What a difference a week makes. I just discovered that I’m going to be teaching an online language class again sooner rather than later. POTCERT is suddenly no longer just about theory.
Jim Sullivan encouraged us, “better to be late than never.” so I’m posting my week-four blog posting on Sunday night. I decided to take a shortcut and recorded in Dragon using my iPod saving me the trouble of typing it all out. Also trying to take a lesson from Alan Levine and not editing to the point I never get it posted.
I guess the one big thing that I’m taking away from this week’s reading in the textbook is the idea to use slides with audio. I’ve always thought in terms of posting audio files or videos but never really considered using an animated PowerPoint with recording. So that’s something new I’m going to try to prepare for my upcoming language class.
I also attended that Cris Crissman’s YA Lit.class at the Bookhenge in Second Life this past Thursday. Very interesting and enjoyable experience. Cris is doing really great job of teaching online. Hope I can get to be that good someday. Obviously you have a lot of experience and really enjoy what you doing.
Bookhenge, home of Cris Crissman’s YA Lit class
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Jim,
My first experience in Second Life I went in on my own and was totally lost. The next time I went I arranged for a tour with a fellow classmate. They showed me everything you could do in SL including how to setup a class and have a guest lecturer.
Audio enhanced slides are a great tool. Just remember it is better to have short segments rather then one long one. In between the short segments you can add a self-assessment.
Walter
I have to give a second chance to Second Life, I guess. I took a workshop at Miracosta and I found it pretty amazing. I then asked my students, as an option among several choices, to make a final project with Second Life with a foreign language. Only 1 student out of 25 did it and it was very “amateur.” But at least this student tried and I was happy to see that he had the guts to do it (everyone else found it too complicated to even try). I tried too by playing with my own project making an avatar of myself. At the very start, there was an overflowing stream of chats at the bottom left of the screen going on coming from Second Life members from all over the world.
I will take another Second Life workshop to learn better “tricks” to make a sound presentation. I saw some of them on uTube and they were excellent.
Danièle, may I suggest an alternative to “another Second Life workshop”? Get a friend to meet you in SL and give you an in-world guided tour. Have them go with you as you learn to walk, run, fly and teleport (and bump into walls and people and sink through floors). Use a telephone for voice communication until you are sure chat and voice is working – or better yet, set up two computers side-by-side. SL is complicated. The sense of being together around a campfire (or dancing, flying, skating – whatever you can imagine) creates such a rich learning environment that it’s well worth the effort.
Danièle, I have to second the excellent advice that Jim has given you. There’s nothing like a little one-to-one contact to help get you acclimated to the place. I meet with my students in one-to-one conferences three times during the semester — beginning, midterm, finals — in Second Life. During the first conference, we spend usually around 15 minutes (sometimes more if there’s troubleshooting to do and often less) just so I can teach them the few things they need to know to participate in the whole class seminars and small group meetings.
I would be happy to meet with you and show you the ropes. Just download the latest browser and tweet to let me know what your Second Life name is and when you’d like to meet and we can arrange a time. I’ll see if Alfonzo might be available, too. He’s the master when it comes to producing programming in Second Life.
Hope to see you in the Bookhenge soon. Oh, I’m @Cris2B on Twitter.
I am also using this course to work through developing an online language class. I am basing much of the class around slide presentations with audio. This has a couple of benefits, I think: Firstly, typed text on a slide means that students don’t have to deal with decoding my horrid handwriting on a whiteboard or chalkboard, and secondly, a slide presentation allows students to pause the lecture, and/or easily navigate to parts that they would like to review.
Your audio slide presentations sounds like a valuable addition to your planned course, Constance.
You know, a lot of language teachers have found Second Life useful for language immersion. Alfonzo in our POTcert class has done much in this area. You should take a look at some of his work — http://www.youtube.com/user/VitualTvMagazine?feature=mhee I don’t understand a word but it seems like a way that I could learn.
It will be a dream come true for me once I can offer immersion and instruction in the Tlicho language in Second Life. I already have Conne River Project picked as my location (until some young people catch the vision for creating a build of their own). I “only” need to convince young X-Box jockeys to train as volunteers to bring elders online to provide the conversation. I keep thinking it’s not all that far-fetched. I know that one good experience would be all it takes to sell it. One giant leap will be a small step once we get there.
Of course, I had to travel to your Conne River Project space and I got goose bumps just imaging the campfire with the elders naturally immersed in sharing their language with the young adults. I don’t think it’s far-fetched at all. I think that’s why virtual worlds work so well for language learning — if you’re caught up in communicating then it’s easy to transcend the actual.
This is important work you’re doing — saving a language, preserving a culture. Best of luck in this venture. Please let me know if you’d ever like any technical help — not that I can provide but my friend Ajax is a pretty good builder.
You are so cool, Jim. I really enjoyed having you visit the Bookhenge. Would you believe my students were impressed that we had a visitor from Canada? This whole world-wide networking aspect of learning online is oh, so new for them.
I do love meeting with my students real-time in a virtual space that seems to encourage creativity and discussion. It’s a kind of teaching I never envisioned I’d be doing but want my students to experience and learn the benefits of.
Please drop in any time. We have a guest speaker on Graphic Novels on Oct. 11, Intellectual Freedom on Nov. 1, and Marc Aronson of Nonfiction writing and editing fame on Nov. 29th.
Hope to see you in the Bookhenge again soon!