One of my plans on finishing the “Second Life for Teachers” course was to explore further how educators are using SL for language teaching. In real life I need to improve my German, so I did a search for “German language course”. A number of Volkshochschule (adult education centres in Germany) popped up, as well as some others. I picked one at random, called Babel Language School.
The sim was one of those parcels of land with uneven ground – difficult to navigate, and where it’s easy to get stuck in corners or behind buildings (if you’re a relative newbie like myself). The buildings were pretty ugly builds, mostly like cages.
The Notecard said:
Get better to express yourself – learn a second language (or a third or fourth …) Spend some of your playing time at Second Life (sl) to learn a new language! Two times a week a lesson in your real new language at a price at L$ 500 a week.
I had a look around one of the classrooms. On the walls were large boards with screenshots of pages from New Headway, a well-known EFL coursebook. Is this allowed, I wondered….
I sent an instant message (IM) to the sim owner, enquiring about German classes. I will blog the outcome later.
Hey there!
Another blog to add to my feed reader – and thanks for the name check. I’ll be interested to see what your thoughts are as time progresses. There are quite a few educators in SL working on areas of learning difficulties, dyslexia, Asperger’s and a host of other issues and it might be worth looking out for them in-world and on the SLED list.
Look forward to future postings,
Gavin