ESL Campus Promotes Team Language Learning

Source:
http://tinyurl.com/2ezmgj
Author:
Cheryl Nitely



















Kip Yellowjacket illustrates some of the free tools and services Second Life English will provide to English teachers in Second Life.

VIRTLANTIS -- Second Life English officially opened this week with tours of facilities designed to offer teachers and students language learning support with “no strings attached.”

Kip Yellowjacket, founder of Second Life English, gave eight instructors the first official tour of a language learning circuit on Monday afternoon, showing them a large meeting hall, instructor classrooms, team-teaching stations, and an underwater quiz area and café.

Yellowjacket will be giving tours all this week that are primarily targeted to English as a second language teachers, though everyone is welcome to attend. He built the new sim to help develop a team-teaching system for learning language in Second Life, which he is offering to teachers free of charge.
“I suppose I am offering something unique in that I aim to facilitate things for other teachers and the focus is on community,” Yellowjacket said. “We want to promote and assist language teachers who want to teach in SL.”

While teachers may charge their students for their services, Second Life English will provide a free space that is part campus, part launching pad for language teachers to help small groups of up to five students to learn English in Second Life. The sim is designed with a teaching circuit with areas for teachers to team teach student using different areas of the sim as tools. But instructors are also encouraged to use the rest of Second Life as a classroom outside the sim.

“The idea is to mainly use these spaces as launching pads for exploring SL and doing activities off-sim,” Yellowjacket said.

In fact, much of Second Life English is left loose ended so instructors can adapt the tools for their own use.

For instance, Yellowjacket included a goal setting area that derives its guidelines from the London Chamber of Commerce spoken English Exams with five levels of objectives. Yellowjacket said exactly how the goals are implemented is up to the teacher.



















Four classrooms that provide English teachers with free teaching space, as well as a file cabinet for organizing student work have already been reserved on the new Second Life English sim.

“I plan to use these goals as a guide, a sort of road map and provide my course groups with some assessment along the way, to see which goals need to be focused on more,” Yellowjacket said.

“But also welcome those who want to help out for free, for some experience, or just because they like to help.”

Yellowjacket will be giving tours Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 1:30 p.m. – 3 p.m. SLT and on Sunday from 4 a.m. – 5:30 a.m. SLT. He and Second Life English can be reached at secondlifeenglish@gmail.com.

Yellowjacket, who runs a language school in Germany with his wife in real life, as well as a 2D world called Virtlantis, plans to teach two free classes at Second Life English and participate in team-teaching events which will begin on the sim later this month.

Other parts of the sim include a competition stadium designed with the look of an ancient coliseum, an underwater area for students to self-test themselves and display work, an underwater café for socializing that comes complete with conversation prompters to encourage students and teachers to practice their skills.

Four classrooms have already been reserved. They draw on Claroline, an open source e-learning software tool for instructors. Yellowjacket said the classrooms were designed for instructors to use privately for pre- or post-activities when exploring the grid in a learning experience, as well as class briefings and assignments. Instructors will also be able to advertise their services on a wall in the sim, for free.

Second Life English is not the first English as a second language sim in Second Life. In fact, Yellowjacket said it was common for Second Life English to sometimes be easily confused with English Village, another sim in Second Life dedicated to language learning.

Yellowjacket, who said he’s been involved with English Village in the past, said he built Second Life English to branch out and explore techniques like offering teachers a free team-teaching environment. He said he built Second Life English as a bit more radical and that as people experience the sim, they will see the difference between the two.

“Many language schools are commercial ventures and I wanted to pursue education in Second Life in a different way,” Yellowjacket said.

He is funding Second Life English himself.

“I am an e-learning freak, I guess you could say,” Yellowjacket said. “I hope do get some sort of sponsorship in the future or at least more donations because there are costs involved.” But he was firm to point out that money was not the main goal in the project.

“Having said that, we will gladly support teachers who wish to offer paid courses,” Yellowjacket said.