SLanguages 2009 Conference in Second Life

Well, the SLanguages 2009 conference in Second Life is over. Phew! This was undoubtedly the best online conference that I have ever attended. I learned an enormous amount about teaching foreign languages in virtual worlds, and I even took part in a lesson for beginners in Spanish.

The conference ran for 24 hours from Friday 8 May to Saturday 9 May, with many of the 39 presentations being repeated so that people in different time zones could attend them without having to stay up all night. A total of 359 participants took part in the conference, with a peak of 91 in attendance concurrently on Friday evening.

If you missed it you can catch up here in Gavin Dudeney's blog:

http://slife.dudeney.com/?p=191

Graham Davies

"IWBs are useless. Discuss." (Quoting Scott Thornbury)

I picked up the title to this thread in Twitter. It comes from Scott Thornbury's contribution to the IATEFL 2009 blog:
http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2009/forum/iwbs-are-useless-discuss

What do you think? I referred Scott to my mini-survey that I conducted in the autumn of 2008. Many teachers waxed lyrical about their IWBs:
http://www.ict4lt.org/en/ICT_Effectiveness.doc

See also ICT4LT, Section 4, Module 1.4.

Scott, BTW, was interviewed by Nik Peachey in Second Life last week and managed to upset a few people about his apparently negative views on technology. But I didn't find his views particularly controversial. Like Scott, I have never regarded technology as the panacea, and I have expressed similar views in my article "Lessons from the past, lessons for the future":
http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/coegdd1.htm

New Joint Virtual Worlds Special Interest Group for Teachers of Foreign Languages

New Joint Virtual Worlds Special Interest Group for Teachers of Foreign Languages

Following discussions between Graham Davies (EUROCALL), Thom Thibeault (CALICO) and Randall Sadler (CALICO) it has been decided to create a joint CALICO/EUROCALL Virtual Worlds Special Interest Group for teachers of modern foreign languages and English as a foreign language.

CALICO has already set up a Virtual Worlds Special Interest Group (VW SIG):

http://colanmc.siu.edu/virtualworlds/

EUROCALL already has a headquarters building in Second Life, on the EduNation III island at:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/EduNation%20III/9/29/22/

If you have not visited the EUROCALL HQ recently, drop in sometime. I have made several improvements, including a more efficient video projection screen, and I have begun installing teleporters to enable easier movement around the site. There is also a holodeck on the roof. What's a holodeck? The term derives from Star Trek. Think of it as virtual reality within a virtual world. A holodeck offers exciting possibilities of calling up a range of instantly available simulations that can be used for entertainment, presentations, conferencing and, of course, teaching and learning.

CALICO has now acquired the land immediately next door to the EUROCALL HQ and will shortly be building its headquarters there. This the two HQs will form a a significant joint environment in Second Life for teachers and learners of foreign languages, where meetings and classes can take place and where resources can be distributed.

We welcome suggestions about what people think would be useful to have at the site. We plan to hold our first joint SIG meeting at the EUROCALL 2009 conference in Spain in September – details to be announced at the EUROCALL website:

http://www.eurocall-languages.org

The contact persons for the joint VW SIG are:

Graham Davies (EUROCALL): graham@camsoft.force9.co.uk
Thom Thibeault (CALICO): ttbo@siu.edu
Randall Sadler (CALICO): rsadler@uiuc.edu

If you are new to Second Life there is a wealth of information in the rapidly expanding Section 14.2.1 of Module 1.5 at the ICT4LT site (which I edit):

http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_mod1-5.htm#secondlife

A pre-conference workshop for newcomers to Second Life will take place at EUROCALL 2009:

http://eurocall.webs.upv.es/eurocall2009/acwork.php

Graham Davies

New projects on language learning in Second Life

I am updating Section 14.2.1, Module 1.5 almost daily. Three new additions:

AVALON (Access to Virtual and Action Learning live ONline) is a two-year EU-funded project running from January 2009 to December 2010, aiming to explore 3D worlds for language learning:
http://avalon-project.ning.com

CALICO 2009 Workshop on Virtual Worlds and Language Teaching:
http://sl4calico.pbwiki.com

NIFLAR (Networked Interaction in Foreign Language Acquisition and Research): An EU-funded project, which began in January 2009:
http://cms.let.uu.nl/niflar/

Keep checking out Section 14.2.1, Module 1.5 at
http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_mod1-5.htm#secondlife

Graham

What do you think about Twitter?

I was luke-warm about Twitter when I joined it some months ago, but I now realise it was my own fault for failing to seek out friends, old and new, who use Twitter. I have therefore made an effort over the last few days to find out who uses it. I found over 20 friends in a couple of hours, and I picked up some useful Web links and other information from them.

You can find me on Twitter as GroovyWinkler.

http://www.twitter.com/

How effective is ICT in language teaching and learning?

This question has been raised on numerous occasions and few convincing arguments have been put forward that ICT makes much difference. There's a bit on ICT effectiveness here in Section 3 of Module 1.1 at the ICT4LT site:

http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_mod1-1.htm#anchor158435

So I thought it was high time I raised this question again. Concrete evidence on the effectiveness of CALL is difficult to obtain. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence about the positive effects of CALL. Teachers often report on their students being "enthusiastic", "engaged", "motivated" and even "excited" in classes in which CALL is used, but are sceptical about measuring its effectiveness. See this summary (in Word format) of a discussion that took place in the MFL Resources forum in 2008:

http://www.ict4lt.org/en/ICT_Effectiveness.doc

Farewell to Lively by Google

Google plan to drop Lively on 31 December 2008, five months after it was launched. So, if you have a Lively room, use it for a final New Year’s Eve bash, take some screenshots and say bye, bye. I guess this is the way things are on the Web: if it doesn't catch on in a couple of months then drop it like a hot potato, especially in these troubled economic times.

The demise of Lively, along with many other websites, should remind us that it is unwise to build a teaching course around a website, unless it is your own – although you can't even guarantee that your own site will always be there. One of mine went down for three weeks in 2001 when my hosting service went bankrupt. I didn’t lose anything, however, as it was all backed up on my hard disk and on CD-ROM. I have links to over 1000 sites on the three websites that I maintain. The wastage rate averages 3%-5% per month – a phenomenon known as “linkrot”. The worst offenders are government and university websites; they are forever changing.

Lively was probably not an appropriate name. No one ever visited my room unless it was pre-arranged, and I am not aware of Lively catching on in education in the same way as Second Life. Second Life educational locations are springing up like mushrooms these days, and many of them are dedicated to language learning. I ran a training course on Second Life in September, and it worked quite well. A colleague ran a course on Lively for the same participants on the same day. Participants could see more potential in using Second Life.

What I like about Second Life is that I meet someone there by chance almost every day. I maintain the EUROCALL HQ there on one of the EduNation islands, and people often just drop in for a chat - three people were there between 6 and 8 pm yesterday evening, 25 November 2008. I also take part in trivia quizzes and I go to live performances of bands, e.g. Irish groups in the Blarney Stone pub in SL, and fund-raising concerts for cancer research. I have won a bit of money by taking part in quizzes.