EFL Professor in SL

  The eighth annual Second Life MOOC (renamed the Virtual World MOOC in 2018) started in 2014. VWMOOC22 will take place from September 1-30, 2022.  Syllabus  Presenters ZOOM Meetings Recordings on YouTube  VWMOOC22 on Moodle (Certificates and digital badges)  VWMOOC22 in Second Life https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Chilbo/167/53/97 Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/vwmooc/ The theme of the current MOOC is “Connecting in Virtual Worlds. Communities of Practice”  There is a plethora of communities in virtual worlds promoting education and learning through connecting online via web technologies such as Second Life. The MOOC will focus on connecting online for collaborative learning and teaching worldwide through virtual worlds like Second Life, Digiworldz, Kitely, Minecraft, Sansar, AltspaveVR, or OpenSim. The live presentations will include the speakers’ reflective process on teaching and learning in fully online and blended learning formats....

Pio was invited by her beloved Avilion Community to attend and enjoy their ACT, Avilion Cameo Theater version of ‘ The Wind in the Willows ’, Tinie style. This event was part of the Fantasy Faires 2022 . The largest fantasy-related event taking place in Second Life. Fairelanders can come to visit from Thursday, April 21st, 2022 until Sunday, May 8th, 2022. This wonderful event raises money for Relay for Life and the American Cancer Society (ACS). One of my favorite events of the year. The Wind in the willows, according to Wikipedia:   The Wind in the Willows is a children's book by the British novelist Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternatingly slow-moving and fast-paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animals: Mole, Rat, Toad, and Badger. They live in a pastoral version of Edwardian England. The book was based on bedtime stories Grahame told his son Alastair. It has been adapted numerous times for both stage and screen. The tales relate the adven...

During the VWBPE22, Pio had the chance to visit a Space Menagerie. There were four different biomes to explore. Tropical Forest Each Biome had many animals that live in that habitat. Visitors had the chance to visit and get a prize at the end of their journey. They were supposed to make a list of three animals they saw in each biome. After visiting all 4 biomes, they returned their completed notecards and got a cute furry prize. :)  Southwestern Desert This is a great example of the kind of activities that could be fun to have with language students. They could visit the different biomes, explore, and talk about the plants, animals, and also the climate. They could imagine they are explorers and even create stories of a visit to those places. Arctic Tundra Grassland Savanna  

  Hosts:  Jennifer Hamilton / Jaz Beverly,  University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and Heike Philp / Gwen Gwasi. Let’s Talk Online. Frame VR is a browser-based virtual world, easy to enter using a simple web link and intuitive to navigate, have been rapidly evolving to offer exciting and surprisingly full-featured immersive educational opportunities for learners of all ages. Whether you are an experienced builder in virtual worlds or new to the practice of integrating virtual worlds in education.  Jennifer and Heike offered a hands-on building session where  participants were invited to experience how easy it is to build learning experiences by importing  both 2D and 3D objects, adjusting position and size. This experienced of building immersively was f ollowed by a sharing and discussion session.             

Continuing with the VWBPE Conference program, Pio attended an event hosted by Thuja Hynes or Tooyaa in SL,  Murat Gülmez (Magua Theriac in SL), and Lynne Berrett (Lissena or Wisdomseeker in SL), from the Whole Brain Health community. They told us about their International Student project (ISP). An experience to introduce Metaverse principles and ways to get started. It was an enlightening experience. A great model of best practices in education. You can follow the post on Facebook. I just love how all these tools get connected. 

Secondlife has a new tutorial for newcomers. It's simple to use. Here you have a little walkthrough you can follow when getting an avatar to enter the metaverse. Go ahead and try it out. All you need to do is to open an account at  https://secondlife.com/ .  Next, download a viewer, I use Firestorm  https://www.firestormviewer.org/choose-your-platform/ . Do the tutorial to learn basic skills on how to walk, communicate and socialize. Just let me know if you need any help. Discover the metaverse and step into immersive experiential learning and teaching.

Social Issues, Storytelling,   and Language Teaching:  Venezuelan Diaspora in the Metaverse. How can we teach about social issues and hard truths in an engaging and memorable way? This presentation showcases how discussing social issues such as migration, diversity, inclusion, multiculturalism, or global warming in the language class encourages intercultural reflection and provides students the communication and critical thinking tools to reflect and learn about modern world issues that have global and personal implications. Helping them to see the world from divergent points of view and to reevaluate their worldview based on their new understanding of other languages, cultures, and communities.  The presentation focuses on methodologies and best practices that incorporate transmedia storytelling and virtual worlds as a medium to present serious social issues in an engaging and memorable way. Along with video and audio materials, it provides examples of readings that...

  Kick-Off Event of VWBPE 2022 The Conference Planning Committees will share upcoming conference highlights. Executive Director, Phelan Corrimal, will officially declare the beginning of VWBPE 2022. WHEN: March 31, 2022 @ 08:00 AM – 08:50 AM America/Los Angeles Timezone WHERE: VWBPE Gateway http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VWBPE%20Gateway%20Pyxis/100/128/24 #VWBPE #vwbpe2022 #SecondLife #metaverse

The Morning Break with Graham Stanley 22-03-22: Virtual Worlds and Education This was fun! Thanks, Graham Stanley for the invite! #metaverse #languagelearning #virtualworlds Doris Molero from Venezuela joined Graham to talk about her work in Second Life and other virtual worlds. You can visit her exhibit and learn more about the Venezuelan migrant crisis and its diaspora in Chilbo here:  http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Madhupak/118/140/71 https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-h7q37-11db4cd  

 VWBPE 2022 : IE. EngageXR for Teaching a Language @ EngageXR VR is certainly a hot place to be at the moment. For this reason, we attended The VWBPE 2022 session on EngageXR h osted by Amany Alkyahat, from Columbia University, and Heike Philp / Gwen Gwasi, let’s talk online sprl. After attending, I can say that Engage is really a great immersive experience. I enjoyed every moment of it. According to its website, Engage is  a spatial network solution for enterprise clients to build their own unique virtual world “MetaWorld” which can be used for employee onboarding, training, product demos, wellbeing, customer outreach, and professional events.  There you can have a  Free  guest account  for exploring & attending events. This allows you to:  Attend Free Events & Meetings.  Explore Public MetaWorlds.  Access Free Locations & Models  Creation Tools Demo Access. Also,  host a Room (4 Guests Maximum). I n order to do so, you...

Best of EVO 2022 CALL-IS EV Session.  TESOL International Association's Computer-Assisted Language Learning Section (CALL-IS) invited ELT educators around the world to participate in the free, open TESOL Electronic Village (EV) during the convention (March 23-25, 2022). This year's EV was a completely virtual ed-tech learning space for TESOL professionals. Participants visited the virtual EV to discover new e-tools and instructional activities, learn with CALL experts and colleagues around the world. They could share their tech-supported teaching experiences ... and more! EV sessions were both synchronous (live) and asynchronous (on demand) to accommodate global schedules. CALL-IS also created self-directed, hands-on EV learning opportunities that enabled participants to "tinker" with a selection of free tech tools and reflect on how they might use them in class or for professional development. These are some of the presentations: Immersive Building in Virtual Worlds ...