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 5, Work 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.

 

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: Teacher asks learners to take a seat around the table and to start talking with one another. After a minute or two the teacher 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 learners 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: Teacher allocates equal numbers of students to go in each hut. Learners 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: Teacher asks learners 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? Learners comment on the meaning of this sentence and offer their own perspectives and views.

 

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."