Below are some pics of this weekend's SLanguage 2008 Conference along with the text which was fed to my Speaker Buddy. The purpose of the text was merely to accommodate those without voice and to help stimulate discussion - am only pasting it here because I promised to do so. :) Thanks to all who helped organize this year's conference! I am already looking forward to SLanguages 2009. :)
//Slanguages 2008 Conference
Good morning! It's 2:30 AM where I am, so it just feels right to say that. :)
I'm glad to be here today and I'd like to once again thank Gavin and Edunation for organizing this event.
I'd like to start by giving you a brief outline of the Second Life English project (2006 to present).
I much prefer dialogue to presentation, so I'll do my best to leave lots of time for Q&A.
This brief project outline will be followed by a list of so-called "talking points" to help stimulate discussion, but please feel free to steer the discussion in any direction.
Please also feel free to give me a virtual pinch should I suddenly start rambling or cease to make sense.
As I said, it's quite late/early here. :)
Let's get started.
- - Some History - -
The Second Life English group has been helping language learners and teachers in Second Life since 2006.
Our past activities were mainly held at the English Village where we organized weekly team-teaching events and assisted learners and teachers in various ways.
- - What is Second Life English? - -
The Second Life English SIM is a free resource for language learners and teachers. We are not a school.
We are a community of language learners and teachers who share the desire to use the virtual world of Second Life for the learning and teaching of foreign languages.
- - What are our goals? - -
(1) help language learners and teachers connect
(2) offer free advertisement to language teachers, groups, schools and "conversation partners" (so-called language buddies)
(3) help language learners and teachers by answering questions, giving tips and freely sharing ideas about Second Life and learning/teaching in Second Life
(4) make language teachers aware of useful tools and resources in Second Life
(5) suggest ways of supplementing the SL learning/teaching experience
(6) offer free language learning/teaching activities such as team-teaching and workshops
(7) continuously develop the Second Life English SIM
(8) promote a culture of online and life-long learning
(9) encourage the idea that all of Second Life is "the classroom"
(10) help interconnect the various language communities in Second Life
(11) encourage communication and cultural awareness/understanding
(12) promote the idea that we are all learners and potential teachers
We want to help empower language learners and teachers.
The Second Life English SIM/Island is a free resource.
You are welcome to see this SIM as one of "your" resources in Second Life.
We plan to continuously work on the SIM so that it becomes a useful meeting point for all language enthusiasts in Second Life.
- - Want to help? - -
Second Life English is a non-commercial project.
We aim to act as a free resource for language learners and teachers in Second Life.
In order to develop into a useful resource, we will need support from the community.
We currently need help in the following areas. This is a tentative list which will very likely be updated in the near future.
(1) Greeting Visitors
(2) Assisting Teachers
(3) ESL/SL Skills Workshops
(4) ESL Content for SIM
(5) Team-Teaching Concept Development
(6) Self-Study Concept Development
(7) Creation of "Activity Recipes"
(8) Collecting of Links for In-World Use
(9) Creation of Weekly In-World Quizzes
(10) Creation of VoiceThreads
(11) Collecting Freebies
(12) Outlining of Role-playing Scenarios
(13) E(SL) Postcards
(14) Organizing Meet-ups (Chat/Talk Sessions)
(15) Clothing Design
(16) Organizing Special Events
(17) Machinima
- - Future Community Building Events - -
As of 10 June, we will start offering weekly "community building events" in an attempt to help stimulate more EFL/ESL related activity in Second Life.
These events/meetings will take place every Tuesday at 12:30 pm PST (SL Time).
There is no set agenda for these events apart from the desire to see through at least some of the above-mentioned goals.
We welcome the participation of all language teachers and learners (etc.) and hope to come up with creative ways of offering language oriented activities which will mutually benefit multiple language communities.
It is not in our interest to solely focus on building an isolated community which primarily engages in activities on the Second Life English SIM.
We instead would like to reach out to all language oriented groups and seek opportunities for collaboration.
This will help to promote the idea that all of Second Life is "the classroom" as well increase the amount of EFL/ESL related activities available to both teachers and learners.
- - Some Possible "Talking Points" (in random order) - -
This is simply a list of suggested talking points.
(1) SL AS COMPONENT VS TOTAL SOLUTION
(2) IN-WORLD TOOLS & RESOURCES
(3) "(DE-)EVOLUTION" OF TEACHER ROLE
(4) IN-WORLD ASSESSMENT
(5) CERTIFIED VS NON-CERTIFIED TEACHERS
(6) KNOW-HOW HOARDERS, TRADERS & SHARERS
(7) LMS INTEGRATION
(8) LEARNING GOALS (RL VS SL SPECIFIC)
(9) HUMAN DISRUPTERS
(10) DRIVE-THRU ASSISTANCE
(11) ACTIVE VS PASSIVE CORRECTION
(12) MULTICULTURAL CONSIDERATIONS
(13) EDUCATIVE CONGREGATING (E.G. CAFE)
(14) RELIABILITY AND COLLABORATION
(15) CONFIDENTIALITY CONCERNS
(16) SKEPTICAL VS GUNG-HO ADOPTION
(17) FREE VS PAID
(18) HIGHER ED CONCERNS
(19) ABBREVIATED VS NON-ABBREVIATED LANGUAGE
(20) SL + ESL SKILLS TRAINING
(21) MULTIDISTRACTION ENVIRONMENT
(22) DIGITAL NATIVE VS DIGITAL IMMIGRANT
(23) SL TIME SPONGE & RL SCHEDULES
(24) IN-WORLD CONTENT (COPYRIGHT VS CREATIVE COMMONS)
(25) COMMUNICATING TO BOTH NON-NATIVE & NATIVE SPEAKERS
(26) GLOBLISH
(27) SL LEARNING CURVE
(28) TIME ZONE CONFUSION
(29) TEAM-TEACHING
(30) TYPOS & PUNCTUATION
(31) VOLUNTEERISM
(32) STUDENT/TEACHER AS RESEARCH SUBJECT
(33) TEAHCING A LANGUAGE IN A MULTILINGUAL ENVIRONMENT
(34) SUPPLEMENTING THE SL EXPERIENCE
