EFL Professor in SL

Saturday, April 21, 2012

5th Virtual Round Table web Conference: To text or not to text

The 5th Virtual Round Table Web Conference (20-22 April 2012) is a 3-day free conference offered to teachers who integrate language learning technologies into their classes. This wonderful conference is organised by Heike Philp, Shelly Terrell, Steven Herder and Berni Wall.

The conference takes place primarily in a virtual classroom
environment (Adobe ConnectPro) with sessions for language learning in virtual worlds being presented using slides and screenshared.

Twitter Hashtag #vrtwebcon

Closing conference party is on EduNation in Second Life on Sunday 22 April, 8am slt.

Pio was invited to participate in this session:

A Round Table called: To text or not to text

Watson & Baker published 1984 their studies on how we communicate. Their research showed that we humans communicate 55% by listening, 24% speaking, 13% reading and 8% writing. Has this changed? Today we communicate mostly in text chat via Instant Messenger (Skype, AIM, Yahoo), write short messages on the mobile and tweet. A large amount of communication takes place in forums. A large amount of communication takes place via text chat in virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft, Second Life etc.

So, here is the public debate question: Are teachers hitting the air by teaching speaking skills?

Moderator Natalya Eydelman

Dr. Doris Molero

Matt Firth

Questions for open mic discussion:

1. Today we communicate mostly in text chat via Instant Messenger (Skype, AIM, Yahoo), write short messages on the mobile and tweet. A large amount of communication takes place in forums. A large amount of communication takes place via text chat in virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft, Second Life etc. As language educators are we aware of this? Should we do something about it in the classroom? If no, why? If yes, what?

2. How has texting changed the way of communication in the age of the Internet?

3. Does the chat/texting/culture affect the use of the language in a more positive/negative way? Whose perspective?

4. What do you see as some of the advantages of texting? What happens with our ability to make jokes? Do you think it is possible to keep your sense of humor in text chats? Anybody for a good joke?

5. What do you see as possible teachable moments involved with texting? What would the benefit of using it to teach about the evolution of the language might be?

6. Should these new modes of communication be used in the classroom? What about the opinion many of my Ss share, for example: “texting and other new tools are not for classroom use, they are for our private communication; it’s one thing we use if with each other and it’s a completely different thing to make use of them in the classroom”.

7. How do we as teachers make use of mLearning tools in the classroom? Are your students excited about using mobile devices in the classroom?

For World Time click here http://tinyurl.com/21Apr1pmGMT

Adobe ConnectPro room (enter as guest)
http://lancelot.adobeconnect.com/virtual-round-table
Livestream
http://www.livestream.com/letstalkonline

Resources:
Blogs
EFL professor in SL http://pioniadestiny.blogspot.com
Matt Firth: Legal English Trainer http://www.legalenglishtrainer.com/

MSM
Shambles Home http://www.shambles.net/pages/staff/sms/
The List of Chat Acronyms & Text Message Shorthand http://www.netlingo.com/acronyms.php
SMS Texting Dictionary http://www.mob1le.com/sms.html
Interpreting Internet Slang & Symbols http://www.safesurfingkids.com/interpreting_internet_slang.htm

Infographics
http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/infographic-instant-messaging-facts-figures/
http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/infographic-twitter-statistics-facts-figures/
http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/facebook-statistics-facts-figures-for-2010/

Roleplaying
Guide to Roleplaying http://www.wowwiki.com/Guide_to_roleplaying
Yet Another Role Playing Guide http://harald.ist.org/uo/post/index.php?page=rp_guide

Role Play: Emotes, Vocabulary and Expressions http://medievalroleplay.blogspot.com/2011/05/role-play-emotes-vocabulary-and.html
Roleplaying Guide and Tips for the Beginner http://medievalroleplay.blogspot.com/2010/07/roleplaying-guide-and-tips-for-beginner.html
Role Play 101: Emote Crafting http://www.thatdamnrper.com/role-play-101-emote-crafting/
Wow emotes http://www.wowwiki.com/List_of_emotes
Roleplaying Emotes http://secondliferoleplay.com/2009/04/28/roleplaying-emotes/
Understanding the Emote http://magazine.roleplayguide.com/2011/08/understanding-the-emote/

Roleplaying in a medieval sim and languages

These are interviews conducted by Anna Begonia to role players of different languages who use virtual worlds and roleplaying a s away to improve their English.

On roleplay: interview with Sir Edge, the battlemage http://aberriolo.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/on-roleplay-interview-with-sir-edge-the-battlemage/
On roleplay: interview with Sir Soltel’vayas, the drow http://aberriolo.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/on-roleplay-interview-with-soltelvayas-the-drow/

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

A building Class with Blu Heron!

Blu Heron

Well, today Pio had the pleasure to be part of a basic skills building class.. the topic.. Eastern eggs!!! It was fun.. and the best part was to learn from Blu Heron !! She's the best... Did you know she taught Pio a long time ago how to rezz and open boxes... It was a very informal session after an Educator Tools session she conducted.

So, this is how we did it...

First thing you do when you get to the brewery classes (BUILDERS BREWERY Free Building Classes, Textures, Script.) you have to sit on a special area for builders.. each teacher changes the deco every time..it's so cool and creative.

After the instructor says hello she gives the first instructions indicating to pick material you will need for the class...

Blu Heron shouts: Welcome to Beginners Egg Coloring Activity! this IS for Beginners level 1 - no building experience! If you know your way around the edit window and have some experience building, the Easter baskets class at 1 is better for your skill level. if you have not got the supplies yet, please click the yellow box behind me.

So after you got your materials, they will show in a folder in your recent tag n your inventory. After that, everything is to just follow the instructions..

Blu Heron: Look in your inventory for the folder called BB BEGINNERS EGG COLORING ACTIVITY (look in the Recent items to find it quickly).

Blu uses public chat to give general instructions and also make sure students are following by instant messaging them.

Blu Heron: I'm asking some of you in IM if you have the supplies. Please tell me there or her in local chat.

The material include a note with detailed instructions as well as screen shots of the steps that have to be followed in order to build the project you are working in. She always arranges the tools in her screen.. She position my camera so Pio can see the area where she's working. Also open the folder with the materials, open the notecard with instructions and she also sets the chat window so She can follow everything.

Something Pio noticed was that Blu has spare screenshots that she places in front of the students so if they get lost and don't know how to use camera properly don't get lost.

Pio learned a few tricks today....

How to color an object and that you can add a precise color to your object by typing in numerical values. For this you Click the Color swatch to open the Color Picker so you can type in the color values.

Here are some of the colors Blu used for the examples:

Cream: Red=255   Green=255   Blue=225
Pink: Red=255   Green=86   Blue=171
Blue: Red=102   Green=186   Blue=255
Green: Red=0   Green=175   Blue=0
Purple: Red=174   Green=2   Blue=253
Chocolate: Red=100   Green=50   Blue=0

Also how to resize and object
While holding down Ctrl + Shift, click and drag one of the gray squares at the corners of the bounding box to resize your egg.

A busy class... :)

A nice Eastern Egg

Proud of my eggs!

Well, it was fun and easy... so what are you waiting for ...Join the Builders Brewery and start building your dreams...

Peeking on Blu picks... Pio found these great places to find her:

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Building in SL: Basics

THE PRIMITIVE BUILDING BLOCKS: Primitives or simply prims are the raw materials from which everything in Second Life is constructed. All things are created from these basic building blocks. Every object, clothes, houses, furniture, cars, plants, etc. are created from prims by the people who use Second Life. Linden lab provides prims freely in unlimited quantities so anyone can build. Each land area can support only a certain number of prims. For example, a basic 512 square meter plot of land will hold only 117 prims. This means a small lot will allow for only a small house with limited furnishings.

HOW TO BUILD THINGS IN SECOND LIFE: Building in Second Life is an art. You build by putting together primitive 3D shapes known simply as prims. Primitive shapes include: cube, sphere, cylinder and torus. The shapes can be scaled up or down, larger or smaller, and cut and twisted.

SANDBOX: To begin building, go to an area where you are permitted to build. For most new residents of SL, that would be a public "sandbox." Of course, if you own land, you are permitted to build on it. A sandbox is a piece of land intended for people to practice building techniques. Search for the word "sandbox" and many will show up.

THE TOOL BOX: To open the Build tool box window, click the large blue Build button at the bottom of your SL viewer window. The Build tool box will open. An alternative way of opening that same tool box window is to right-click on the ground. A pie-menu will appear. From the pie menu, select Create, which opens the Build tool box window. You are ready to create.

CREATING: Near the top of the Build window you will see five small icons. Second from right is Create. Third from right is Edit. Create should be selected. Below those icons are more than a dozen small pictures of shapes. Prims come in several shapes. Select a prim shape. Touching the wand tip to the ground -- that is, left-clicking the ground -- will place a prim in the selected shape there on the ground. Similarly, a prim could be dropped onto a surface other than the ground. As the new prim appears, the Build tool box window will change to Edit mode. We refer to the prim as an object.

BUILD TOOL BOX TABS: The General tab is used to set the name of the object, and its description, permissions, and details for selling the object if you are putting it up for sale. The Object tab is where you will edit the object’s shape, position, size, etc. The Texture tab lets you set and adjust the surface color and texture of the object. The Content tab displays a list of objects which you place inside the prim. Examples of things in the container would be scripts, sounds, animations, and other things and stuff you put inside the object.

MOVING, ROTATING AND COPYING THE PRIM: You can move the prim back and forth, up and down with the red, green, and blue arrows you see right on it. To make a copy of the object, hold down Shift while moving it with one of those arrows. Hold down Ctrl to rotating the object. Hold down Shift+Ctrl to resize the object.

LINKING PRIMS: To combine two or more prims into one solid object, edit the first prim, shift-click to select the second prim, and then go to menubar Tools > Link. They become one object. You can edit one prim in a linked set by going to the Edit tab and selecting Edit Linked Parts.

POCKETING YOUR WORK: To keep the finished object in your inventory, right-click it and choose Take from the pie menu. Alternatively, you could keep a copy by right-clicking the object and selecting More; and then Take Copy. The object you Take will go to the Objects folder in your inventory.

CLEAN UP: After you build in a sandbox, clean up after yourself by right-clicking on any leftover scrap objects and selecting Take or Delete.

OPENING BOXES: By the way, a sandbox is a good place to go to open and unpack boxes of things you buy in stores.

Building in Second Life is all about experimenting. Find inspiration in everything around you and try your hand at building something cool.

ADDING BEHAVIOR WITH A SCRIPT: You can even add behaviors to objects you create using a scripting language - basically, attaching code which tells the object what to do. As an example try this out:

Create a cube and then right-click on it to select "Edit." Pick the "Content" tab (you might need to click "more" to show the object edit panel) and click on "New Script." Hit "save" and then "close" to see the script appear in the object's contents. Now close the edit panel and click on the box (you should have a finger icon instead of the normal cursor when passing over the box).

See how it says "touched" when clicked? Change this by going back into Edit mode, open the script on the Contents panel via a double-click and replacing the word "touched" in the script with something of your own choosing. When you next click the box it should chat your new text instead of the default "touch." It's that easy to make something totally unique! As you spend more time in the world you'll be able to play with more scripts written by other people or maybe even try creating some of your own.

Visit the Second Life Website to download guides and tutorials: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Build-Tools/ta-p/700039

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Afganistan Virtual Museum at the VWBPE 2012

Well, on my wandering in the poster area..I found this beautiful museum...I was enchanted by the simplicity of it, the colors, the textures, poetry and history of this courageous and ancient people.

Afganistan Museum in SL on PhotoPeach

Don't miss this wonderful place... and make sure to get the wonderful gifts...

A peek..into....VWBPE 2012

Hey, there! we did it again.. went looking for what's going on.... :)

A pick into VWBPE 2012 on PhotoPeach

Well, hope to see you all there!!! Keep on shining love and peace! And...... Be EPIC!!!!!
Pionia Destiny

VWBPE is back...This year we are EPIC!!!

Well, it's been a while since I last posted here. Zillions of little things distracting us... evil multitasking...or happy serendipiting.. shrugs her shloulders.. Who knows? What I know it's that those roads have taken me to new lands, people and more knowledge. With a content heart we are back in town... and with good news... Virtual World Best Practices in Education is here on a new edition and eventhough I am not presenting there, I will be presenting presenters.. a whole new challenge, yeaah!! So, let me tell you about this year Epic edition of VWBPE 2012.

Quoting VWBPE's definition of what Epic is..

Epic is being able to attend a virtual conference with cutting edge participants and brilliant bleeding edge presenters and explore engagement, immersion and NPIRL* education. http://www.vwbpe.org

On its fifth year, this free, grass-roots conference provides opportunities for participants in all virtual worlds and games to share innovative teaching, learning and research practices in 3D virtual environments.

They offer a wide range of content delivery options including lectures, guided virtual tours across platforms, research presentations, workshops and tutorials, machinima, discussion and round-tables.

It is a three day conference that provides opportunities for sharing and further understanding of virtual world technology. The virtual worlds discussed in this conference are: Second Life, OpenSim, World of Warcraft, Minecraft and Club Penguin.

Attendance is free and some sessions may be livestreamed and recorded.

Registration http://vwbpe12.eventbrite.com/