Reminder: "Open House Days"

[KipYellowjacket]

Hi everyone!

I've announced two informal "get-together sessions" for this weekend's "Open House Days". If you are interested in hosting your own event, please help make others aware of it by adding it to the event calendar here on the community website. Please also feel free to announce it via in-world group notice. If you do not yet have the ability to send group notices, just let me know. If you are a launchroom owner and have the time, it would be great if you could type up a kind of "introduction text" (who you are, etc.) and perhaps mention your SL objectives/project(s). This can be seen as an opportunity to seek out collaboration with other language teachers, etc.

I'll plan to be in-world throughout much of the weekend for spontaneous chat sessions, etc. Hope everyone can find the time to type up a notecard. If needed, I'll happily provide you with a notecard dispenser. If you are too busy this weekend to participate, simply let me know and I'll refer people to your profile page on the community website. :)

See you in-world!

Kip

[KipYellowjacket]

Hi everyone!

Just wanted to clarify that the informal get-togethers I advertised will take place as follows:

March 14 (today) 22:00-23:30 Central European Time
March 15 22:00.23:30 Central European Time

Sorry to those who might have been confused! Seems these pesky time zone issues will continue to haunt us from time to time. ;)

Just as a reminder, these "events" will be informal. We'll likely head to the builder holodeck in the sky and gather around a campfire or smth for conversation and brainstorming on various topics. Regarding topics, feel free to bring your own! I'll plan to focus on SL Claroline Holodeck Integration, SIM Development & the future of Second Life English. That should give us enough to talk about, but all discussion is welcome!

If you have any questions about anything, just let me know. See the event calendar for a slurl to our initial meeting point and other details.

PS We'll likely need/want to have such events more often in the future so that, as was originally intended, we can all get to know each other a bit better - seek out collaboration, etc. As things now stand, it seems my 2 informal events will be the only "organized happenings" this weekend. If I'm wrong, please let me know and add it to the event calendar. Thanks! :))

See you soon!

[Włodzimierz Sobkowiak]

Some reflections on the demo of Claroline-enhanced holodecks, as shown on Saturday:

(a) I believe the most exciting FLT affordance is created by embedding Claroline-controlled resources (text, tests, quizzes) into holodeck objects to create a fully interactive FLT environment usable both in teacher-directed and self-access modes.

(b) Ideally, of course, each object would be audio-enhanced, with some additional dictionary-like info attached, such as a short definition or a couple of example sentences. Maybe such material could be lifted ready-made from existing resources, but don't ask me about Intellectual Property Rights... Some sims with similar affordances exist in world, e.g. Ciudad Bonita by LL or Mi Casa by Calisto Encinal.

(c) The hard bit is, as always, the creation/capture of all this content. As far as I know, there's no good quality text-to-speech-synthesis in SL, which means all adio needs to be recorded, uploaded (at a cost), and then built into prims, as I have been doing with my domino blocks. Maybe we could equip just one holodeck scene fully to test feasibility?

(d) Another problem is the design of interesting and didactically advantageous language routines to be downloaded from the Claroline server into world. This means going beyond simple multiple-choice, providing liberal feedback on errors, experimenting with some artificial intelligence. All experience from existing scavenger hunts and like activities in-world is most welcome in this area!

(e) As I said on Saturday, I'm ready to make the contents of one large intermediate-to-advanced EFL course (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation) available at no charge to developers of such a resource in Virtlantis. Some info about the course is available here. All content of the course is in English; the language of instructions is switchable between English and Polish. The course had a built-in dedicated bilingual dictionary as well.

(f) I believe that in all creation, adaptation and capture of FLT content for SL one should -- to the extent at all possible without compromising the didactic quality of the materials -- steer away from the conventional 2d perspective of the flat web, as well as the grammar-translation method still to be found in many places on web2, web3, as well as in countless RL classrooms. Many exciting didactic affordances of SL are stil unexploited, I think.

[KipYellowjacket]

"(e) As I said on Saturday, I'm ready to make the contents of one large intermediate-to-advanced EFL course (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation) available at no charge to developers of such a resource in Virtlantis. Some info about the course is available here. All content of the course is in English; the language of instructions is switchable between English and Polish. The course had a built-in dedicated bilingual dictionary as well."

==> Pls excuse my delay in responding to this post - must admit I overlooked it! : / We've discused Pop-English before as you know, and I think it's a great idea. Seems the offer you are making regarding use of your lesson content is very kind and could translate into an opportunity for a collaborative team project?

"(f) I believe that in all creation, adaptation and capture of FLT content for SL one should -- to the extent at all possible without compromising the didactic quality of the materials -- steer away from the conventional 2d perspective of the flat web, as well as the grammar-translation method still to be found in many places on web2, web3, as well as in countless RL classrooms. Many exciting didactic affordances of SL are stil unexploited, I think."

==> I agree, but I also think there are many 2D tools which have yet to be explored in conjunction w/SL.

Would be great to talk to you about all this again at some point soon!

Kip