Educational Gaming Commons

I just came from Spanish class and I wanted to write about our experience this morning while it is still fresh in my mind. Our objective today was to learn more about Mayan Culture by exploring the Ruta Maya, a recent addition to the Chichén Itzá Archeological site on Visit Mexico island (sponsored by the Mexican government) and to practice some discrete grammar points that are related to our language studies, namely comparisons and the preterite and imperfect tenses. The students received an information sheet which detailed a walk along the Ruta Maya with visits to four pyramids. In addition, I noted that there were a number of fun things to do in the area, such as swimming near the watrerfall, scuba diving, hang gliding and riding a zipline through the rainforest canopy. The students were to visit four pyramids, read the notecards, do one fun thing and complete a written assignment in Spanish using the targeted grammar points.

I soon found out that I had neglected to mention the fact that that there were also free horse rentals available. A number of students converged on the horse rental barn and soon were exploring the Ruta on horseback. O.k., I said to myself, here is a cultural lesson- a teachable moment. In Mexico, it is very common to rent a horse for a ride on the beach, so I urged the students to walk the horses down to the beach. As I was ruminating on the fact that, yet again, Second Life had provided an authentic experience, the students discovered that they could fly with the horses. Soon the sky was filled with flying horses. For the next twenty minutes or so, we found out that, yes, horses can climb the pyramid steps, yes, horses can hang glide and even get on the zipline platform. I am fuzzy on whether or not they successfully rode the zipline on horseback.

So, in my best professorial manner, I suggested that the students should stay focused on our objectives and remember that they had to complete the written part of the assignment as well. One of the students said, well, can't we write about the horses? Well, what I really had in mind was some explanaton of the archeological site, but then again, why not? What mattered was the use of Spanish.

I am still analyzing the experience. I told them at the end of class, "I am so blogging about you today,"
but what is the lesson here? I was very prosaic in my lesson plan; I had visited the island, ridden the horses and it had never occurred to me to fly, let alone climb the pyramids and hang glide on horseback. Maybe I just don't get it; I get hung up on the authentic experiences and neglect the creative possibilities. It is as if the students had made paper airplanes out of my lesson plans. I need to think about whether or not that is bad. O.K., yes, they probably got carried away, but they were so in the moment, it was a joy to observe. Second Life is about encouraging that creative fervor, that crazy "look at what I can do" spirit that is cetainly missing from most standard classrooms. I am looking forward to reading their written assignments and seeing the results of the turn class took today. Just maybe Mayan culture and the Spanish language can be learned on a flying horse...

A week ago, Spanish language students teleported from the now familiar Hacienda Segunda Vida to the Al Andalus Caliphate Project, a sim that covers two islands and re-creates the largest historical site in Andalucía, Spain, the Alhambra. Basically, the Alhambra was the palace and governmental center of Islamic power during the years of the conquest of Spain, from about 711A.D. to 1492. The actual buildings are in Granada and command a large hilltop with gardens and intricately carved buildings with fountains, receiving halls and hundreds of rooms.

The Al Andalus sim, is a magnificent example of Second Life's ability to provide a setting, an atmosphere and a spirit of place. As I led students on a guided tour of the major parts of the Alhambra, I was struck by the authentic feel of the surroundings. Of course, there is no such thing as an exact copy of the original, but this sim is certainly faithful to the design of the Alhambra in many ways.

To get ready to visit, students visited the web page for the Alhambra in Spain and learned what it looks like and what the buildings represent. I also connected the Alhambra to the students' own experiences by noting that our American author, Washington Irving, spent some time living there when the Alhambra was in disrepair, and wrote a book of stories about his experiences called Tales of the Alhambra.

While exploring the buildings, the students visited a Mezquita, or mosque. They were instructed to take off their shoes before entering and the women put on veils, (which were conveniently located in a basket by the door), to show respect. The students were subdued and respectful during their visit and came to a better understanding of the place of Islamic culture within the Spanish tradition.

I teach in the School of Humanities and this type of experience is exactly what we want our students to have. But was it real? That depends on your definition of real. Perhaps to participate in Second Life, you must choose to "willingly suspend your disbelief," as Samuel Taylor Coleridge described one's approach to fiction. Having gone through that process of agreeing not to disbelieve, then we, at least for the time, believe. In exchange for our believing, we find ourselves participating in an internal, emotional way to the stimuli around us. What I am saying is that, though the Alhambra sim is not technically real, it does have an emotionally real aspect, and we give our permission for that to happen.

On our Spanish Chapter test a few days later, I included a page-long reading on the Alhambra in Spanish and followed with a series of questions on the reading. Approximately 98% of the class read the passage and answered every question correctly. In Second Language pedagogy, we call this kind of series of activities related to a lesson, "scaffolding." Nesting activities together provides a firm scaffold to support students when they risk reading, writing, or speaking a language. Second Life has an important place in that scaffold for student learning.

I am amazed that our Teaching Spanish in Second Life group now has 51 members. We have been meeting monthly for five months now. As I am preparing the agenda for our meeting next Tuesday, I have been reflecting on the way that Second Life has opened up these possibilities for collaboration. With voice chat, we are able to speak with each other about language learning, literally from all over the world. Last month we had members from Mexico, Germany, Italy and the U.S. all online together as we toured the facilities of the Glendale Community College (Phoenix, Arizona) Spanish program. Calisto Encinal has built a beautiful interactive building for Spanish instruction. He even has a working bathroom, for those necessary moments. Oh no, Hacienda Segunda Vida doesn't have a bathroom...
Our agenda includes: getting our students together with native speakers for voice chat; sharing our office hours with all our students so that they can visit other faculty; sharing techniques and inventory. For example, Calisto gave us all a device that sends the students up into the sky for small group work. They stay on their pods in the sky until the instructor brings them down. They seriously look like they are sitting on pegs in purple cereal bowls. They can see other groups in the distance, but can't hear them. It is a great device when you have a whole class working on a project in small groups. One fact of working internationally is the clock. We generally have our meetings at 8:00 pm EST, but realized last time that our members from Germany and Italy were up in the middle of the night to attend. This month we are meeting at 8:00 am EDT, to accommodate their schedules.
I am also looking forward to the SL LAnguage '08 conference on May 23rd on EduNation. I went last year and heard speakers from many countries talk about the challenges and opportunities of teaching in SL. I had a proposal accepted, so this year I will be speaking on "Coordinating the Physical Classroom and Teaching from My Virtual Hot Tub: Hybrid Spanish Classes in Practice." The conference will run for twenty-four hours and each presenter will speak two times. More on that as I see the schedule.
All the best from the Hacienda,
Flora

Yesterday, I made a presentation on Second Life pedagogy at the Middle Atlantic Council on Latin American Studies Conference in Baltimore. As I was preparing my materials for the conference, I discussed learning Spanish in Second Life with one of my students, whom I'll call Tory. Tory has really enjoyed the experience of learning Spanish in Second Life over the last two semesters. What she finds most exciting, is the active part of the learning process. She says that she is learning Spanish and actively using it at the same time. It is true that we often want to teach students everything about a language (as if it were an object), and then they have little opportunity, especially outside of the classroom, to actually use it. Then Tory said something very interesting, "After all, we learned our first language actively. The best way to learn a second language is to be active in that language." Language pedagogy theorists have noted this for a long time, but I thought it was significant that Tory was able to see it from her point of view. Second Life does provide active learning, not just for Spanish, but for many disciplines. Think about it, did you learn to drive a car by reading a book, or because someone explained it to you? (I do have to say, however, that our second daughter swears she learned to parallel park by getting instructions over the phone from a friend...I never understood how that was possible, although she can parallel park better than I can.) Seriously, I think Tory is really on to something. This generation of college students, generally speaking, really responds to doing. Second Life makes available a rich, constantly changing, interactive, immersive environment for our students to experience.

Best wishes,
Flora

Thought I'd take a moment to catch you up on things Spanish in Second Life...

A group of my Spanish 002 students have designed a Penn State T shirt. It has the Lion on the front and on the back it says, "Estudiar, Aprender, Vivir en Espanol"(Study, Learn and Live in Spanish) Penn State Harrisburg. Our plan is to have a T shirt dispenser located in the Hacienda for visitors to get a free T shirt.

This Friday (2/29/08) we are planning an Avatar Fashion Show at the Hacienda. Our lesson this week is on clothing words, so each student will introduce another avatar and describe their clothing. I have also invited some visitors. We will have a "reception" afterwards, with virtual food, of course. The students are excited about the show and spent some time last week finding new outfits. I am actually stylin', myself. To get ready for this assignment, the students studied the vocabulary and watched a video segment of a Spring fashion show on Univisión that I posted on ANGEL. They watched, listened and filled out a video guide that I prepared for them. One of the keys to building a Second Life program is to integrate it very tightly with your syllabus. That way it is not something extra, but enhances your objectives for the course.

This program was featured in the February 2008 edition of The Language Educator, a national publication of ACTFL (America Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language. As a result of the article, I have been contacted by a couple of universities about collaboration, and received an invitation to do a six hour workshop on SL at ACTFL's National Convention. I really want to get the word out about how effective the virtual world can be in college courses. This is not original with me, but I will say that... it is serious fun.

Thanks!
Flora

From students landing helicopters on the lawn during class; teaching from my hot tub and giving my students poison candy (Virtual! LOL!) for Day of the Dead, it has been quite a semester at the Hacienda!

Just a quick pre-Christmas note as I put the first semester in the Hacienda to bed for a little while. Overall, we had an awesome semester. Forty-eight students spent every Friday class in SL, completing assignments in culture and language that I designed to coordinate with our textbook, Mosaicos. I am conducting a study (IRB approved) that includes evaluating all of the assignments of the participants and the results of a confidential survey we conducted. More on that later. . . From anecdotal evidence, student satisfaction has been really high. My class meets at 8:30 am next semester and has been filled for weeks!

Feliz Navidad!

Flora

I had such a great experience on Tuesday night; I wanted to share. I organized a Second Life Spanish Educators Group this semester and was surprised last week to find that 20 members had signed up. I called for a meeting at the Hacienda on Tuesday night. Eight people responded from places like New York, Tennesee, Texas, Arizona, and Mexico. We had a two hour voice chat at the Hacienda, sharing experiences and questions. The group decided to meet on the third Tuesday night of the month, so we are meeting again on December 18th at 5:00 SL time. If you would like to join the group, or just want to visit, send me an e-mail at gbc3@psu.edu and I'll invite you. It is a small start, but it is an amazing experience to have Second Life pull this random group of educators together to pool their knowledge.

Sorry the image is so big, but Flora wanted to meet everyone and refused to fit into a smaller space. She is sitting in the resource room of the Hacienda waiting for students to arrive.

We have been very busy at Hacienda Segunda Vida this Fall semester. Two sections of Spanish l (48 students) have participated in weekly projects that are coordinated with our textbook, Mosaicos. They have done such things as have a scavenger hunt for introductory vocabulary; practice numbers by shopping in Barcelona; visit European University; and have conversations with their partners.

Last week we had a guest avatar, Capricorn Brewster, speak to the classes. Capricorn is a Cuban American who is a faculty member at Borough of Manhattan Community College. He shared his experiences growing up in the Cuban community in Florida, his parents'experiences fleeing from Castro's regime in 1959, and his reflections on a trip he made to Cuba. The students really enjoyed his presentation and flooded him with IM questions. We decided to use IM so that 24 students could ask questions without a lot of confusion.

Also last week, I prepared a display to teach about the Day of the Dead celebration in Mexico. There is an ofrenda or altar, still set up in the patio of the Hacienda, if you are interested. Also, there is a display of photos of ofrendas in Mexico. The photos were uploaded from my collection of photos taken in Puebla by my daughter, J. Elizabeth Clark and I. Two of the photos were uploaded from Morgue file, a copyright-free site for photos. On October 31, the classes visited and explored the displays. The students received a notecard explaining the Day of the Dead, a sugar skull for their inventory and a candy bar from my pumpkin-shaped candy dispenser. I have to admit, however, that the candy was scripted to make their avatars go into convulsions and die for a second or two...they really got a kick out of it, although they were worried at first.

Overall, this has been a terrific learning experience for the students and for me. The students are expressing themselves in Spanish, have created more written text than any class I have ever had, and are learning a lot of culture in a 3-D environment that would be impossible to reproduce any other way.

Visítenos en Segunda vida
Gloria Clark

Hacienda Day 1 7-23-07

I wasn't sure what to expect as the Hacienda SL grew from a rough sketch into a virtual reality. It is really coming to life. I have been at work gathering plants and trees for the garden around the Hacienda and have experimented with pulling items out of my inventory and placing them in an area outside the building. Right now they are not in an order, but I have realized that I need to make a plan for my students' experience of the native Mexican plants I have chosen. I want them to further their immersive experience of the Hacienda with a walk in "nature."

There is also a purchased building on PSU HArrisburg's land. It is a two story house with many typical Mexican features, like textile design details. If possible, I would like to create a social area for students to get together on the first floor, a cantina of sorts. On the second floor, I would like to create a gallery of art objects and have started to collect them in my inventory.