WP5 Language Teacher Training Course


Avalon Language Teacher Training Course

 

This 50 hour course for language teachers took place between 15 February and 30 March 2010 (six weeks). The course aimed to develop skills in teaching languages in Second Life. Teachers were expected to have at least one year of teaching experience to participate in this course. 24 hours of the 50 hours were allocated to teaching and learning in Second Life with tutors. The other 26 hours were allocted for self-study, primarily through the Moodle that was designed for this course http://lms.workademy.net/.

 

Sessions led by tutors in Second Life took place on Tuesdays and Thursdays, between 21:00-23:00 CET. The participating teachers were placed in two groups and each group had two tutors at one time. One of the groups was tutored by Nergiz Kern and Holly Sue Longsroth, and the other group was tutored by Graham Stanley and Joe Perreira on Tuesdays and Joe Perreira and Zeynep Onat-Stelma on Thursdays.

 

The curriculum for the teacher training course can be viewed here: AVALON Teacher Training Course Schedule (Weeks 1-6).doc

 

The course has helped teachers who are new to SL learn about and practice technical features of SL, as well as encouraged them to think about how they could adapt their teaching practices to the Second Life environment. For teachers who had some previous experience in SL already, this course helped them develop their technical skills as well as link their existing skills and knowledge of SL to their teaching practice by providing examples of activities that are suitable and effective to use in SL. Teachers were expected to prepare a project at the end of the course (this was a prerequisite if they were to be given certificates) where they created a lesson plan, presented their plan in the final week to their fellow teachers adn tutors and they also did one of the activities from their lesson plan with the other teachers acting as their students. 

 

The certificate handed out at the end f the course can be viewed here: Avalon Certificate.doc

 

The feedback for this course both from participating teachers and the tutors can be found in the WP6 Project Report: WP6 Project Report.docx WP6 Appendices.zip