A world of difference

LearnEnglish Second Life - Basic Training Course Day Two

Developed by Graham Stanley, graham.stanley@britishcouncil.es January 2012

About the course

Welcome to the LearnEnglish Second Life initial training course. This 2-day (12-hour) short course has been designed as a primer for British Council staff interested in starting to use the 3D virtual world Second Life for teaching English or organising events on the British Council Isles. This course assumes no prior knowledge of Second Life.

Objectives
By the end of Day 2, participants will have: understood how best to manage groups of learners/participants and spaces in SL. some idea of the tools that can be used for classes / events in SL. had some practice in event/lesson/course planning in SL. had some actual teaching experience in SL. formulated an action plan to follow after the course has finished.

Programme
Day 2 9.00 Session 2.1: Classroom Management in SL a) space Land in Second Life / Parcel Management / Parcel Properties / Objects and sandboxes / Building Class 10.00 Session 2.2: Classroom management in SL b) learners Moving in a group / Dealing with lost avatars /Pairwork and groupwork / Notecards / Feedback and assessment / Evaluation 11.00 Coffee 11.30 Session 2.3: SL Tools 12.30 Lunch 13.30 Session 2.4: SL Event/Lesson Planning 14.15 Session 2.5: SL Teaching Practice 15.15 Session 2.6: Final Roundup / Q&A / Action Plan 16.00 Finish

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Classroom Management in SL a) space

We are going to the Student Suburbs on BritishCouncil Isle3 for this session. You can get a landmark to the area by clicking on the relevant area of the map of the BritishCouncil Isles near the orientation area.

Land in Second Life

To begin with, it is worth taking time to understand how land is divided up in Second Life. The following image from the official SL wiki (http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Land) gives a good overview.

With respect to the BritishCouncil Isles:-

The BritishCouncil Isle is a private estate made up of 3 regions (BritishCouncil Isle, Each of the BritishCouncil Isle regions are divided up into several different parcels. Each
of these parcels have permissions set that decide what people can and cannot do on the land. We will look at this in more detail later, but you can see these permissions by looking at the Parcel properties (World->Place Profile). As mentioned previously, each region of Second Life can hold a maximum of fifty people before lag makes it difficult for people to move. BritishCouncil Isle2 & BritishCouncil Isle3)

Parcel management
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Knowing where one parcel of land ends and another starts is important. You can see the boundaries by turning on the property lines (see image left: World>Show->Property Lines). Sometimes voice is restricted to a particular parcel, so when you cros from one area to the next someone may not hear you.

Parcel Properties
Each parcel has its own properties, which can be changed. To view the properties of a parcel, right click on the land itself, or go to World->About Land. Looking at these, you can see what permissions avatars have on the parcel of land. These are set by the Owner of the land or an Estate Manager.

Task
Explore some of the parcels in the Student Suburbs and check the properties. In particular, take notice of the differences between the following:About Land->Options-> Build / Object entry / Run scripts -> Media -> Home page -> Sound -> Music URL / Voice -> Restrict voice to this parcel

Let's now look at what you can and can't do on some of these parcels and we'll talk about why they have been set up like this.

Objects and sandboxes

Second Life is a virtual world with very powerful building tools and which allows you to create and manipulate a number of different objects and tools. Most islands only allow building to occur on areas named 'sandboxes' because otherwise the islands would become littered with objects that people have created or left there. For events or classes that don't involve placing objects (i.e. most of the conversation course), this is not a problem. For other courses and events, however, you will be using objects and so 4

you will need to do the class in a sandbox or arrange with the Owner or one of the Estate Managers to turn on object placement/building for you in the space where you want to hold the event / class. Basic building class We don't have time to look at building in much detail in this course, unfortunately, but no SL course should ignore it, so I am going to show you how to build something simple that will be of use to you for teaching and/or events a posterboard. We'll be starting with this... and ending up with this.

Task
Follow the instructions to create your own posterboard...

In the images above, you will see how similar boards have been used in actual classes.

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Classroom management in SL b) learners

We have already looked at the benefits of adding students as SL friends and/or creating a special group for each class. Remember, each group that you create costs $L100, so you will need to have SL money for this. As you can only obtain SL money if you have a premium account, either the Owner/Estate manager can create the group for you, or transfer the money to you so that you can do it. Moving around in a group You should plan your event / class so that moving around to different spaces with learners does not waste too much time or lead to learners getting lost. Lost avatars can be minimised by using the same format for moving from area to area - giving them a landmark to the new area is probably the easiest way, unless the new apces is near enough to walk to or you trust your learners to fly there.

Dealing with lost avatars

If someone does get lost (I usually keep a list of names of avatars handy and check whenever we move on), then IM them to ask if they are OK and send them a teleport link. Alternatively, if there are more than a couple, then open the class group chat and post the SLURL of the new area in there so they can click on it and join you.

Task
Imagine one of us is lost. Send an IM and then follow it up by sending a teleport link.

Pairwork and Groupwork There will be times when you want learners to work in groups or even pairs. We have seen how this can be done by asking people to start private or group voice calls. However, there will be times when you will want to be able to monitor what learners are doing, so using pairwork or groupwork parcels is often the best option.

Task
Can you find which areas in the Student Suburbs have been set up for groupwork and which for pairwork? What kind of activities could be done here? Why do you think the pairwork parcels are so close together?

Here are examples pictures of pairwork and groupwork being done by learners:

In the screenshot above, notice the following: how the camera has been pulled back so the teacher can see all of the learners the mini-map is configured so the teacher can see if there are any learners (green dots) outside the parcel (there is one can you see the green dot?) the chat box has been expanded so text responses can better be monitored the 'Nearby Voice' menu is active, so the teacher can easily see who has their mic on and who doesn't, and who is talking. The volume of that person can also be turned up/down as required. The learners are sitting rather than standing because this means voice levels for the learners do not need constantly adjusting. If the learners were standing / walking about, then you and the other learners may find yourselves changing the voice levels depending on who is where. In the screenshot below, you can see a similar number of windows open to monitor activity, but here the learners are working in pairs practising Part 2 of the Cambridge First Certificate Speaking paper. Voice is restricted to each of the parcels and so only those standing on the same coloured square can hear each other. Because the parcels are close together, the teacher can move quickly from one parcel to the next and monitor the learners, making sure they are OK and giving help, advice and feedback when appropriate.

Notecards
You can use notecards for other reasons, such as preparing class input / notes / homework to give to the learners in SL. They can be sent to the group easily as an attachment to a group message. You can also add landmarks to the notecard (see below), which makes it easier to provide learners links to the places they are going to be visiting during the class.

To create a notecard, open your inventory and click on the Plus (+) sign then 'New notecard'

Task
Create a new notecard, give it a name and add text and insert a landmark into it.

Attendance Good record-keeping is important for classes and events. Apart from being necessary in order to establish who or who does not deserve a certificate of attendance, we have to keep records to be able to establish the relative success of the event / class. I suggest using a Google spreadsheet for formal attendance records. You can see an example of record keeping for the pilot conversation course here. NOTE: You may find it difficult to connect the person who turns up in SL to the class with the details of the learners who applied / signed up. I suggest asking for their emails at the end of the session (in order to send them homework, etc) this should make it easier to identify everyone.

Feedback and assessment

Apart from informal assessment of the learners during class, you may want to take notes and send each learner an email with a more personal assessment notes. To do this, you will probably have to keep notes during the class. One way of giving learners feedback is to tell them that you will be writing in text chat any examples of very good or incorrect language that you hear them say at the same time they are speaking. The advantage of this is that you have a written record of some of the language the learners used during the class. You can also keep copies of these text chat transcripts (select all then copy and paste) to use for purposes of feedback, etc. Alternatively, you can use the notecard feature in SL to record the language students use. This could be less distracting for some. Some courses require that a certificate of attendance be produced and sent to the learners at the end of the course. The best way to do this is usually as an attached PDF.

Evaluation
Because of the nature of classes in SL, we will be undertaking an ongoing evaluation in order to determine whether the nature of the courses / classes we offer meets the demand and whether or not the format is suitable for all levels / all learners, etc. The best way of obtaining feedback from learners will be by sending them a short feedback form via email. We may want to do this with the learners who did not show up to class or who dropped out to in order to understand their reasons for doing so. Any comments that you hear students make too can be recorded if felt relevant. We also need to take into account the British Council scorecards! 9

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SL Tools

There are lots of different tools you can use for teaching in Second Life. We do not have a lot of time to look at many of these on this course, but we will be looking at a few useful tools for teachers such as whiteboards / presentation boards and other tools such as the Opinionator (see image below).

Task
Practise using a couple of simple presentation boards and some other teaching tools and decide which ones you prefer.

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2.4

SL Event/Lesson Planning

Time has been set aside in this session for you and your partner to prepare a simple lesson idea or a very short (!) event (15 minutes or so). Depending on time and circumstances, there will be learners available as guinea pigs for you to test these out afterwards. If not, then

Task
Plan your class / event and write notes below

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2.5

SL Teaching Practice

During this session, you will have the opportunity to hold your event, or for teaching practice.

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2.6

Final Roundup / Q&A / Action Plan

Are there any final questions? Has everything you wanted to learn about been covered? Do you want to go over anything again? Bearing in mind that the AVALON Teacher Training course is a 60 hour hands-on course in teaching in Second Life, this course has been designed as an introductory course to teaching and holding events in SL. I hope you appreciate that there is a lot more possible that we have not been able to examine in these two days, but which you can find out about yourself if you are interested.

Action Points
I plan to do the following in Seond Life to build upon what I have learned in this course:-

Further Information
You can find the online PDF of this training course here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/76999748/LearnEnglish-Second-Life-Training-Jan-2012-Day-One

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