Second Life & Other Virtual Realities

I had never heard of Second Life or virtual realities until I took this course. Who would have thought that there is an entirely different world online?! Like with any new possibility, questions arise about the programs usefulness in education.

Some of the potentials of the use of these virtual worlds in language learning include having an actual virtual stimulus of real life in which students can practice their language communication skills. Also, the fact that the program is actually like a game makes it so that students are learning without really thinking that they are learning. So it makes it a little more interesting to them.

From personal hands-on experience with Second Life (which is not much), I am a bit hesitant to use these virtual realities in a classroom. The thing I do not like the most is that you have no control over the people that your students encounter. It also scares me that you can do ANYTHING in the virtual world that you can in real life ... and I mean anything. To combat these fears, one idea is to look into TEEN Second Life which might be more cautious, however I believe as we talked about in class that a small fee is required for background checks. Another idea is to have a well structured activity fully planned out for students like a SurReal Quest.

Like I said, I am not completely sure of the ins and outs of Second Life. But one SurReal quest could be having the students go to a Spanish speaking community or island. Each student would have certain pieces of information they are required to find out. They then will have to ask different residents questions in the target language to find out the information. They will record the answers and have a time limit so that they will not be tempted to venture off into other worlds or mess around with things like changing their appearance.