Synchronicity has deemed that this post be the 200th on my blog...it feels nice to commemorate this "landmark" with an interesting development in the Learning and Teaching of Languages.
Cool Cat Teacher blogged about this last night and I picked up on it in google today.
Second Life, the virtual world, will host an 24 hour multi-lingual conference on the subject of language teaching and learning in virtual worlds. Its free and will take place from 18.00 GMT 23 May 2008 to 18.00 GMT 24 May 2008.
Here's the slideshow to introduce the conference.
There are no details of the programme as yet but organisers are asking potential attendees to register their interest online and also to submit proposals for papers. Now I have never yet set foot upon a virtual world, as I have to admit I find the idea quite sad, but I can see the value in using these kind of applications in an educational context. Therefore I want to use this as an opportunity to learn about Language Learning in a virtual environment. (I've even got myself a SL name...Chuffin Dreadlow!)
The organisers have released details of the thematic areas they want to cover in the conference presentations, and what interests me is looking at how students could use SL (or other similar "worlds") away from the classroom to back up their learning. At the moment I cannot forsee us being able to access something like this in classrooms with current filtering policies.
I'm quite looking forward to it and maybe next year I'll be in a position to submit a proposal after having a year of experiencing this stuff.
Technorati Tags: slanguages2008, secondlife, languagelearning, coolcatteacher
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