Many ELT professionals IT skills are below average and many of them are reluctant or afraid to learn new skills. When we started Languagelab we already had experience of Virtual Worlds, Blogs, Wikis, Forums, VoIP etc. We knew how these things worked and what their strengths and weaknesses were because we had been using them for various purposes for as long as they have existed. Sadly, many English teachers lack even a conceptual understanding of how these things work and can be used to benefit their students. If you cannot understand how the tools work it is impossible to comprehend using them to teach. At best, such people would have thought about how they could use their existing methods with the new technology and correctly decided that this will not work well.

I’ve found the best way to explain technology to such people is to talk about the results it brings. Languagelab is great not because of the technology it uses, these are incidental. Languagelab is great because of the number of hours its students spend using the language with native speakers. Using English with real people, in real situations, for several hours a week is a great way to learn it. Even the staunchest technophobe can’t argue with that.

Presenting such people with the opinions of other ELT professionals that have already tried the technology and see its benefits is often useful (teacher quotes here), most people don’t know how extensively SL has been used and tested. Hearing from satisfied students is far more powerful (student quotes here).

To be fair to the ELT community, when we have fully explained how students use Languagelab no one has questioned the benefits. Many people have doubted it before understanding how it works, I suspect they are in the same camp as those that made the quotes above. When new technologies such as books and pens were first introduced to education there would have been those that opposed them. Plato was famously against writing as he felt it was bad for memory.

Digital Technology has only recently become sophisticated enough to be disruptive in Education. The sector is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 1000. Having seen how effectively virtual words can be used for language learning, I honestly believe there isn’t a more effective way to learn a language. There is always resistance to change but there are a great many teachers keen to learn and capitalize on technology in the interests of their students. I have met far more teachers with this attitude than ones that are completely anti-tech.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmoUq6pE4uA

First, SL is much easier to use for teaching language when compared to any other technology. What could be more natural than walking into your virtual classroom, seeing students waiting for you and conducting your lesson exactly as you would in RL. You want to shoe-horn Russian into Blackboard?

Second, the most powerful situation for language learning is being in an immersive environment. If you can’t spend your junior year in France, you can certainly speak to French speaking people in totally French language environments that already exist and are rather friendly.

Third, my last high school (before retirement) offered French, German, Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Japanese. On the other side of town the high school offered Spanish and French. In the majority of high schools in my state (rural high schools) you had only one choice – Spanish. Imagine the ability to take any language in the world from someone who is a native speaker, qualified to teach “X as a Second Language,” and still living in the country where the language is the “official” language.

Finally, imagine all the unemployed and underemployed English teachers we could hire to teach folks living in other countries. I can assure you that the demand for native speaking English teachers is extremely high. Can you imagine that your teaching job could allow you to “Teach from the Beach” whether that “beach” is home with your small children or an actual beach in the US or elsewhere.

These “no language teaching in SL” folks are blind, nuts or stupid. Perhaps all three.

That’s my experience too. I’m quite happy to concede that there’s value in other approaches (heck, I’m commenting on a blog, no?) but the “broad church” sentiment does not magically result in demonstrable reciprocity. SL educators in my experience are actually more accepting of the “other” due to the many oddities and vagaries they encounter. While there are opinion leaders, I think the networks are also often looser and flatter than in Web 2.0 and ultimately less tribal (DOGME sounds like a tribe par excellence but good luck to them). I will quite cheerfully go to a wide range of meetings (yup, even be the token scientist at slanguages) and enjoy whatever backchannel conversation and insights emerge (as they did). While not in Carol’s league for superhuman productivity, over the last couple of days I compiled a FAQ for the SLED list, gave a Tamiflu model to an academic devising an H1N1 flu information literacy build on her sim and corrected a couple of typos in a blog by a US community college academic doing some nice biology tutorials for his students. The key aspect for me is that everybody is communicating, making something, helping one another (I use no end of your stuff), even across subject boundaries. Some of the activity is inworld but much of it isn’t. It’s a distortion to paint a picture of us as insular, overbearing zealots preaching the one true way. SL’s just another tool, albeit a fairly special one.

I will heed her advice as well as sometimes people just say stuff to get attention and it can be a bit upsetting unless we don’t let it.

Hope I don’t get into trouble for that!

You know who you are, you know what you’re doing is great. So do I at the end of day.

So, ta, ta for now – I will now sign off my computer, raise a glass of wine to all methodologies, all styles and ideas living under the roof of the great Minerva.

Thanks for this – but just to emphasise one point: in all my postings I have been very broad church, I’ve constantly praised other approaches and other tools and been very complimentary about DOGME (which which I have no argument, really). The same can not be said of some of the more strident voices on the DOGME list, I’m afraid.

Early on in this debate (at the beginning of the week), I said ‘live and let live’. I just wish everyone else felt the same way.

Gavin

In your other posting about SL – I mentioned that it reminded me of the Martin Luther’s 95 thesis – this was part joke and part truth.

Basically, anyone who finds a “special” way to do anything, whether his name is Scott Thornbury or Gavin Dudeney, LOL, becomes an evangelist and in some cases said teacher/preacher may end up holding all other styles and forms of teaching as having little merit in order to attract a wider congregation to his own particular church.

In a world, steadily losing itself of external gods, we are becoming our own gods and preach rather profusely.

I include myself in that list.

I belong to the church of web 2.0.

If someone took away my little netbook and told me that I could no longer teach with it, I’d cry.

How will I teach without using authentic materials I’d ask?

Oh, how I would mourn the loss of all the fabulous things I have found or created.

But that’s because I personally dislike the monotony of textbooks and using 4 different colored whiteboard markers to create grammar charts – telling students how to build a house from scratch but not how to turn the lights on.

Despite my deep passion for web2.0 and its tools and applications, can I respect those who always teach without a laptop?

Yes, because I know it also works.

Dogme works in certain scenarios and in certain classrooms.

Sometimes, however, there is indeed more to the house than beautiful curtains and warm conversations.

Some students are perfectly happy turning to page 25 and have their teacher talking 90% of the time.

Sometimes the house needs a secure foundation (or that it gives the illusion of one) and there are whole load of people all over the globe who have managed to learn using them anyway.

If you went to a house that was beautifully decorated, where the wine was great and the food divine but it was about to fall down, you’d leave – so I respect the teachers who use textbooks as well.

Can I respect those who inhabit and teach in an otherworldly place of beautiful soft cushions, silky virtual curtains, clouds in the sky and no need for bricks and mortar… a place where every time I visit, I manage to lose an item of clothing? (BTW, thanks for the notification from EduNation of lost skirt, I appreciated the email),

Yes.

Great teachers have nothing to do with the tools they use or the tools they don’t use.

They are great teachers because they are able to share their knowledge and do so with complete enthusiasm and conviction.

They will the students to learn and so they do.

Keep on with what you are doing, Gavin and all you 2nd Lifers, but do let those who do do it their way, do it their way.

Karenne, a.k.a. Pope Sylvester II

I would just like to say that the responses here are very gratifying and engaging and appreciated by those of us who aren’t as articulate! I will definitely point people here to fortify my position that SL® is a worthwhile use of one’s time and consideration. Thanks!

I suppose that with respect to 1-3 it’s difficult to persuade anyone as it so much depends on what they value about life in general. But overall I’d say that no-one has the right to judge that something is intrinsically worthwhile / not worthwhile for someone else.

But the 4th point is worth discussing / exploring / defending, and I don’t think it needs any theoretical discussion. The person just needs to witness /experience language learning for themselves in Second Life, and talk to people who have experienced it. There’s no need for the conditional mood .. it’s already happening.

The regular Italian lesson I have attended in Second Life on Monday evenings for the past couple of months gave me the confidence to chat to people I met on a professional trip to Italy last week and to offer a spontaneous (albeit very brief!) comment in the formal part of the conference. And the good thing is that the doubter does not need to take my word for it .. s/he can observe / ask questions in Second Life (much easier than evaluating the success of other forms of instruction..)

1. I have a friend who has suffered from agoraphobia for most of her life. Travelling has always been a nightmare for her. In foreign cities she would often get sudden panic attacks and retreat to her hotel room for hours. In August last year she discovered SL. The effect on her has been dramatic. In SL she has learned to “travel” with ease. Behind her avatar’s guise she has lost her fear of meeting strangers. This appears to have transferred to RL. She has been on two trips abroad in the last 6 months and did not experience a single panic attack. When asked about this change in her life, she points to SL as having a therapeutic effect and giving her the confidence and security that she lacked. Of course, it isn’t a “cure”, but it has made a significant difference.

2. A young friend of mine in her mid-30s has been paraplegic for 10 years – the resulf of a lorry driver on his mobile phone crashing into her car. As she puts it, “In RL I cannot walk, but in SL I can fly.”

BTW, I am doing very well as a learner of Spanish in SL. I am not following a course – that’s not my style of learning – but I am picking up lots of Spanish simply by visiting Spanish sims and conversing, sometimes with the aid of a translator, with the native speakers whom I meet. I’m an exploratory learner.

Graham Davies

1. Do you think your English has improved?

Yes, I think my English has improved a lot. First of all, I have learned a lot of new Yes, My Grammar was not that good and it’s better things (words – grammar – ..) in the class. I usually practice speaking English with now. For example I used to put past tens after did other family members, and in the university, and I see that my confidence in like: Where did you came from? and learned that is speaking has improved, and my speaking has became better. We have a project wrong. where we communicate with different organizations, and sometimes we have to talk English with foreign people. I found myself in the previous weeks talking easily and more confidently to them. I helped a friend in writing her essays, and those essays got good marks, which means my writing has improved.

Yes, because now I know new vocabulary and I can say it Correctly.

This courses very useful, educational and amusing. I learned a lot of words.

Thank God I participated in this course. I had so much fun. I met very nice and intelligent people. I feel that my English has improved significantly, and I’ve learned a lot of things.

2. Which activities were most effective for your learning? Why?

Taking the other students in a tour to a place, and the games we played together: it’s so fun, and makes students interact with each other. Preparing and giving When take Character like Journalist or tourists presentation: it’s something that you do by yourself, so you learn more by guide etc. Using Second Life objects like cube, preparing for the presentation. sphere and other objects because that make mean Listening to the teacher, and learning about the different accents and of words so easy the pictures is the easy way pronunciations: This has improved my speaking, as I learned the correct describe any thing. pronunciation of some words, and now my ear is more sensitive for different accents. Meeting and having guests in the class: I liked listening to Dennis, and Breathe. I liked the idea of writing a letter to Dennis. I learned a lot from listening to them. For me all were effective, because Doing the homeworks: These were the most fun homeworks I’ve ever did. I liked I learned from each one. using the voice thread (although I didn’t use voice ^-^;), and I liked writing in the blog and the forums. Doing the feedbacks: I don’t know how to explain it, but I think it is very useful way to use your English to express how you felt about the class (Answering the questions). Interaction and the subject present of the student Having the teacher feedbacks on me: It gave me confidence, and helped me improve more. Speaking, writing and especially listening

3. What did/didn’t you like about your teacher and the way she taught?

I liked her way in teaching. It was fun and the fun What I liked: Greeting us, asking how are we doing and chatting with us at the part is very important in learning for me. beginning of each class. Making all students participate. New topics and new teaching ideas every lecture. Different homeworks ideas. Feedbacks on the teacher and the students. What I didn’t like: hmmmmmmm I really can’t find anything.

4. Which lessons are better?
a) Second Life 60.00 % b) Real Life 0.00 % b) Both are the same 40.00 %

5. Would you participate in another SL English course? a) Yes 80.00 % b) No 0.00 % b) I don?t know 20.00 %

But then, what do students know about learning, right?

You’re right. Apparently, or so I’m told, TV is bad for you, video games are bad for you, and so it goes on. Nobody seems to have heard of the concept of ‘everything in moderation’ anymore; instead people’s logic goes out of the window when presented with any technological advance: I don’t understand it, so it’s bad.

Personally, I’m more worried about the books:

http://slife.dudeney.com/?p=221

But look at Graham Davies’ comment above – what a great example of good use of technology in a very stressful and worrying time. I defy anyone to pick that apart on the grounds of it having no value or no place in that person’s life.

The original source of the comments I quoted in my posting have yet to respond to this. I don’t know if that’s because everyone’s still in bed, or they can’t think of anything to say…

Last night in my rented house on EduNation about 6 people gathered to hear a talk given by a colleague on foreign language pedagogy. Last week 9 people gathered in the same place to discuss a new book written by two of them. The discussion last 90 minutes. Serious purposeful work can be done in SL.

Thanks to all of you who responded, and please keep them coming if you have the time…

ES

To cut a long story short, I am still here and fit and well. The ASC in SL has been a great source of support, and in return I have given talks to their members in SL on a couple of occasions, passing on my experiences and my story of survival.

Cancer sufferers, especially the recently diagnosed, are often not willing to open up about their feelings, but in the guise of their avatars they are more willing to reveal their emotions. Don’t knock SL and don’t look it only from an educator’s point of view. It offers much more than those of you who enjoy good health imagine. You can read my full story here:

http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/pmpsurvivor.htm

Graham Davies
Emeritus Professor of Computer Assisted Language Learning

Well, may be you are right. In that case it means that my fantasy life resemble very much my Real Life. And above all, my fantasy profession is just like my real one! I’m a language teacher in RL and I work with language and experiment with language learning and teaching in SL. That’s great! You opened my eyes! I’m living the live I really want to live and I do the job I’ve always dreamed of. Thank you very much!

“SL is a way to escape the boredom, emptiness and frustrations of one’s real life!

Lately I do not need to escape boredom: I would really like to have some nice boredom to rest a bit this year, and do all those things that people who are never bored, live a very fulfilled life and never experiment frustration do: watch TV, do compulsive shopping, read gossip magazines or the last written-on-commission best seller, etc. Instead I chat with my Indonesian, Catalan, Spanish, Swedish, Italian, English, Australian friends, experiment with script, learn many new things every day, visit interesting places, attend an course for teachers funded by the EU, organise activities for those who want to improve their Italian… What an empty and bored life is mine!

“Second Life???? Who needs it???”
“cars??? Who needs it??? (I do no drive ;o)

“I really doubt SL would ever be suitable for good professional language classes”

Yes, serious, professional language classes consist in filling in the blanks, reading out of books and listen to the teacher. In no serious, professional language class there is the need to actually interact with people and objects. In fact, our classes are in real-life 3D but most of the time they look so awfully 2D. Spoken language, when present, is often more like short monologues, in turn, than real dialogue. I realised it in a class when our teacher said that we all had a lot of problems with “question tags”. Ahh, I was forgetting to say that that class was in Second Life. And we were not making any exercise on question tags, we were just having a normal, simple conversation, the kind you have with friends.. and yes, we saw that question tags in English are very useful, and realised that we never use them in our Real Life 3D class. Very sad indeed.

Imagination, creativity, fantacy, yes, without them we wouldn’t even have film nor TV. And who would dispute that a movie is real – or is it not?

I cherish SL for what it is, an expression of what is in the minds of people. It is their creation.

Language learning in Second Life? To me this simply sounds like this “The most enjoyable and by far the best way to learn a language is to do so on a total immersion language program abroad. In this way, you are totally immersed in the language, which greatly speeds up the learning process. Learning a language in this way is the most effective method, whether you are a complete beginner, or already have an advanced level – but it’s also a lot of fun!” – a quote from a language travel company.