EVO Tesol 2011 village - Reflections Week 1

Well, Pio is fascinated at what's happening at the Tesol 2011 VILLAGE (Language Learning and Community Building in Second Life).

The kick off was a great opportunity to meet new educators that come to SL for the first time. They are very lucky because they got just to the place where the most experienced avatars live and work to help other educators.

New SL  and more experience SL language educators  had the chance to try to set up their microphones and were given the chance to introduce themselves and have a first pick at what holodecks are and got the chance to visit the Piazza. It was a really nice way to start the sessions.

The idea of this 5 week EVO Session Adventure that repeats every January, (thanks to these seccions Pionia was born), is to facilitate the process of learning to use 3D worlds by helping educators to develop basic SL skills which are appropriate for and relevant to teaching and learning foreign languages. Participants are introduced to various language learning scenarios in SL. They become familiar with the affordances of SL such as cross cultural interactions using simulated real-life scenes and cities, recreations of historical buildings, and places which are suited for role play and scaffolded conversation practice. Also, it provides educators to have a place to meet regularly in-world in round table expert discussions, that invite SL experienced language teachers to relate their experience and reflect on these experiences in learning conversations in a relaxed atmosphere so as to take part in the social side of Second Life. 

For the first week, these were the outcomes. Pio got a message from he organizers summarizing and offering excellent resources and thought of sharing them here:

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this week, participants should have:
  • joined our comunity network VILLAGE (you have done this successfully, congrats)
  • inroduced yourself and edited your profile in our comunity network in this discussion forum
  • read the course information in our VILLAGE wiki
  • set a Second Life account and added your SL avatar name in your grouply profile (see forum: how to get started in SL)
  • taken a tour to one of the SL orientation places inworld
  • set up voice and sound features in SL viewer
  • befriended other partners in the session inworld and in our network
  • attended one of the welcome sessions in SL
  • posted your week 1 reflections at VILLAGE blog or in this discussion forum (first impressions of SL, expectations, achievement of outcome … etc )
Useful SL Skills

Click this link to go to the SL skills list and tutorial videos.

Activities

1. Join our main comunity network in our grouply http://village.grouply.com
2. read the course outline and activities in our Village wiki
3. Explore what Second Life is before setting an account,
4. Read and see how SL can be used for language learning,
5. See Margareth's slides about her first experience in SL,
6. Set a Second Life account and log inworld for a first visit,
7. After you have logged in and finished in Orientation Island, visit Caledon Oxbridge
8. Take the Caledon tour for new residents,
9. Write your SL avatar name in your page our Village
10. Attend a 1-hour welcome session in SL,
11. Post your reflections to your blog on the Village Grouply
 
 
Resources
Optional Readings / Viewings
This is an example of a language class in Second Life, by professor Merryman fron the Cypri Chat group.


Well, this first week was a really interesting week. Even thought Pio is not a newbie anymore.. she loved helping and meeting future EFL Second Life Professors

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