Second Life

I was one of the unfortunate few who could not get Second Life to run properly on the computer last Monday, so I am not in the best of positions to comment on its suitability for use in the language classroom. However, having witnessed it running smoothly on Rubi's PC, my first impression was that this kind of virtual world is nothing short of amazing in terms of its scale and the vast array of things that your avatar can explore and do in it. If I were to use Second Life with my upper primary students, whose English proficiencies are well below the territory average, I would introduce its different elements sloooowly over a period of time, perhaps in my literacy workshops during the post-examination period.

For starters, I would assist my in creating a single avatar representative of the whole class because it would be easier in terms of classroom management than allowing every student to have their own. Of course, my students would very much prefer to have their own avatar given the choice but I am little concerned about the steep learning curve they would have to go through individually and the fact that some (especially the boys) might choose to meander off task. Creating an avatar can be an English learning opportunity itself - you could get students to verbalize the reasons for wanting to choose a particular last name or starting look (using adjectives to describe appearance or quality), for example. Once the avatar is co-created, the students, with expert guidance from the teacher, could begin exploring one of islands. As we discovered last Monday you can easily lose track of what you're supposed to be doing in this virtual world so there needs to be a concrete task for the students to complete and it needs to be explicitly stated in both spoken and written form.

There has to be a million and one ways to exploit the Second Life virtual world for language learning but my brain is obviously nowhere near operating on all four cylinders on this Chinese New Year's day (by the way, Kung Hei Fat Choi to you all!) I guess the first thing that comes to mind is to have the students explore together an island that you have already taken the time to explore yourself and then get them to provide a running commentary of what they are seeing or write about what they have seen. Or set them the task of finding certain things in certain places e.g. find three things that you would like to see in real life in the Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and describe them. (I think somebody else might have already mentioned this.) It goes without saying that Second Life provides a natural and engaging stimulus for students to speak and write. I think I'm sold.