Virtually Anywhere in Second Life: A Transmedia Storytelling Adventure

April 17, 2021

Virtually Anywhere in Second Life. Visiting the Terracotta Army. Molero (2020)

Virtually Anywhere is a transmedia experience for language learning. Students employed Transmedia Storytelling techniques to collaborate in the creation of new fiction based on an existing short audio story. The storyline used for this project is part of the audio series Virtually Anywhere by Cambridge Assessment English. These audio episodes were created primarily to help students improve their English listening skills.

The series tells a story about university students Geeta and Paul who are struggling with their archeology coursework when a mysterious professor offers to help and takes them on a series of virtual traveling to different sites. In the original series, our characters visit two sites: The Terracotta Army in China and the Citadel of Teotihuacan in Mexico.

Virtually Anywhere in Second Life. Martha Eugenia Lino (Eugenia Calderon in SL). Molero (2020)

Students created two new episodes following the original ones as models. Since students were in different countries, they thought of a situation happening in their countries. Students in Argentina chose Pucara de Tilcara in the province of Jujuy in Argentina and students in Germany selected The Imperial Palace of Goslar.

Virtually Anywhere in Second Life. Landing point in Edunation. Molero (2020)

The episodes were recreated in the virtual world of Second Life. Each episode was represented following the original story. You can visit the sites and interact with the different materials designed to follow the storyline. At the same time, different tools were created by both the educator and the students. Visitors to the sites can try to solve riddles and follow clues to find answers.

Virtually Anywhere in Second Life. Escape the Tomb. Molero (2020)

Students had the opportunity to learn about real places, too. They worked in teams to research the different sites. They collaborated using Google Documents as a repository for the info and artifacts they found. Educators from China, Mexico, Germany, and Argentina, the countries of the sites researched in the project help us and had the chance to present both in Zoom and in Second Life about the archeological sites in their countries.