Virtual worlds – second life

I’m really interested in virtual worlds especially second life.  It think there is real potential there to reach people from all over the world and I am well, just interested.  I have been in second life now for 2 years.  I have an avatar called shnooze schuler.  I  also signed up to  the ning community teaching languages in a virtual world. The organisation has a wiki which is here Electronic village on line.  NergizK is involved with this but I have to admit I haven’t actually taken part in any of their workshops yet.

I think there are two main problems with second life:

A. You need really up to date technology to access it.  My newish prized notebook has died on me

Disaster strikes..

February 21, 2010

So I am relying on my old laptop, unfortunately it isn’t up to SL standards.  I only get this message telling me my computer is substandard.

I finally  managed to access it on another computer this week but I am always wary because,

B.  it takes so long to learn and navigate your way around second life.  I love the SL parody on youtube as for two years this is really my experience so far of  second life.  Walking into walls, crashing into things, flying into nowhere.

I think these two points make it quite inaccessible even though I know there are worthwhile things happening there you have to invest a lot of time to get there.

However with point B things may be a little brighter.  SL have changed things recently and I really think, as I revisited it this week, that they have made it easier to use! Thankfully.

I didn’t crash once ( well…not so many times), and I managed to teleport places. I still never met anyone or “spoke” to any one or really did anything but I did find the British Council Island and took a self portrait ( I haven’t worked out how to get rid of that hair or outfit!).

There are projects going on globally for the British Council and second life.    Graham Stanley and Kyle Mawer are involved with British  Council SL teen grid island and BC SL islands on the adult grid.  I have also heard of the avalon project: In project terms SL is a good idea and I think there is lots of potential.

In class terms though, for me and my classes I can’t see that I could take my students to SL and do any kind of activity.  I’m still interested though and now I know that I can fly and not crash into the wall I’d like to return and find out more about the Teaching Languages in a Virtual World group and what they do.

Games

Card games, charades, bingo, battleships etc etc…The idea of using games in an EFL classroom is anything but new.  Whether you teach adults or children games for vocabulary and grammar have been a staple part of the class since I can remember.  Only with adults, maybe you would call it an “activity” and not a game. The reasoning for that being that adults may think that a “game” is a trivial waste of valuable class time.

I know there is a movement towards making more educational use out of web 2.0 games and computer games.  I’ve recently come across  “reinventing learning though digital play”. I’m also lucky in that a couple of my colleagues are  advocates of using online games to motivate  young learners so I get a lot of ideas and information from them.  They produce Digital Play a site that I use regularly and that I give a big thumbs up to.   Before attending some of the workshops that they put on I had no idea of different computer game types, point and click, role games, simulations.   My gaming history was a short go on Sonic the Hedgehog and Tetris.  Personally,  I’m not a gamer and I don’t really have the patience with games.

Over the last few years though I have used them in class and I have had some really good successes.  One I’ve been using for quite some time now is a point and click game called    Samorost 2.

It has worked well with everyone.   Another one I’ve had really good success with is third word farmer, a simulation game.  It needs preparation to “prime” the  class and I make worksheets for vocabulary and to keep them on task.

However I can’t say that all of my “game” experiments have been so successful.    Recently I used the simulation game “smokescreen” with a higher level class.  It involves a lot of English as it is necessary to read  throughout the game .   For some students this type of game wasn’t interesting.   We  took some of the themes from it for discussion and used it as a basis for written work in the form of a “game review”.  It wasn’t a huge success though in terms of “fun motivational learning”.

Here’s a quote from a student of mine, a boy,  from his game review;

“I don’t really like playing games, but at least I know that I would not recommend this game even though it’s so famous. I think that we waste a lot of time in our lives so I don’t want to be the one who encourages people to spend all their free time playing a game with no point”.

Games can work out really well but I think it’s always worth considering:

• Not everyone likes games, me and my quoted student to name just 2.
• Not all students consider playing games a good way to learn.  Some (like the adults I referred to before) might feel better calling the game an “activity”! Bearing this in mind,  I always explain why we are playing the game and what it ties into.
• The novelty factor.  I have been playing a great game recently with some younger (upper primary) students..poptropica They suggested it to me and it has been great for some students but not all of them have taken to it.  I also used in  class good old fashioned “building blocks in your hand” Jenga, which has been an instant winner.  They also requested “Simon says”…well, I have to say that “simon says” is very very popular.   So,
  
• Games, and online games, can vary quite a lot and so there will be no one game that will be the panacea for all students.

Having said all that I’m going to continue to experiment with online games and activities.  As I get more familiar with them I  get better (I hope!) at using them to add to classroom content.  And, when they work well, they work really well.