New Dorm on Evergreen Island!!

The New Dorm on Evergreen Island

Last night, I met my friend from Eureka College on Evergreen Island, and with his help put up the waterfront dorm that's been in line for construction this past month. It took nearly 3 hours to get it straight. I had to rez and de-rez it several times until I finally got the hang of the controls and could line it up with the street (and get it to stop looking like the Leaning Tower of Pisa 500 years from now). It's beautiful. I can't wait for our students to start moving in and decorating their rooms. There are 8 rooms upstairs and one downstairs, which I think will be designated for the RA. There's also a beautiful lounge and windows with a view to the neighbors, the Administration of Justice building.

dancing at the Shelter & the present progressive

Luck Davi and I got our courage up and ventured out onto the dance floor in grammar class yesterday. After a review of information questions (Who...? What..? How do you..? etc.) and the present progressive verb tense, we jumped into Second Life for the last 20 minutes of class to try out our new dance moves. As it turned out, things were easier than expected--we found a dance floor where all you had to do was touch a little glowing object and then join a Sync Dance. Luck finished out the day by starting an entry in her blog. Even her new friend from the restaurant, Gelsey Rae was there, looking elegant in the pink fairy wings and black dress that she'd traded out for the cat ears and tail she'd been wearing at dinner.

Using SL videos offline (in the RL classroom!)

Here's a great way to get students speaking spontaneously and authentically in the classroom! Run a SecondLife movie from one of the students and have the student talk about it as it's running.

There are a couple of ways to do this. You can have the students make a movie and then prepare a presentation about it, or you can have the students speak extemporaneously. Or you can save the movies yourself to a CD or external hard drive and bring it with you to class.

It provides authentic, student-generated content for writing and speaking. Just today, I was going to introduce the present progressive tense to JK. I showed her the verb tense and explained what it was for, then played some video segments from the day she turned into a blue wolfperson and raced around Yadni's Junkyard naked on a motorcycle. I asked, "What is your avatar doing?" JK answered with short sentences in present progressive. We had a good time, and she produced a lot of language accurately.

Making movies in SecondLife

I've been making videos of JK's adventures in SecondLife during class sessions using CamStudio (a free download that Tacoma Community College Information Commons has handily bundled together with the SecondLife software onto USB drives that faculty and students can check out. It's easy: just start SecondLife, run CamStudio, and then save it to a portable hard drive once you're finished. It creates an .avi file that is readable by not only CamStudio but also Windows Media, and Quicktime.

When I'm done, I often convert the .avi to an MP4 so that I can upload it to YouTube or my blog. I've been using a program called Final Cut, but conversion can also be done in Windows Moviemaker.

The dancing avatar!

Today was a great day in grammar class. You know, it's difficult to get enthusiastic enough about something at 7:30 in the morning that you want to dance around...But watch this video and you'll witness a virtual miracle. I sent JK's avatar some free dances (you can get these at Yadni's Junkyard) yesterday while preparing class so that they appeared when she logged on to SL this morning. Then we went clubbing. Well, we went to the Shelter, a very cool place to dance, and JK struck up a conversation with a catwoman. We're working on Wh-questions (information questions like, "Who are you," "How long have you been here," etc., and JK got a chance to practice these in chatting conversation with Gelsey. Take a look at the video. JK and I laughed aloud. She wrote some sentences about her adventure for homework (see the Wiki Module "Dancing." Her favorite by far was moonwalking...

Share lesson materials for ESL in SecondLife at http://thenakedavatar.wikispaces.com!

I've been writing a blog at my website, http://thenakedavatar.wikispaces.com, for the past few weeks as I've been chronicling the Second Life adventures of my level one grammar class at Tacoma Community College. I moved over to Google Blogger today along with my one student (yes, it's a small class this summer), JK, when she started her own English language blog today. JK is keeping a journal. So am I. We have slightly different purposes, of course; JK has the added responsibility of using grammar that we're learning in class, while I am documenting the work I'm doing for an Instructional Innovation Grant. However, the focus is the same: JK's adventures in Second Life.

I am working on a grant to develop materials for teaching developmental students using SecondLife. The mission of my grant proposal was to come up with materials that not only made SecondLife accessible to developmental English as a Second Language classes, where educators may not consider using technology for fear that students may lack sufficient cultural or language skills, but also to teachers--hey, it's really easy to use and it's a kick!

This afternoon I'm in the Information Commons using Final Cut to edit some video of JK turning herself into a blue wolf and riding a BMW motorcycle around the junkyard. Curious?...Stay tuned!