My main interest in Second Life is for its educational possibilities but up until yesterday I had only read and imagined what this might be like. Yesterday I was lucky enough to be allowed to observe a class in English Village. The class was based on preparation and prompts provided at the accompanying blog. And there will be correction follow up on the text chat histories generated by the activity (for those students who wish).
The lesson was an experiment in team teaching which I gather they had not tried out before. This probably made the pace a little slower as everybody had to be organised but the activity itself was viable only with several 'teachers' for the students to interact with. Prior to getting myself seated on the observation deck I had a chance to wander round English Village and marvel at all the effort which has gone into providing role playing opportunities and other facilities.
'Students were given the task of asking the teachers and lesson observers preselected questions while simultaneously making use of common interjections. It was up the students to initiate conversation as they made their way through the three "Conversation Stations". A prize will soon be given to the student who managed to ask the most questions and make use of the most interjections! The lesson was concluded with a fun display of fireworks. '
Like all digital meetings I had the feeling that what happened in the session could have been done in half the time in Real Life but that is not really the point. The point is that a group of people from very disparate places got the opportunity to practice their English which they might not otherwise have had. Indeed, the one 'student' I ended up talking with admitted that he was from Hawaii and therefore did not really need English lessons but had just come for the interaction! It was interesting that the students often got engrossed in the conversations and in so doing failed to follow the rules of the lesson which was to ask questions and use interjections on hearing the answer. This must count as a positive.
Second Life is soon to incorporate voice chat as a standard feature. This may alter life there substantially with all those women masquerading as men and vice versa being outed. It might also be a shame for classes such as this since the slower pace of text chatting helps students at lower levels have time for reflection before they 'speak'. Though text chatting will not disappear of course.
I am not ready to venture into teaching in Second Life as I feel I need to be much more comfortable and familiar with the environment before I attempt it. Another issue is bandwidth of which it appears I have little. The counter in the top right hand corner of the Second Life screen was telling me that I had about 20 kbps throughout most of the session. Maybe I misunderstand and that indicates only what it needed to use but I was also getting dire packet loss figures so I think I'm right in thinking that I'm right at the edge of what I need to run SL comfortably. One problem for me is that it is difficult to spot when my machine has had enough and freezes completely. I often think that people are just not doing very much! Still my ISP is giving everybody extra bandwidth for free as from tomorrow so things may get better. (That's not an April Fool I hope).
Keywords: Second Life, teaching
