Sunday, November 11, 2007
SL and QA
Second Life (SL) and Quest Atlantis (QA) are two innovative online environments. SL is a 3-D virtual world entirely created by its residents and it has grown exponentially. Today is inhabited by millions of Residents from around the globe since its opening in 2003. Question Atlantis provides users with traveling to virtual places to perform educational activities , talk with other users and mentors, and build virtual personae. As language teachers and learners, what are your opinions about the online virtual world? Can we possibly incorporate SL/QA as a tool for language education?
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I don't have any experience with QA, but I do have some with SL. Speaking of incorporating SL as a tool for language learning, I think it's possible. SL has already developed the voice feature, which means the learners can communicate via talking/listening, not only limited to typing. Given that there are residents from around the globe, it's possible that learners may have a chance to meet with native English speakers (let's say the language learners are learning English)and practice their listening and speaking.
However, there are still some problems with using SL for educational purposes. For example, since the access to SL is open to public, it's kind of hard to control who the learners will meet in SL, which may arise some issues with underage students. One solution to this may be that school can purchase a private island and only residents with permission can access the island, just like what UT did (UT has a UT island, onlye UT students can access it). But again, we still cannot keep the underage students from wandering other public islands outside of school private island.
Thanks spotspot for raising the concern about the online security issue in K-12 education. I realize many school districts nowadays block the social networking sites in order to protect their students given the difficulties to screen the users and information students may access. My group recently made a presentation on simulation games in education with respect to the simulation types, rationale, advantages and disadvantages and so forth. The URL is as follows. FYI! http://edusimulation.blogspot.com/
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