The Second Life activities we conducted in class this week were both interesting and revealing. I had never heard of SL before, so I learned a lot from the readings and my presentation on the subject. It seemed like a visionary program that could potentially yield all sorts of rewards in the classroom, but when it came to the hands-on activities, I began to question its usefulness and practicality.
To start, there were problems downloading the SL client to the computers in the language lab. And seeing that these are university computers, it would seem that those computers would be of a higher quality than those that people have at home. The inability to download the client program consumed time that could have been better spent on another task.
When we did actually get to use the program in pairs and trios, I found that it was quite easy, if one wanted, to stray off task. Part of this is because of the novelty of it all. After all, how many people have created avatars and flown around a virtual world? But because of this fascination, I feel it may overshadow the language learning activities that are supposed to take place.
I also found SL a bit cumbersome to use. The controls felt awkward, and I wasn't quite sure how to navigate. I remember one student found a door that would presumably lead to another world. (It had an "exit" sign on it and other avatars were turning into sparkles when they touched it, as if they were being vacuumed or whisked away to the other side.) This student spent several minutes trying to go through the door and talk to people for clues. Keep in mind that these are reasonably tech-savvy university students. How could a digital immigrant navigate this?
To give SL a final chance, I tried downloading the SL client on my computer at home. I wanted to explore a bit more. I was successful, but could not open the program without crashing Windows. So that's when I decided to uninstall the program and take a pass on it for now.
This is not to say SL is worthless. It's probably quite fun and interactive. But as a tool for language learning, I believe it's more trouble than it's worth based on my experiences with it thus far.
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3 comments:
Anthony, I completely agree with you. I don't think that Second Life is worthless, but it definatley seems to be difficult to work with at this point in time. Maybe, in the future some of the kinks will get worked out and make SL more pedagogically sound for FL classroom use.
Also, I hope your computers ok. Windows crashing sounds serious.
Great title - interesting post!
I agree with your statement that SL is not worthless, since it may turn out to be quite fun and interactive.
On considering that this experience with SL was the first time for you, don't you think that those "troubles" were expected?
Would you apply this tool in your classroom? Would you recommend your students to use it in their spare time? Have you delved into any island with pedagogical purposes?
Have you come across any island for ESL students? For instance, for Spanish I would opt for inviting my students explore places such as "El Instituto Cervantes" (cf. http://secondlife.cervantes.es/ ), mainly because, after my visit, I found it suitable.
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