Languagelab.com Blog

As I have said in previous posts, when we teach beginners we need to make use of visuals and interactive activities.
One of the first things that made it difficult for me to design a lesson in Second Life was my lack of knowledge of the kind of tools
I could use to teach in that environment. We know that in a Real Life classroom we can use overhead projectors, video players,
video beams, maps, whiteboards, among many others, and the tools labeled as web 2.0 have made the process of planning e-based
lessons very easy. However, I did not know what tools I could use in SL. To solve this problem, I started a search for
educational tools, and found many free tools as well as tools that can be bought from different designers. At the same time,
I learned that I could create simple objects adding textures, sound and ready-made scripts to make them interactive.
For more sophisticated tools, Languagelab has technicians who can create them for us. Nowadays, with this knowledge, planning
is easier but also a challenge to the imagination.

In order to have images and text shown on boards in SL, we have to upload textures (images) created in Power Point or any image editor
such as Photoshop, Paint Shop etc. Two excellent free solutions are Paint.NET (Windows only),
and Gimp, etc.
Sounds can be uploaded in Wav format. They cannot be longer that 10 seconds
which is a restriction for language teaching. However, you can use sounds from the web. The downside is that for every image and sound
we have to pay 10 Linden $

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I am teaching Spanish to beginners in Languagelab. I have taught beginners of all ages in RL, but this is my first experience in a virtual world, and I am enjoying it. We have just finished delivering a course of Spanish for Travel where 95% of the language used was Spanish.
In order to cope with the lack of facial expressions and body language in general, certain elements need to be included to make sure students don’t get lost.
These are some of the aspects that characterized the Spanish for Travel course:

1. Team teaching: In order to model the language, pronunciation, dialogues, etc., the class is team-taught, a teacher and a helper.
2. Whole language approach: the four skills of the language (reading, writing, speaking and listening) are integrated in each lesson.
3. Eclectic use of teaching methods and approaches: In order to cater to different learning styles, and to the content being taught, we use different teaching methods and approaches (TPR (Total Physical Response), notional-functional situational, task-based, among others), to achieve our main aim: communicate in the target language.
4. Use of 3D objects: Lots of materials are needed for beginners, in order to introduce new vocabulary and concepts. Materials should be colorful and well-designed (layout – font sizes – combination of colors – size of images). Objects interactivity is highly appreciated by students.
5. Varied activities and locations: Changing activities and places is fundamental to make the class varied and to keep students attention.

I will expand on these aspects in future entries.

Meanwhile njoy these images from one of our Spanish classes:

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