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Teacher Training Manual

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Saved by Zeynep Onat Stelma
on December 8, 2010 at 3:08:35 pm
 

As part of the AVALON Project, we piloted a Teacher Training Course for language teachers in Second Life. The Teacher Training manual consists of teaching guidelines that have emerged from the Teacher Training Course. It is hoped that this manual will be a helpful resource for teachers around the world who would like to start teaching languages in Second Life.

 

The Teacher Training Course Curriculum can be viewed here: AVALON Teacher Training Course Schedule (Weeks 1-6).doc

 

 

AVALON Language Teacher Training Course

Trainer Manual

 

This manual has been prepared as an outcome of a pilot teacher training Course that took place in Second Life as part of the AVALON Project (see http://avalon-project.ning.com/), in accordance with WP5 and WP6 Work package 5Work package 6. The pilot took place between 15 February and 30 March 2010. The course was aimed at language teachers who were not yet familiar with Second Life but wanted to explore its potential for language teaching. The language teachers who participated in the teacher training course came from a variety of European countries and they taught a variety of languages. Although the activities suggested in this manual are for the teaching and learning of English, it is up to the teacher using this handbook to adapt the language and activities (if necessary) to suit their own teaching context. For the purposes of this manual, the teacher trainer is referred to as the 'Tutor' and the teachers taking the course are referred to as 'Trainees'.

 

The activities and tasks presented in this manual are adopted from those that were used in the pilot Teacher Training Course. It is the aim of the project to include this manual in the project’s wiki so that teachers who wish to use this manual may also make contributions to it to develop it further. If you have used resources and tasks that have been particularly successful, please include these as suggestions in this manual. In this way a wider community of language teachers may have access to resources/ideas that address their particular teaching needs.  

 

This manual will provide guidelines for lessons in a weekly format. Each week would normally consist of two sessions. There will be suggestions for lesson plan ideas for each session, however, the aims indicated will be for the week and not session by session in order to make this manual more flexible for your use. You may choose to cover the aims of the week by giving different weight to the hours you wish to spend on them in each session.The activities provided for each week are suggestions and can be adapted/deleted depending on your particular lesson.

 

It is important to note that this manual needs to be used together with the Moodle; http://lms.workademy.net/

The Teacher Training Course was designed to enagage language teachers in Second Life  for 4 hours in a week (2 hours in each session) with tutors and to allow 2 hours per week for self-study and contributions to Moodle where teachers participated in discussion forums, read on theory and explored links and resources. Access to Moodle has been made public via a guest login; http://lms.workademy.net/

 

Materials and resoruces used on the Teacher Training Course are stored in various places. For each activity provided in the manual, suggestions for materials and resources to be used with that activity will also be included.The materials and resources referred to can be accessed through various means. Some of the resources will be accessible from 'vendors' located on AVALON Island (place of these vendors??), while for other resources, teacher trainers will be directed to links where they can buy resources or get resources for free to use in SL.

 

Here is a list of slurls to the places on AVALON Island mentioned in the manual:

 

Sandbox: http://slurl.com/secondlife/AVALON%20Learning/116/63/36/

Teacher's Meeting Area: http://slurl.com/secondlife/AVALON%20Learning/75/227/40/

Settlement Huts: http://slurl.com/secondlife/AVALON%20Learning/176/104/25/

Business Barn: http://slurl.com/secondlife/AVALON%20Learning/134/189/33/

Music Stage Area: http://slurl.com/secondlife/AVALON%20Learning/65/67/50/

Village: http://slurl.com/secondlife/AVALON%20Learning/98/170/38/

Harbour: http://slurl.com/secondlife/AVALON%20Learning/225/77/22/

 

Week 1

     

Aims

to help you get to know others on the course

to introduce you to ways of changing avatar appearance

to introduce you to basic features of Second Life: e.g sitting & standing; using the voice feature

to introduce you to Avalon Island through a 'walking tour'

to explore the theme of 'identity' and language teaching in Second Life

 

Activities

 

Introductions

Aim: Getting learners and teachers to know about each other, practising sitting down and using voice in SL 

Place: Teacher's Meeting Area might be a place to do this activity as there are chairs there already.

Materials/Resources: You can use the chairs in the Teacher's Meeting Area or, if you wish, you can create your own chairs to use in different places on the Island.

Description: Tutor asks trainees to take a seat around the table and to start talking with one another. After a minute or two the tutor asks everyone to answer these three questions: 1) What language do you teach?, 2) How long have you been teaching?, 3) Why are you interested in taking this course in SL?

 

Speed introductions!

Aim: Getting trainees to find out information about each other, practising walking in SL 

Place: The Settlement Huts (these are soundproofed), or the Sandbox provided that it is divided into soundproofed sections.

Description: Tutor allocates equal numbers of students to go in each hut. Trainees are given 3 minutes to find out as much as possible about the others in the same hut. Once the time is up everyone comes out of the huts and gathers together outside to share interesting information they have found out about fellow 'classmates'.

 

Catch that suffix!

Aim: Moving around in SL (running) and practicing suffixes 

Place: Sandbox or any area where there is a large empty space

Materials: Boxes or cards with different suffixes (-cy, -ness, -ity) written on them

Description: Teacher places several different suffixes like -cy, -ness, -ation, -ity around the Sandbox and asks learners to run  to the correct suffix as the teacher calls out adjectives of personality such as 'determined'- 'determination', 'sincere'- 'sincerity'. 

 

Musical Chairs

Aim: Moving, sitting, standing in SL, getting help on technical problems in SL, practicing giving advice

Place: In front of Music stage area or any area with some empty space to put chairs

Materials/Resources: Chairs

Description: Teacher sets up chairs, one less than the total number of students. Teacher plays music through microphone (outside SL) and asks learners to walk around the chairs. Teacher asks learners to sit down on an empty chair when the music stops. Teacher plays and stops music through microphone. The last person standing when the music stops gets a notecard with a technical problem written on it such as, 'I can't hear voice'. Teacher asks other learners to give advice using appropriate structure for giving advice (i.e, 'You should...', 'Why don't you...', If I were you...').

Tip: The teacher can put the problems that occurred at the beginning of the lesson on the notecard so that learners could get to review how they can be solved during the lesson.

 

Treasure Hunt

Aim: Begining to explore the issue of 'identity' in SL, moving in SL

Place: Village 

Materials/Resources: Boxes with words written on them (the words should create a full sentence) 

Description: Tutor asks trainees to find objects with words on it placed in various places in the Village. Learners are asked to create a sentence with all the words they have found collaboratively. The complete sentence is: 'Can language learners become the learners they want to be in Second Life?' Trainees comment on the meaning of this sentence and offer their own perspectives and views.

 

Creating/modifying your Avatar

Aim: Exploring how to change ones appearacne in Second Life.

Place: Sandbox or any other area where there is a lot of empty space

Materials/Resources: Free clothes packs that can be obtained from: [add slurl] 

Description: Tutor asks trainees to think about their appearance and how their appearance contributes to their identity. Trainees are then handed out some clothes to put in their inventory for later but with which they can try out different appearances. Each trainee is asked to make themselves look different in terms of their appearance (weight, length,facial features etc.) and to also try on different clothes from their newly obtained folder of clothes. Trainees are then asked to explain whther they feel comfortable with their new appearance and to try to explain why they might or maight not feel comfortable with their new look. Other trainees can voice their opinions about whther a particular newly acquired appearance suits the concept of a 'student' or 'teacher'. 

 

Week 2

     

Aims

          to continue the ‘getting to know  you’ process
          to consider ways of ‘networking’ in SL; for example by using the ‘add friends’ feature; filling in your user profile;
          to introduce SL note cards and ways of using them in language teaching
          to cover basic ‘navigational skills, e.g creating landmarks & teleporting (on the Avalon Island) & map reading
          to explore the theme of ‘modality’ and language teaching in SL
          to begin to think about ways of promoting participation among learners in SL

 

Activities

 

My Identity

Aim: Getting learners to think about identity in SL, getting learners to think about their appearance in SL

Place: Sandbox

Materials/Resources: Opinionator (possible to buy at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Tupi/145/140/303 for L$99 (Linden Dollars))

Description: The tutor asks trainees to gather in the middle of the Opinionator and explains that each time she/he reads out a statement about identity that the trainess go to the section that describes their attitude the best (either agree, disagree, strongly agree, strongly disagree, or neutral). The tutor gives some statements (tutor could also write these in the chat box for trainees to read in case they cannot hear the statement). Example statements:

"My AVATAR should look like me in real life."

"My AVATAR should look like a teacher."

"It is important to have a similar identity to the identity one has in real life."
Depending on where trainees are placed on the Opinionator following each statement, the tutor prompts a discussion about identity and Second Life.

 

Creating my Profile
Aim: Creating a profile for oneself in Second Life.

Place: Start outside the Business Barn and move inside once they start the pairwork (see 'Description' below).

Materials/Resources: YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCgQRrdtgQc

Description: The tutor could have a look at this YouTube clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCgQRrdtgQc before the session for guidance if needed. The tutor starts out with a discussion of the uses/dangers of filling in your profile in Second Life. After a brief discussion/exploring trainees attitudes about this, the trainees are asked to work in pairs to fill out their own profile. The tutor then suggests trainees to have a look at the YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCgQRrdtgQc).

The pairs are then asked to discuss how the profiles can be used in teaching and write their suggestions on a 'notecard' to then send to the tutor. The tutor briefly elicits how to send an item to someone who is online and nearby and someone who is far  away or offline.

 

'Say cheese!': Taking snapshots in SL

Aim: Helpng trainees with practising taking photos/snapshots of their Avatar and others in SL

Place: Village

Materials/Resources: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Video_Tutorial/Take_a_snapshot

Description: Tutor explains how to take snapshots in Second Life of yourself and your surroundings. Tutor then asks trainees to take a snapshot of themselves and to upload this snapshot to the Moodle site, http://lms.workademy.net/

 

Organising your inventory 

Aim: Helping trainees organise their inventories so they can make efficient use of it in their teaching.

Place: Anywhere on the Island

Materials/Resources: http://slexperiments.edublogs.org/2008/07/15/tip-8/

Description: Tutor asks trainees to find notecards in their inventory. Tutor shows trainees how they can create sub-folders in the notecards main folder and then asks them to organise their existing notecards into folders. Tutor then suggest to trainees that they can follow the same principle for objects and other items in their inventory.

 

"Shall we teleport?"

 

Aim: Helping trainees with teleporting themselves and their 'friends' to and from different places in Second Life.

Place: Start off in the Sanbox and have ready-prepared examples (landmarks) of other places on the AVALON Island or other Islands to use for this task.

Materials/Resources: Various landmarks from your inventory.

Description: Tutor shows trainees how to create landmarks and how to 'give' these landmarks to others. Trainees then start practising teleporting each other with one or two volunteers who are asked to choose one or two places on the map and teleporting everyone to this location. This activity can also be done in pairs where pairs are asked to teleport each other to and from different landmarks that they have in their inventory.

Tip: It is useful for the tutor to have created a group for all the trainees to be able to track everyone in this task and to be able to bring back everyone to one place at the end.

 

Who is good at multi-tasking?

 

Aim: Introducing the concept of modality and the different modes of communication in Second Life.

Place: Settlement Huts

Materials/Resources:

Description: Tutor asks trainees to get in groups of two or three. Tutor explains that he/she will povide a discussion topic with a task to be completed to everyone and that each pair/group will go to a differnent hut and talk discuss this topic. In the meantime the tutor will send texts either via the chatbox to the whole group or via IM to individuals askng them questions. Trainees will experience multi-tasking where they will be discussing their topic and completing their task while they get asked questions and expected to respond to these via the text function.

Tip: Tutors can choose a topic of discussion that is either in current news or they could get trainees to discuss difficulties of negotiating the different modes of communication in SL. However, the important part of this activity is that the trainees need to be given a task to complete based on their discussion, otherwise they may stop discussing the topic altogether and focus only on answering the text-chat/IM questions.

 

Week 3

     

Aims

          to explore other Second Life islands/communities whilst considering the notion of 'spatiality' in SL

          to develop your navigational skills when moving  on and between islands

          to consider the nature of SL island ‘communities’

          to think about what makes an SL community successful

          to think about how communities may be useful in language learning contexts

          to build a basic object in SL

 

Activities

 

Creating slurls

 

Aim: Showing trainees how they can create slurls for particular places they visited.

Place: Anywehere on the Island

Materials/Resources: http://slurl.com/about.php

Description: Tutor explains the use of creating and sharing slurls in connecting Second Life to the outside. Through slurs those who are outside Second Life can automatically be teleported to a location in Second Life. Trainees are asked to visit http://slurl.com/about.php to see how they can create slurls for a specific location. Tutor picks a specific location and takes trainees through a step by step process of creating slurls for this location. Tutor then elicits potential difficulties in meeting up in Second Life without slurls.

 

Island-hopping!

 

Aim: Practising navigational skills: teleporting/flying, developing understanding of 'spatiality' in Second Life.

Place: Start at the Sandbox-move to different islands-come back together at the Sandbox

Materials/Resources: Tutor can provide some landmarks to trainees before this activity or trainees can be asked to use existing landmarks in their inventory if they wish.

Description: Tutor asks trainees to get into groups of three (group of four would also be fine). Tutor asks trainees whether anyone in a group has their own landmarks that are likely to be unfamiliar to the rest of the group. If they do and they would like to use one such landmark from their inventory, they can. If trainees do not have landmarks that tey can use, the tutor can give them landmarks of various different places in Second Life (tutor can find interesting landmarks from the website, www.secondlife.com). Tutor then asks trainees to teleport to a landmark/location and to explore the island using various navigational tools (flying, walkig, running) and to return back to AVALON ISland, the Sandbox after 10 to 15 minutes. Once everyone has returned to the Sandbox, tutor asks each group to talk about what they have seen and done where they have visited. Topics that could be discussed with each presentation are: appropriateness of content in these islands (the way avatars are dressed, what they do), difficulty/ease of staying close to each other, and other such issues.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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