What is Second Life?
Second Life (http://secondlife.com/) is a 3D virtual world platform developed by Linden Lab for participating social interaction, like online conference, lecture and group work through synchronous online text and voice chat with other residences. Through the avatar you created, you could explore the world and join individual and group activities as well.
How to use Second Life?
- Register for new account - Create your own avatar
- Choose the place to go
- Explore the world and communicate with other avatars
Second Life in Language Teaching and Learning
Teachers can arrange online courses with Second Life by inviting students to the specific place and time in the virtual world. Teachers and learners do not have to stay in the classroom and they could choose any place for Second Life lecture. Teachers could upload the PowerPoint in the conference room in the Second Life to give their presentation as well.- Students can talk with other residences in English to exchange information. In this process, not only their communicative skills could be trained and improved, but also obtain cultural knowledge by communication with people from different backgrounds.
- Teachers could play a role as researchers. They could arrange meeting with interviewees in the Second Life and conduct interviews. Second Life provides comfortable and relaxing places for interviews.
- The first time to use Second Life was in the ICT class with Tilly, Simon, Cecilia and Lu. We explored the Kamimo Island and tried to find the subjects mentioned in the handout. It was fun to explore the virtual world since it looked similar with the real world with houses and places for conferences. We could control our avatars quite well. We could "run", "sit on the chairs" and even "fly" in this virtual world. Additionally, Tilly has invited David, an expert of Second Life from Sweden to introduce us how to use Second Life and answer our questions on Second Life as well.
- 2013/03/12 Joining the JURA Program - As an volunteer of JURA Program, I was arranged to join Group 2 with Fabienne from France, Louisa and Ana Julia from Netherland. We arranged our first meeting on Thursday night at CET 7 p.m. in the Kamimo Island. Since this was our first meeting, we needed to recognize our group mates by names. I met Louisa and Fabienne and waited for others for a while. After that, we found a place to "sit down" and began chatting with each other. After self-introduction (name, nationality, career/major, age, etc.), we talked about our hobbies for about an hour. Since the confusion of time (CET and GMT), Ana Julia showed up at GMT 7 p.m. but we managed to begin our belief conversation. It is interesting to talk with people from different countries and to get in touch with them.
- Increase social interaction between people from different countries and backgrounds.
- Avaliable for online conference, lecture, presentation, meeting, interview, etc.
- Flexible time and places.
- Communication is avaliable through text and voice.
- Semi-authentic setting is provided.
- Computer Facility: Second Life Viewer requires high-qualitied equipment of computers.
- Inappropriate Content: It might contain adult websites.
- Cost: Payment (Linden dollar) is required to decorate your avatar and increase your privilage.
- Privacy: Others residences could hear the conversation between you and your target residences.
- Security: Leaking personal information to strangers might get you into trouble.
- Community Involvement: Without your familiar people in real life joining Second Life, it would be relatively boring during exploration.
- Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage by Axel Bruns
- Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human by Tom Boellstorff
So detailed and organised! By the way, I think another benefit of second life could be presenting yourself through an avatar, so students may actually be more willing to take part in discussions and activities :)
ReplyDeleteThank you, Simon! I do agree that for those learners who are shy and feel nervous during face-to-face communication in target language, they could use Second Life to reduce the anxiety and increase their willing to communicate in a relaxing and comfortable environment.
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