Languages Show-and-Tell
Today I attended a Language Centre show-and-tell organised by Hervé Didiot-Cook and attended by teachers from the LSE as well as our good friends from Columbia University Language Resource Center – Bill & Stéphane.
Challenges/Risks of Second Life
Tamy Zupan, the LSE’s SL evangelist (!) talked us thru’ some of the challenges we are going to face as we look at introducing Second Life. These include an interface with a steep learning curve, negative attitudes from staff and students, a lack of narrative (as it’s a virtual world not a game), unclear moral & ethical boundaries and some cultural challenges and of course the pedagogy: how to take advantage of the potential that it offers for for language teaching and how to assess this. CLT will be supporting the Spanish teachers in a pilot which, for now, will very much be an opt-in for students who are keen to explore the use of SL in their Spanish studies.