The class I have conducted last week

Last week I have conducted a class in SL. I played the role as a teacher to teach my two students English. Although the net speed was not very well, it did not effect a lot, we could still talk with the voice function. It was a quite good experience for both of us. They told me they had never experienced virtual lessons before and it seemed that learning in the virtual environment was interest of them. 
 
Yanlin

Cypris Chat: Halloween

Kimiko

English Cafe： Halloween

Kimiko

Qian's Week 12

Hello Everyone,

 

 

I have attended an art gallery in SL which was held by an American artist. It is so interesting to see so many amazing works showing in SL. You click on them, you can look at in different angels. Most importantly, you dont need to wait a long line to buy tickets. After that exhibition, I have chatted with that artist. Surprisely, he said that his orignial thoughts of his series works called 'Chen Yu Luo Yan' came from an classical Chinese romantic story. After heard that, I suddently remembered that my Chinese characters (CC) notecards for group trial lesson were sitting in my inventory. The idea is if he can get some inspriations from Chinese literature, he might also them from Chinese language. Then I dragged those notecards to him. He is quite interested in my way of showing Chinese characters, especially the evolutionary developments of Chinese characters. I promised him that I am going to made more notecards like that for him, also for my teaching.

 

With sending him the notecards, I was also sending him a pronouciation link to him. He can click that link to hear the correct pronouciation of that CC. He expressed that he really loved this way to learn CC. I also think I really like his way to show people his works.

 

This experience reminds me some improvements for my project, such as some the pronouciation links should be added on the notecards. The students can learn it without speaker or teachers' voice assistant. 2nd, a pre-test and a post-test will be better for learners to enhance their learning memories, also good for teachers to collect the teaching results. 3rd, more visual assistants will be great loved by CC learners, such as images plus illustrations, or images plus handing drawing evolutionary texts.

 

Sorry for the delaying post, I was sick last weekend.

 

Good luck

 

Qian

Some interesting landmarks

I have found some interesting landmarks where people teach and learn English. They are all built in Second Life. Interestingly, they are recommanded in an Asia International TEFL Conference. TEFL refers to Teaching English as a Foreign Langage. This conference focused on Collaboraton and Creativity in English Teaching and Learning in Asia. "The use of IT in Lnaguage Teaching" was a part of the contents in the conference, and it talked about teaching and learing in SL. I put these on the bolg in case you are interested in them.
 
Avatar Languages
British Council Isle
Cypris Village-English Learning Community
Education UK Island
Edunation
English Conversation
English Language School
English Village
ESL-Learn English-Language Lab
International Schools Islands
Second Life English
TESOL, TOEFL, ESL & EFL (English) Resources! Learn English!
Voice 3D English
 
 
 
Reference:
http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/Cebu-Video.php
 
 
Yanlin

Report my attendance of English teaching classes 5

Although I continue to attend the other classes, I observed the pronunciation class at 3D English CHACHAT, and I could talk with the guide and students after the class.

The guide seems to grasp the detailed situation about English teaching schools or chat-groups in SL, and says that the area of English teaching in SL is not so wide. For example, the assistant of ‘Cypris Chat’ owner was his co-worker, but she was headhunted by ‘Cypris Chat’ about 2 years and a half ago.

The guide says that there is little possibility to attend the other English teaching classes for me, even if it is not free. That is because most of those kinds of schools were already closed, although they were well attended at first.

So, I will give up finding out the other classrooms, and focus on the classrooms which I could found out until now.

Kimiko

Ethical Considerations

This week, I will be focusing on the ethical conundrums that we have been facing in the past few weeks. Initially I 

was just focusing on our problems but I came across some interesting news that I thought I must share with you. 

Butterbusch and Talab (2009) explain various unethical scenarios in a very reader-friendly manner. They talk

about how a female avatar, who is new to SL is taken advantage of by a creature. The creature brings her to 

different lands, including the "seedy" side of SL. This was taken even further when the creature persuades the

female avatar to get a furry avatar of her own. What is interesting is that these furry creatures have their own 

social rules, values and practices. They have immersed themselves so completely into this identity that they have

forgotten what its like to have a simple human avatar and that it comes with its own identity. What proceeded

was that the female avatar was harassed and it was only when the female avatar changed back into her human 

form that the abuse stopped. Now, all of the above seems obviously unethical. However, apparently, even

choosing not to disclose your real life identity is unethical in Virtual Worlds. Dr. Alex Gordon, who conducted 

research on identity in Second Life revealed that 80% of female avatars were actually male and 75% of male 

avatars were actually female!! It is shocking to find how many people actually want to escape the realities of life 

by going to the extent of changing their identity. What makes the unethical aspect of this even worse is that there 

are scripts that allows the abuser to control his/her victim's avatar. Eg. Knees detached from the body, shoes on 

top of the head, etc. The icing on top of the cake is when SL users get punished in real life for crimes committed 

in SL. True stories include, a woman in Tokyo who kills her husband's avatar and is consequently sent to

prison and a woman in Delaware plotting to abduct her SL boyfriend. 

Coming to ethical issues that concern us more. Many researchers feel that it is alright to simply stand in the 

background and collect the data trail that people leave behind. However, as long as they are 'lurking', it is 

unacceptable.

Devi

References: 

Butterbusch, H. R., & Talab, R. S. (2009). Copyright and You Ethical Issues in Second Life [Journal]. TechTrends, 53(1), 6.

 Nairn, A. (2009). Research ethics in the virtual world [Journal]. International Journal of Market Research, 51(2).