Learn a Language in a Medieval Roleplay

Pionia, Elaine and Anna

This weekend Artstonia hosted an introduction to Roleplay for the teachers of VILLAGE: Language Learning and Community Building in Second Life, an online workshop of TESOL EVO 2001
Pionia Destiny, who ran this kind of events many times in the past years, asked Elaine Khandr and me to give her an hand.

This time we decided to change a bit the formula, and to organise a short quest for the participants, thinking that in this way they would have the occasion to have a clearer idea of what roleplay means.

But the organisation of the event was also an occasion for the three of us to know each other a bit better, and I hope that we will have more occasions to collaborate since I really enjoyed the experience.

To say the truth, most of the work was done by Elaine, who is a skilled builder and scripter, beside being a wonderful person.

I would like to thank also Sir Sol and Sil Edge and all the other Arstonian who joined us in the quest and who gave the participants a good example of what good roleplay is.

And of course, a huge thank to Gwen and Nahiram, without whose organisation and support this little workshop would not have been possible.

introduction to rpg by Elaine

3, 2, 1… you are on air

On saturday I was invited by Pionia to take part in an interview, together with Cyber and her, about language learning in virtual words.

Well… who can say “no” to  such a proposal?

This was an occasion as well to spend some times with two good friends and to learn about new intersting initiatives in SL, like the Teknoartia forum, whose aim is to be a meeting point for people interested in making things in SL. A real public square where you can find people with similar interests and share ideas and projects with them.

Actually, the radio that invited us, Colombiamor was born in SL, and it’s the result of the work of people leaving in different continents. A demonstration of how SL is, with no doubt, the best social network existing at the time.

Pionia, Cyber and me met a bit before just to chat, confess each other we were rather nervous, and meet some of the staff of the radio. It was nice to see some of the backstage while we were not “on air”.. you know how curious I am.. of everything and everybody . Of course at the beginning we were tenses, but then thanks to the warmth and the competence of our hosts, we relaxed and even joked a bit.

In the end, we were asked to tell a recipe of our country… a really embarrassing task for me, because, despite being Italian, I’m a disaster and a danger in the kitchen and all my friends know that I’m rather prone to burning to ashes everything, even the saucepan.

I leave here the  link to the interview (in Spanish)

After us, was the turn of presenting a nice initiative: the Peace and Diversity  Marathon Art  2011, that will be held on 15-16 January. 24 hours non-stop of concerts, literary readings, exhibitions of visual arts and many interesting events to send a message of Peace and Unity in Diversity throughout the world. Another brilliant example of what SL and VW in general allow us to do.

For more information: http://maratonarte.blogspot.com/

add a dimension to your learning.. with a good friend

In October 2010 Karelia Kondor and I prepared a presenation for the 3rd Virtual Roundtable Conference.

For me it was a real pleasure to be able to collaborate with Karelia: we met in Edunation thanks to Carol and became real friends by now. And I love to work with people: I like the energy that is produced and the learning and teaching that is taking place. In this case, I was the one who learned more, and I have to thanks Karelia to offer me this opportunity.

Since the conference was not on SL and then probably our “pubblic” was mostly new to Virtual Words, we decided to give an overview of what can teachers do in Second Life and to explain it from the point of view of  our personal experience.

It was nice and reassuring as well to have Gizmo, Pionia and many other friends among the attendats, and to be able to rely on the wonderful organisation of Gwen.

Here are the slides, since we had a little problem with them and were not able to show them all.

For more information:

the recording: http://www.virtual-round-table.com/profiles/blogs/add-a-dimension-to-your

Karelia page: http://www.all-london.org.uk/second_life.htm

references:

introduction (video)

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Hazel/42/161/1621

Italian Art: Gallery of the italian creativity: dynamics painting  and sculpture by Gleman Jun.

Sculpture: Both myself by Gleman Jun

Avalon Learning

 

For information on the project:

http://avalon-project.ning.com/

http://avalon.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/

Slexperiment

 

Information:

http://slexperiments.pbworks.com/w/page/11306631/FrontPage

Slanguages 2010

 

Information:

http://www.slanguages.net/archive2010.php

http://avalon-project.ning.com/events/slanguages-2010

http://www.virtual-round-table.com/profiles/blogs/slanguages-2010-summary

sharing resources (slide)

 

International School

http://slurl.com/secondlife/International%20Schools/65/94/25

One of the many places where you can find free resources for teaching in SL.

English at Cypris Chat (slide)

 

http://cyprischat.org/center/

http://cypris.ning.com/main/authorization/doSignIn?target=http%3A%2F%2Fcypris.ning.com%2F

Virtlantis (slide)

 

http://www.virtlantis.com/

Goethe Institut (slide)

 

http://www.goethe.de/lrn/duw/sdl/enindex.htm

Teleportnovela (slide)

 

http://teleportnovela.blogspot.com/

Italianiamo (slide)

 

http://italianiamo.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/il-marito-della-parrucchiera-il-film/

Games (videos)

Gymkana

 

http://italianiamo.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/giochiamo/

http://vodpod.com/watch/2470641-pyramidoodle-kick-off-con-anna-begonia

Devil Island Mystery

 

http://elearningproject.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=93&Itemid=175

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j63IE3PHnT4

Languagelab (slide)

 

http://www.languagelab.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/languagelife

Avalon: alzati e cammina (slide)

 

Some reflections on this experience:

http://aberriolo.wordpress.com/2010/08/17/a-teaching-experience-some-reflections/

If you want a copy of the build, please contact Anna Begonia (sl name)

Role play (video)

 

Artstonia (role play sim)

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Artstonia/216/118/127

Chatlog: example of role play interaction

[2010/09/29 23:50]  gadget Cyberstar: greetings, anna

[2010/09/29 23:50]  anna Begonia: greetings

[2010/09/29 23:51]  Relm Foxdale: Greetings

[2010/09/29 23:52]  anna Begonia: greetings

[2010/09/29 23:52]  Whrek Nirvana: Eya Girly

[2010/09/29 23:52]  gadget Cyberstar: ooh goodie, the rat is here

[2010/09/29 23:52]  Whrek Nirvana: shut up

[2010/09/29 23:52]  gadget Cyberstar: and why would i do that?

[2010/09/29 23:53]  Whrek Nirvana: you’ve got shit spewwin out yur gums

[2010/09/29 23:53]  Whrek Nirvana: I’m sure relm doesn’t appreciate getting covered in it

[2010/09/29 23:59]  anna Begonia: *approaches Whreck, looks at his skin*

[2010/09/29 23:59]  anna Begonia: Sir, do you paint it every day? It would take long. How many hours?

[2010/09/30 00:00]  anna Begonia: do someone help you?

[2010/09/30 00:00]  Whrek Nirvana cocks his foot to the side and sweeps his tail around it, standing up tall in front of her, “Wha, You aint meanin ta tell me you aint never seen a tatoo before girly, THis down come off, its burned on my flesh”

[2010/09/30 00:00]  Relm Foxdale suddenly chuckles. “You have longer hair than me.”

[2010/09/30 00:01]  gadget Cyberstar: aye, frieking wood elfs, they dun know how ta cut hair

[2010/09/30 00:01]  anna Begonia: Oh, my god! burned! it has to be very painful! Why did they do it to you? *with a shrill in ther voice*

[2010/09/30 00:01]  Relm Foxdale grabs his ponytail playfully

[2010/09/30 00:01]  gadget Cyberstar: hey! no pulling!

[2010/09/30 00:01]  Relm Foxdale laughs

[2010/09/30 00:01]  gadget Cyberstar: pull my hair, i steal an ear

[2010/09/30 00:02]  Relm Foxdale: You wouldn’t dare

[2010/09/30 00:02]  gadget Cyberstar: try me

[2010/09/30 00:02]  Relm Foxdale frowns

[2010/09/30 00:02]  Relm Foxdale: Nah

[2010/09/30 00:02]  Whrek Nirvana holds his hand up and traces down his arms, “Traders and brands, each of these was given to me when I was slave to one or another, the Ravinica guild added the roses every time, or was it gruuls

[2010/09/30 00:02]  gadget Cyberstar: tatoos dun hurt, actually

[2010/09/30 00:03]  gadget Cyberstar: well, much

[2010/09/30 00:03]  Whrek Nirvana: they do when theyre seared

[2010/09/30 00:03]  gadget Cyberstar: yeah

[2010/09/30 00:03]  Relm Foxdale: Not very much, no

[2010/09/30 00:03]  gadget Cyberstar: i said much

[2010/09/30 00:03]  Relm Foxdale: Depends where they are

[2010/09/30 00:03]  Whrek Nirvana: take a hot Iron, dip it in ink, then brand the flesh

[2010/09/30 00:03]  gadget Cyberstar: well, ye stop feeling much after a whyle

[2010/09/30 00:03]  Relm Foxdale smirks. “You’ve never seen mine, Gadget.”

[2010/09/30 00:03]  anna Begonia: you were a slave? *goes nearer to Whreck* how can be that you were takein slave? You are so strong *smiles half shyly half mockingly* why did you not defend yourself?

[2010/09/30 00:03]  gadget Cyberstar: did nay know ye had one

[2010/09/30 00:03]  Relm Foxdale: But then I keep it hidden, for good reason

[2010/09/30 00:04]  Relm Foxdale: When i was with those…people

[2010/09/30 00:04]  gadget Cyberstar: ah

[2010/09/30 00:04]  Whrek Nirvana: I was a boy when I was taken at as a slave, and even now not much I can do to a camp of slavers ta stop em, though I’ve slipt outta theyre grips a few times as of late

[2010/09/30 00:05]  gadget Cyberstar: ye just gotta learn how ta fight right

[2010/09/30 00:05]  anna Begonia: I was told that there are raids sometimes in the village, they catch people, children or girls. Are they slavers?

[2010/09/30 00:05]  gadget Cyberstar: mostly just monsters

[2010/09/30 00:06]  Whrek Nirvana: Wouldnt doubt it, Sparten raiders are pretty notorious fer taken breedin stock, women and girls, athenians well take workers of men

[2010/09/30 00:06]  Relm Foxdale: Well, Gadget, I need to go to bed…it’s been a long day, traveling to Flotsam and back

[2010/09/30 00:06]  gadget Cyberstar: *frowns* alright

[2010/09/30 00:06]  anna Begonia: ah…. other mostners, not the one you have in the village, i guess

[2010/09/30 00:06]  Relm Foxdale: But thanks for dancing with me *smiles*

[2010/09/30 00:06]  gadget Cyberstar: goodnight, relm

[2010/09/30 00:06]  Relm Foxdale: Night

[2010/09/30 00:06]  anna Begonia: good Night lady

The real Virtual World

art gallery (slide)

 

http://slurl.com/secondlife/International%20Schools/29/88/73

Imperium Katama (video)

 

http://imperiumkatana.wordpress.com/

http://slurl.com/secondlife/ImperiuM%20Island/128/128/2

Sant Francis of Assisi (slide)

 

Unlukyly it disappeared in 2010.

http://italianiamo.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/assisi-assolutamente-da-vedere/

http://www.secundavita.com/

having fun… and collaborating with friends

I’ve been appointed stage technick by Gwen Gwasi

That means, that I have a good excuse for doing what I like most in SL: prepare settings.

Here is the result:

The first scene of Gween play (two small pieces of “Baal”, by Bertold Brecht) will take place in a party.  So here I wanted light, opulence, and to give the idea that they are a sort of artist circle of friends.

To keep prims down, the pictures on the wall are… part of the texture. The middle of the room is empty to let some space for the actors to move.

The “prim” will be a little organ. Gwen will buy it for her rapresentation.

The second scene, is in a squallid bar, people are drunk and quarrel. Here the setting is dark, furniture are battered, lights are dim. Here actors will need more space to move, above all in the last scene.

learning by machinima

When Italianiamo came to a stall due to the repetition of the formula and to its limits, I had many things in mind I would have liked to try out.

Among them, the most simple, less technical demanding for learners, was a machinima.

I had no experience in acting, nor in using theatre technique for learning nor in machinima, unless you want to call “experience” a small part I played when I was 6 and some short films I did in SL for documentation or just for fun.

In addition, I had no idea of how the Italianiamo’s participants would react to the idea.

Our activities until then were very little demanding: just drop by and see what is the topic of the day. But this time I was handing over to them the responsibility of almost everything: the thinking of the story and the dialogues, and most important of all: the commitment. A machinima is not something you do in 90 minutes, and the presence of the authors and actors is required in almost all the stages.

For me, I kept the technical part: the preparation of the settings, the summarising of the decision we took and the transcription of the improvised dialogues, the shooting and the editing of the resulting material.

Of course, I was as well a guide and an Italian teacher: helping out with grammar and pronunciation and trying to maintain a sort of balance between the characters, so that each had their moment of glory, as well as pushing them a little when they were stuck in the story.

It is very interesting to be writing this now, while we are starting to work on our second little film. I remember that the first time I had no idea of how to proceed.

We started thinking a story. The first sessions were actually ideas and ideas and ideas and ideas going around, each starting from some other ideas but walking on their own. This first stage is very messy and it is difficult even for me to keep track of all the different stories that sprung up. As well, some are naturally more creative and bolder while others are more shy and reflexive, and if I wanted that the story was really a collective creation, I had to push some while holding back gently others.

From the general outline of the story we got the different character, mostly proposed by those who wanted to embody them. And starting form the characters and the relations between them we went on building the story and the dialogues.

This is the most interesting part, in my opinion, from a language learning point of view: the same vocabulary, sentences and structures come out naturally over and over. Something that was not happening with the old structure of Italianiamo and that I felt it was one of its main limits. And the same vocabulary is used again in the second stage: the creation of the dialogues. Moreover, this time it is also written and repeated. And repeated and repeated.

At first, I thought that each person involved in a dialogue could write in chat what he was saying, but I soon discovered that it did not work. It was unnatural and difficult to them to think quickly their answer and to write it down while they were saying it. They were too focused on the improvisation to be distracted by something as trivial as to take notes.

When I realised it and decided to transcribe myself the dialogues as they were improvising them, we had already lost a wonderful quarrel between the hairdresser and her husband.

There is nothing to do about it: improvisation is improvisation. The first go is always the better, fresher and wittier of all. Then you can polish it, add something here and there, change this and that, but if you try to repeat it, to do it again from what you remember, it will not be the same.

Once we had the transcription of the dialogues, we started rehearsing them. In this phase it was very useful and interesting to have some native speakers among us. This allowed us to work on different dialogues at the same time, since the Italian “actors” could improve pronunciation and help writing down any correction/change.

The final part, the actual shooting, involved also repetition: we usually took at least two takes of the same scene.

But most important of all, we laughed a lot, we enjoyed our time, involved people on the go (like when we needed a barman… everybody was scanning their friend list to look for eligible candidates, sending messages -in Italian, since most of them were native speakers- to see if this person was willing to come and play the barman part), made suggestion on the settings and discussed and solved problems as we spotted them.

I also learnt to machinima, and I have to thanks all the Italianiamo participants for that. Without them this project, our film “il marito della parrucchiera” (the hairdresser’s husband)  and all the resulting learning would not have been possible.

TLVW10: the story of “discovering Italian Renaissance” at Città Ideale




For the second year, Misy Ferraris and I  worked together to prepare an example of didactical use of SL for the Tesol Evo course Teaching Languages in a Virtual World.

As in our last event (about the Italian Carnival ) we decided to focus more on the Italian Culture than on language: most of the people who are taking part to the EVO course are English teacher and we think that it’s much more interesting for them to “live” an activity as student than to sit down and listen to the explanation of how we would or could do this and that. Therefore, if our class was about language, we would be forced to prepare a beginner class… and in my opinion SL is not for beginners: to much work and too little result.

We had spotted a very beautiful land: Città Ideale, and I had been thinking for a while of using it for some activities. Then Italianiamo went on to its second version and my real life got even busier.

This was the perfect occasion to try to use this land for teaching.

First of all, we contacted the owners of the land: Ketty Dagostino and Jo Magic, who where enthusiastic about our idea and offered their help and collaboration from the very start.

Once we had the owner permission… there was no way back. It was time to start thinking about the activity/ies.

I’ve always found that to bring a group to a new Sim in SL is not an easy task. Either you play the “guide” role, leading them and explaining what you see around, or you ask your student to explore the land and report back what they have found. In this latter case, they often tend to look a bit lost, and sometimes stay stuck where they are, and… even worse, they almost don’t speak (the worst thing you can do to a language teacher: keep quiet)

Since I find it extremely boring and useless to go around with a group of avatar and explain them about this and that, I’m always looking for new way to let them explore and use the space they are in for learning.

The best solution, I think, are treasure hunts. So I started thinking about one where people had to go inside some of the beautiful buildings of Città Ideale to find the answer and where each answer would give access to the next clue/question.

I needed a script (as usual   ) but I’m not a scripter   . So I started searching in my inventory, in the scripts wiki… and finally I remembered of http://www.3greeneggs.com/autoscript/!!!

I made the script with just a couple of clicks. It worked wonderfully…  but only with me. I needed a scripter. TZN86 Blinker, the scripter of Città Ideale, came to my rescue. Once I solved the technical part, I could start thinking about the content, and again, thanks to the collaboration of the owners of the land I could have access to a huge amount of information.

The next part was simply to read, write questions, check everything, coordinate with Misy Ferraris and the people of the land, post the notice of the event and… cross fingers.

The result? Of course it can be improved. May be now I would ask less questions and give some indications of where the different buildings are, but on the whole I consider it a success. At least I had great fun observing the participants and giving them some little hints when they were stuck.

I hope they had fun too.

A big thank to everybody that made this event possible: the people who attended it and the people who helped us. As usual, to do something in SL, you need to collaborate and you get to know very nice and generous people

To read about Misy Ferraris part of the game, click here.

My earthly self

Anna Begonia lent my cellular self this space for a short post. It will be short because I’m very busy at the moment, and excited. With a group of colleagues from the Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Barcellona we started a proget: Italismani. It’s still in its early beginning, and we have still a lot to do, but the idea is very good and it will be as well a way to work together and know each other better.

The idea is to create a repository of online exercises and activities that suit our students. We know that there is a huge amount of exercises online, ready to use, but they not always respond to our student needs. In addition, for many of us it will be an occasion to learn to use some useful tools and introduce new technologies in our classes.

The kick off of the project is a short video, the result of the collaboration of teachers and students. We had great fun shooting it, and hope you will enjoy watching it.

On places and people

Lately I was interviewed by two of Cvetka‘s students. It’s becoming a tradition by now, and one I enjoy. Let’s say it, to be interviewed, even if  by a student, always make you feel a bit… a bit more interesting than what you really are. )

The second of my interviewed asked me to bring her to 3 different places I like or find interesting in SL.

[................................... long, embarrassed and embarrassing silence...........................].

Hem hem, I have to confess it: I do not travel too much in SL. Ok, when I read (mostly on SLED) or are told of some new interesting location, I usually go and have a (often quick) look. But lest say it: to jump from one point to the other of the grid after a while is… boring. It’s like being on holiday: everybody likes to do sightseeing, but after a week of churches, museums, monuments and walks in picturesque neighbourhoods, we all would like to have something better to do.

The places I like most are… the places where I do something interesting or where I meet interesting people. And what I like most is making interesting things with interesting people, without caring about the surroundings landscape (whose feature I appreciate  most is: low lag).

I enjoy the Edunation community and love its sandbox (a sort of meeting point for all its residents), I like to meet with the members of Slexperiment, I love to get involved with the versatile Pyramid group and to participate in their many events (the last of with, a conference with Mario Gerosa on the 14th of  December 2009), or to keep in touch with my ex-schoolmates (he he… this word make me feel so young!) of the Muvenation course and to share opinions and help each other. And I enjoy building, learning, having concrete, tangible projects with other people I like and admire.

Therefore, I brought the student who asked me about interesting places to the Second Life Italia community land, where she can meet Italians and chat with them, and to the Indire sandbox, where …. she can meet Italians and chat with them.

I do not know why, I had the impression that she was not very impressed by it… but she is young, she will learn

On camera controls and field trips

Camera controls, I think, are the best invention in SL: we all love them and use a them a lot, either to look closer at a picture or a text, or move around without having to keep pressing the keyboard arrow to walk (and admit it, also to spy on our neighbours   )

Yet, they are the worst enemies of collaboration and communication in SL.

Let’s see why. Imagine we are in Real Life. We go together to visit an art gallery, a museum or a nice building as a part of a learning activity. We get in, and since our teacher knows that not everybody has the same pace or interest when visiting such places, he tells us that we have 30 minutes to have a look around. To make the visit more interesting he can ask us to chose one piece of art we like and to be prepared talk about it to the group later, or if a guided visit is planned, to start thinking about possible questions we would like to ask to our guide.

People start moving around and it’s very probable that small groups will form. Since we are social animals, it’s very likely that some discussion or interchange of information and opinion will start while the small groups move around the gallery or museum. There is communication, then, and collaborative thinking since what the people beside me are telling will somehow produce a reaction in me: make me notice a detail I did not see at first or make me think about something I was not aware of at the beginning.

The teacher, on his part, will see what we are concentrating our attention on at each moment, and may be could go from one group to the other, to encourage or participate in the debate and may be add here and there a piece of information, thus stimulating further the conversation among the students and avoiding to “lecture” his students.

Let’s see now the same situation in SL. The teacher and the group walk inside the gallery, museum or whatever. The teacher ask the students to look at the art pieces and chose one they like in order to talk about it to their classmates or to ask questions about it to the teacher/guide who will explain something later about the artist/place.

Everybody stay stuck where they are and start moving around with camera controls. Nobody knows what the others are looking at nor where they stop because something struck their eyes. No spontaneous communication is possible. Although we are all in the same space, there is not “shared space”, since the space we feel we are in is it delimited by what our eyes see, and we are all seeing different things, ignoring where the others “are” at the moment.

As the silence starts to be heavy the teacher, who don’t see them moving, does not know if people did understand the task. He cannot intervene to encourage discussion or to add some little pieces of information and he is strongly tempted to break the silence by filling it, lecturing the students…. But this was not the aim of the activity he had planned. His encouragement to move around and look at things are seldom followed, because students are actually “moving around” with their camera controls, so they do not see why the teacher is asking them to do what they are already doing.

The solution could be:

a)      to abolish camera controls   …..impossible in SL

b)      go all together around the place and stop all together in front of different art pieces. It works, but it tends to be more teacher leaded than what we would like, and less student centred than what we aspired to. As well, since when Mr. teacher is present we all aspect him to “do things” and not us, the conversation lead (and load) will often fall on him.

This is what I learned while organising art exhibition in 2008, and what remembered when visiting an art gallery in 2009, where we visited in group the gallery and I asked in turn the students to chose an art piece and to discuss it together.

Yet, I do not know how and why, I forgot it completely when carrying out our visit to the Assisi Cathedral, where everybody just stood at the back of the church and nobody really knew what was going on. Since I’m still hitting on my head with a pan for my mistake, I decided to write it down, to learn a lesson and to remember it, and hoping that my experience will be somehow useful to other teachers who are planning similar things.

Pyramidoodle, the kick off of a new project

Clicca sull'immagine per vedere le altre foto di Fiona

On Thursday I was invited by the Italian group Pyramidoodle, hosted on the beautiful Solaris Island, to present a little thing I prepared for my Italianiamo activities and share with them the experience and some reflections.

Pyramidoodle is one of the multiple expression of the Pyramid Cafè group and its aim is to encourage the use of 3D and virtual environments (Second Life, OpenSim among others) to help organisations, groups and educators to meet and share their knowledge in an informal and playful way.

I’m very glad to have had the chance to see them in action from behind the scenes because they gave me a lesson on how to organise an event.

In my, by now rather long life in SL (I will be 3 on the 11^th of November) I’ve never took part to anything so well organised (and it is to be said that I worked for almost a year for one of the biggest language school in SL).

Beside being connected in streaming to multiple places in SL, we were streamed as well in Opensim. Nothing was left to chance: each member of the organisation team had a defined role: Fiona was taking photos, Crisma was recording the event, Junta was typing what was being said for those who could not hear it while Zogia, Salazhar and Magicflute were introducing the project of Pyramidoodle and the event itself.

A part some little technical problems (what would be the fun in SL if one knew that everything will work perfectly?) due to the number of avatars participating, the event went on pretty also thanks to the collaboration of all the attendees.

The closing of the evening with small talk and playful improvisations was particularly pleasant and gave us the chance to know each other a bit more.

If you have time (it’s quite long) you can see here the video shooted by Crisma.