Second CLA: Second Life Opportunities for Language Learning and Teaching Alexander Maurizi
Centro Linguistico d’Ateneo
University of Perugia
Second CLA: Second Life Opportunities for Language Learning and Teaching Alexander Maurizi
Centro Linguistico d’Ateneo
University of Perugia
Internet users – world distribution - (basic unit: 10,000 users) from the World Factbook 2007 Language teaching methodologies have undergone a major change since the advent of the Internet.
The teacher is not seen anymore as a divine depository of knowledge, stockpiled with useful information.
The learning process is similar to a net, in which every new knot has to be connected with all the others in order to form new abilities.
Students learn faster and better if they have to accomplish a task or if they feel the genuine urge to communicate something to somebody, rather than faking dialogues about Jack and Jill going up the hill.
Far from being self-sufficient, the student more than ever needs to be taken by hand, like a modern Alice in Wonderland, or else he is put at constant risk of being submerged and diverted by the excessive, and not always appropriated, amount of stimuli received.
Our videoconferencing system:
Our content-sharing platform (Moodle-based):
Second Life is a multiplayer 3D virtual platform created by Linden Labs, a company based in San Francisco, California. Multiple connected servers host what is generically known as a “metaverse”, that is to say a virtual world with its rules, residents, communities, economic and social structure.
A free downloadable client allows geographically distant people to interact socially in the aforementioned world, thus the definition of “social network”.
The avatars (that are the virtual representations of the people sitting behind the desk) can chat (both in textual and vocal mode), dance, listen to some music or watch a movie, flirt, buy and sell things, and, generically speaking, do all the things that people do when interacting.
Usually these behaviours take place in an area specifically set up to remind the corresponding place in the real world. Let’s see some examples:
Usually these behaviours take place in an area specifically set up to remind the corresponding place in the real world.
Usually these behaviours take place in an area specifically set up to remind the corresponding place in the real world.
The platform also allows its users to do things that are normally impossible in the real world, that is to fly, to relocate instantaneously in another part of the world, to modify one’s own appearance in a split second, to reach friends scattered throughout the world with just the click of a mouse.
One of the most common purpose is to learn something, whether about arts (paintings, monuments and photographic exhibitions), history (historical places, historical role playing game lands), sciences (planetariums, architectural exhibitions, museums) or a foreign language (language schools, groups, communities).
For example, looking at a beautiful painting can be an astounding experience, but what about walking into it?
Many famous foreign academic institutions had already decided to settle in this parallel world (MIT, Princeton, Harvard and many others)
Given the small land space at our disposal, we opted to build traditional learning areas.
This is accomplished also thanks to a sophisticated system that manages many details: the weather, daylight and wind change according to a complex algorithm that influences other parameters such as shades, reflections, lights and so on.
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