Secondlife.com is an online interactive world of truly massive proportions. Rendered in 3D environments, people from all over the world perform ordinary internet functions like chat, form social groups, buy and sell things etc. in a completely immersive environment.Virtually anything can be created or built.
For language learners, there are tons of opportunities to meet people or just experience a virtual world immersed in the language you are learning. Just a brief view of Secondlife opens up a world of potential uses for language learners.
I have little knowledge of Secondlife and no real experience with it. But, I suspect that the possibilities just hinted at in most language community sites could be taken to extraordinary new heights in Secondlife. I already know of one company using Secondlife to teach language (I'll go through my notes and find out more about that and post on it later) and I'll bet that others will follow.
Would anyone having any real experience with learning or using a foreign language in
Secondlife care to comment on it and shed some light?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Hi
Virtual worlds such as Second Life have so much to offer language learners and there are now quite a few language educators using virtual worlds to provide more immersive and social contexts.
There is an annual conference (SLanguages) that takes place in May each year. The next one is on 8 and 9 May 2009. You can find more infomration on the website www.slanguages.net
Personally I have experience using Second Life in combination with other online tools. Students can meet with others to practice or take advantage of really "being" in a place. For example, in a recent lesson a student gave the teacher a tour of virtual Krakow (in Second Life) in the style of a tour-guide giving a tour to tourists.
There are many other ways to use virtual worlds and I would recommend attending SLanguages 2009 to see many examples.
Hope to see you there!
Howard
Post a Comment