Second Life: A Classroom for ESOL
(Left: Ms. Carmichael hangs out at an assessment station on SL English, while (a younger) Ms. Lawrence instructs an ESOL class for BA&CE)
Second Life is has incredible potential as a learning platform. I was excited to read on Forbes.com that an English language school in Germany has launched an island "Second Life English." The island is dedicated to offering FREE (yes, you read that right, FREE) resources for learning English, including virtual ESOL lessons. According to the article, Educator (and island owner) Kip Boahn "feels a new medium calls for a new way of teaching language. Even using the game's English interface gives students a chance to practice what they've learned." I couldn't agree more! I enjoy his approach:
different linguistic tasks, which could include anything from asking
for directions to bargaining to buy a knickknack. To do those tasks,
Boahn and his colleagues use "holodecks," rooms that can flip through
as many as 40 different scenes at the mere click of a mouse. Want to
practice ordering American fast food? Just switch the holodeck to
Dara's Diner and line up at the counter.
This sort of flexibility means that, as a teacher, you can cover a lot of ground teaching culture, in addition to language, by creating situational enactments that are difficult to do in a classroom. I used to teach ESOL at the Brookline Adult and Community Education Center in classrooms at Brookline High School. I laugh to think of the many ways we rearranged the classroom to mimic check-out lines, banks, cafes, and even a car dealership! I can't help but think of how much more efficient it would be to change one setting to the next with a simple click. On the other hand, there is a lot to be said for group exercises in imagination, not to mention the language exercised just coordinating the effort! It is truly an interesting example of the sort of gain/compromise tensions that arise when you move real life activities into virtual settings.
Examples like Boahn's are important as more and more people begin to investigate the potential for education options in Second Life and other virtual worlds. It helps to remind people of the kind of good that can come from a free platform like Second Life, and gets us all thinking about the ramifications of adopting virtual education models. It is certainly useful on the broader scale to consider what SL teaching opportunities might exist for CCTV, and the Cambridge community at-large!
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Again, I am a real novice at all of this, and I am sure that all of you SL'ers have beaten this topic into the ground, but it seems like people would create their avatars to be whom they wished they could, and that could be good or evil, to be simplistic. On a lighter note, I could be a strong, young, really smart avatar in SL....no comments, please. I guess allowing people to not take responsibility for their avatar is a no no, and people are probably as responsible or as irresponsible as they are in RL. morning musings....
I'm glad to hear that! There's something very nebulous about Second Life that makes articulating its nature very tricky sometimes. Hopefully I can paint a few small pictures of SL through blog posts and photos! :)
The ESOL lessons are real time, organized with instructors and students gathering at predetermined times. Students choose what first language they would like their instructor to have, something very relevant in such a global context! Classes use the holodecks almost as a theater set and then role play.
I visited the Second Life English island when I first saw your post, hoping to see a community of people there 'hanging out,' but no such luck. It is a fairly new island and I imagine that, as time goes on, more people will be returning to it for lessons and meeting other avatars. Perhaps they will be inspired to role play on their own... ideally maybe there could be more advanced students volunteering to 'staff' the holodecks so visitors can come and learn at any time! ::laugh:: Somewhat like a 24/7 ComputerCENTRAL!
Your question "What do you call the real person behind the avatar?" brings up a linguistic challenge I've been trying to sort out for a while now. First, to answer your question: "The real person behind the avatar" could summarily be called the 'user'. The problem with that term, however, is that it literally captures only half the picture.
In fact, with a few academic exceptions, people associated with virtual worlds generally do not distinguish between the avatar and the person behind the avatar. Instead, because software environments like Second Life have been established as being "worlds," the term "resident" is used to refer to the "user/avatar". That is: resident = user at the keyboard + avatar in virtual world = user/avatar. I put "="s between each of these because they are technically all the same, but I personally think they carry extremely different connotations.
What many people chalk up as "being PC" is actually a very important movement toward understanding the way language affects they way we view one another. It is with this understanding that I began to evaluate the problematic choices being made as we develop a language around virtual worlds and Second Life. The easiest example is that very term, "resident."
I am searching for a lot of sensible language to discuss Second Life, and what to call the "user/avatar" is definitely on the top of the list. The term resident creates a situation of haves/have nots. Linguistically, there's something intrinsically superior about a "resident" status. Likely because of our... let's safely say 'controversial'... immigration policies, there is an association of having to "pass" some type of judgment or approval system to become a resident. It is exclusionary and, importantly, possibly intimidating to those who have not yet joined SL, or any other virtual world.
Other options? Well, "User at the keyboard + avatar in virtual world" would probably end up summed in an acronymatic nightmare of UK+AVW, so right away I don't like it. Beyond that though, the real problem with UK+AVW (and even "user/avatar") is that is separates out the user from the avatar, which can start some pretty big philosophical debates. (Trust me on that one, and never ever mix that topic with drinks.) For now, perhaps because of our societal need to feel like people are accountable for their wrong doings, even their virtual ones, we generally do not consider the user as a separate entity from the avatar. Since the two need to be synchronous and synonymous we end up looking again for one word to describe the union, and the search continues for a replacement of "resident."
As for the "academic exceptions": I think it's worth mentioning that most often "resident" or "user/avatar" is separated into "user" and "avatar" when discussing identity in SL. There is fascinating work going on investigating the choices users make when designing their avatars, given SL's infinite range of options. For instance, my avatar clearly has a Japanese influence in appearance. Reflective academic that I am, I have given some thought about the significance of my choices (or if there is any), a subject for a separate long, and possibly cathartic, blog entry. ;)
This is really interesting, Aubree (I feel like I say that in each of my posts) - I am starting to gain a better understanding of what goes on in Second Life and how it can be used....so, is all of this in real time? For example, when a student goes up to the counter in Dara's Diner, would there be another live person behind it? (What do you call the person behind the avatar?)