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Showing posts from January, 2021

Immersive Storytelling in Virtual Worlds

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Storytelling is a wonderful means of getting our students excited. Recreating such a story in a virtual world would provide a great setting for roleplay and fanfiction. Yet, how difficult is it to recreate scenes of Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter or King Arthur and his Round Table in OpenSim? What about character creation? Changing avatar outfit, clothes and accessories? When creating the scene, what building skills are required and when it comes to storytelling, what skills are required to come up with a captivating story? These main three challenges will be addressed in this EVO session and we hope to recreate a story in OpenSim. Why OpenSim? During our last year's EVO session 2020 Immersive Language Learning in Virtual Worlds, we spent 5 weeks evaluating 18 different 3D environments and ranked and voted for our preferred 3D solution, which was OpenSim. Our evaluation grid included: easy of use, security, costs, what can be customized, etc.  Objectives By the end of this sessi

EVO is celebrating 20 years!!!

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  For five weeks in January and February, TESOL experts and participants from around the world engage in collaborative online discussions or hands-on virtual workshops of professional and scholarly benefit. These sessions bring together participants for a longer period of time than is permitted by land-based professional development conventions and allow a fuller development of ideas than is otherwise possible. Sessions are free and open to anyone around the globe. It is not necessary to be a TESOL or IATEFL member nor to attend the TESOL Convention in order to participate. All you need is access to the Internet. The sessions carry no academic credit, and participants may choose the level of involvement that works for them. This year, we are pleased to offer a record of 19 five-week sessions. Please inform your colleagues about this unparalleled professional development opportunity! For descriptions and abstracts of all sessions, visit the Call for Participation at http://evosessions.p