My interview was with Chris Surridge, who is actively involved in the development of Sloodle. He teaches communication and writing at KAIST ( Korea's Advanced Institute of Science and Technology).
You've all been using a limited version of Moodle as part of this course. Its an open source VLE, a platform that can support a variety of interactive activities like wikis, forums. podcasts, assignments, quizzes …
You may also have hear
d about Second life.
Second life is a 3d virtual world designed by the users themselves. Users can socialise with each other using text and voice.
They create representations of themselves called avatars, which can walk, talk and fly! Parts of second life include virtual versions of real life places eg the statue of liberty, art galleries and museums.
Educational Benefits:
"For language learners it's a really interesting place because the turn taking, pausing and paying attention to what other people say that we keep drilling into our students' heads - it is really exaggerated in Second Life. When you are involved in a text chat, if you just try to blurt out whatever you are thinking you end up typing over somebody else's comments and things get confused, you fall behind, especially if you have two or three people going at the same time, so you really have to pay attention to the social mores that surround proper conversation. Our students are really aware of that and they benefit quite a bit from the fact that in Second Life they're tasked even harder to pay attention to those things and when they do speech for example with the headsets on, it's dead hard for them, not just because they have to speak and listen but because there is a little bit of a pause sometimes with the voice in Second Life so it can be really confusing in a hurry, so they really really have to pay attention to what the other person is saying. They really have to think hard about what they want to say next. They become hyper-conscious of what they are doing and what they are saying but, as a language practice tool, it is just ideal."
(Chris Surridge)
Sloodle is the integration of Moodle and second life. It stands for second life object orientated distance learning environment. A class can be conducted with student from different parts of the world in the same virtual space. With the addition of moodle tools through Sloodle, students can blog information back from second life. This is useful for task based learning when you are sending students out to investigate various things. Each time they blog back to Moodle, it outs a time and location stamp in their entry. You can click on it and teleport to that location if your second life client is open.
Another feature of note is the web intercom, which allows chats which take place in second life to
be logged back to the moodle chat log. So, you are recording the interaction, which can be used for reflection afterwards.
If Second life is like a game without a game, Sloodle brings a game component by providing tracking and scoring capabilities. "Students I have tracked in SL using the Sloodle tools stay on task, focus their attention, and work independently far better than students whose actions are not tracked or who do not correspond with Moodle via Sloodle. It's an empirical fact. " (Chris Surridge).
NOTE: Interview aside. One thing I didn't realise is that second life is
a really great place to meet up with other people involved in education
and discuss ideas. I just visited this iste island and was immediately
welcomed, given a tour. Then a group developed and we were discussing
the advantages of virtual worlds in education!
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