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=The Naked Avatar--Teaching English as a Second Language in Second Life= =Tacoma Community College, Tacoma, WA, U.S.A.=

This Wiki page is dedicated to teachers and students of ESL who would like to use Second Life in their classes.

A Brief History:
This project got started in Spring 2009 when I was piloting a SecondLife activity in a Level1 (EAP89) Conversation/Pronunciation class. To be honest, I approached SecondLife with some trepidation. I felt clumsy and out of place in this virtual world, overwhelmed by the new terminology like "landmark," "teleport," "rez"...and I could not even make my avatar walk in a straight line. But when I got up the courage to take my students to a computer lab one day and show them how to get an avatar, I went from feeling slightly defensive to positively thrilled. Within five minutes of creating their avatars, one student was flying, and another student who had already advanced to altering the avatar's appearance was exclaiming with shock, "I'm naked!" A simple slip of the mouse, and easy to fix--but it was the moment that revealed to me the power of SecondLife in a language classroom. As the students laughed and went on detailing their avatars and running around Evergreen Island, I saw how they identified with their virtual personas and how we could adapt this context for real and powerful communicative language-learning activities. ...And so was born a conference presentation at the State Board for Higher Education Teaching & Learning Conference in Wenatchee that spring, and subsequently the "Naked Avatar" Instructional Innovation Grant Project.

**How this website can help teachers:**


 * This project will create lessons and materials that will make it easy for teachers to take their classes into Second Life!
 * Teaching and learning in virtual worlds increases the interactivity of a course--and research has shown that an increase in interactivity in courses increases retention.
 * SecondLife provides a constructivist context within which to address course learning outcomes.

English for Academic Purposes Levels 1-3 Learning Outcomes **How this website can help students:**

The students will have a context for using and practicing the language that they study in their textbooks. Second Life allows us to graphically simulate real life situations in the classroom for discussion in a way that a textbook or a worksheet cannot.
 * Second Life gives them experience in virtual reality and provides portable technology skills that are becoming more common in the workplace and in education.
 * As such, SecondLife will address the needs of a changing population of learners, who, according to research, perform better in interactive environments.

creating a learning environment which supports a diversity of ideas, cultures, and approaches to understanding issues
Virtual reality expands the borders of the classroom and, by extension, removes some of the physical classroom's limitations on the student's ability to express his/her individuality. SecondLife hosts users and diverse interest groups from around the world. Users and group members can communicate via Chat and/or Voice and discuss various ideas and issues with people in real time.

encouraging collaborative learning
These SecondLife modules are task-oriented, requiring students to solve a problem or complete a task in SecondLife and use English to negotiate the problem or task. Research shows that SecondLife supports the development of a learning culture by providing students with a shared experience in the virtual world.

enhancing student learning in developmental education
Increasingly, our students belong to what research has called the Net Generation (born after 1980). Their learning style is described as hands-on and visual. They like to work in groups, network and socialize as they do on the Internet. They like to personalize their learning space, as they do their Internet space, to reflect their identity. SecondLife allows students in developmental classes to construct a space and connect with other learners. Further, this exposure to technology will prepare them for the learning experiences that they inevitably will encounter in their future classes.

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