2 machinema project from the facilitator and the learner point of view

In October Gizmo and me presented in the Slanguages Conference some reflection on our experience with the machinema projects of Italianiamo from the point of view of the facilitator (me) and the learner (Gizmo).

For me, to sit down with one of my learner and to examine what we did and achieved (or not achieved) together was a very enriching and interesting experience.

The presentation itself… well, was as well a good learing experience . I’ve learned that I really have problems with slides (this time was lag, i was unable to see almost anything and to move, so it was impossible for me to show the slides that illustrated our talk) and that it’s better for me not to give presenatation in English: my level is not enough to feel confortable speaking in front of people, even if they are only avatar.

You can check yourself here, if you do not believe me

or if you prefer, you can read the text that we prepared.

Anna: Hi everybody and thank you for coming. The title of this presentation is Learning by machinima: reflection on pros and cons and we will analyse, from the point of view of the facilitator and of the participant, our experience with an Italian learning activity that involved making a short film in SL, a machinema.
But let’s first introduce ourselves.

Gizmo: I’m Gizmo, In RL I teach Spanish in Adult learning centres in the South  of England. In SL I am 3 years old and have been trying to improve my Italian in SL for probably about half that time. I have attended all three stages of Anna’s Italianiamo project.

Anna: I teach Italian in RL at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in SL and at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya. In SL, I’m almost 4 years old, and I explore the possibilities that this tool offers for informal learning of languages.

Italianiamo, is an Italian informal learning project for learners of level A2 onwards. It started as weekly, stand alone activities. I used the SL environment to stimulate learners oral production. I used this formula for almost a year, trying different variations, and I learnt a lot from it.

I also saw that, the typical SL language learner, that is the learner you already find in SL (not the students you can bring in virtual worlds yourself) is a sort of a casual learner, more interested in communication than in accuracy (At least  this was what I observed with the my Italian learners in SL). It’s someone who comes to the language activity, participate with enthusiasm and interest, but is not going to study or work on his own afterwards. Therefore I felt that this approach was not the best one because it did not offer the occasion to repeat, in a natural way, the expressions, vocabulary and structures seen in the previous activities.

So I wanted to try something new, to try to focus on accuracy as well, without making a “class”.

I finished Italianiamo first phase and invited people who usually came to italianiamo to participate in a new project, if they felt like: to make a short film together.
Of all the things I wanted to try in SL, this was the easiest from the point of view of the learner: it did not require any technical skill from their part. But it required commitment. It was not anymore something you drop into when you feel like chatting in Italian. It was a project and for projects you need a group.

There were 3 people who came regularly to the first Italianiamo, and other who came from time to time, some more other less often. Italianiamo, being an activity open to everyone, also included native speakers who participated in our activities. 3 people came to the 1st meeting of Italianiamo-the movie: Gizmo Karelia and Paloma. One week later arrived Lluis and a native speaker, Marino.
Let’s look at the composition of this group, because it will be important to understand many things later.

Gizmo: yes, Karelia , Lluis and I were good friends, did other things together in SL, and had a strong interest in improving their oral Italian. Marino was developing a strong friendship with Karelia and me. Paloma came quite regularly for a couple of months, then would disappear,  for work reasons, then turn up again for another couple of months. But basically, most of  the participants in the first film were regular and committed attendees who had also been through the first stage of Italianiamo together.
When we say committed , what I mean was committed to the group. Some of us, myself included, are learning Italian in order to keep up conversationally with Italian friends. I can’t pretend that I do homework or serious study of the language – but the first stage activities of Italianiamo gave me a kick start to where I am now, when I speak Italian nearly every day with friends that I  have made on SL.

The whys and the wherefores

Anna: the idea underlying italianiamo-the movie was… to make them talk again and again about the same topic without boring them. The film was an excuse, a little trick, the purpose for doing everything in the middle. I wanted them to use and reuse the same vocabulary, structures, sentences, but in a natural way. And I wanted to be able to work on pronunciation too.  And I wanted them to be actively involved in the project in all its phases: it had to be their film, they had to feel they had the complete control of it. I was the one taking care of all the technical, difficult bits, like the settings, organising how to work, and the actual filming and editing

Deciding the story

Gizmo: We started to decide what  the central topic was going to be, brainstorming ideas and discussing them, and we decided the story would take place in an hairdresser’s shop. The ideas were quite simple, nothing too deep, with well worn themes and some good action in the end.

Anna: We started choosing a broad subject and a setting. The participants decided who they wanted to be in the story. I help them thinking up their character, made them reflect on the relationship with the other characters, how they felt etc, just to get them in their roles.
Only then, starting from the relationship between characters, we created a plot.
This part was a creative mess. Many idea sprung up, many were discarded, we were naturally forced to summarise again and again our story. You see? Repetition, same vocabulary coming up again and again, same structures… but without getting bored or feeling that they were “repeating it”.
My role here was to put some order, to keep them on track, to avoid changing the story over and over again, give little pushes form time to time when they got stuck.

Gizmo: the story in a nutshell is that the hairdresser, the character Alessandro,  has been having an affair with a client , Venus.  They have been planning to start a new life together when Alessandro gets cold feet when Venus tries to push him to act.  There is a big argument with his wife, Venus is enraged and tries to steal Alessandro’s savings but is stopped in her tracks by an all seeing black cat  who also speaks Italian.

Dialogues

Anna: Once the plot was finished and we had it written, we could start with the dialogues. I first thought that everybody could prepare simultaneously their dialogues, improvising them, and then we would write them down, correcting the language when needed, so that they had their script.
But i saw immediately that it did not work. if you have been studying a foreign language you will have noticed it. When the teacher asks you to prepare a dialogue, improvising, and then present it to the class, the “original” one, the one you are improvising, is always better, more spontaneous, witty, fresh, that the one you are representing in front of the class.
This is because to us, to the people representing it, that dialogue, it’s not so meaningful anymore. I mean, when we talk to someone, we react to what he/she says. We do not know beforehand what this person will say.

So we had to work in another way: I had to write down what they said when they were saying it, the first time.
At the end, I copied everything on a notecard, read it again, corrected grammar mistakes and some vocabulary, but trying to change as little as possible of their language. If some sentence was not clear, we discussed it, I made some proposal, but they always had the last word. Above all, they had to feel comfortable reading it. the language had to be their level. It was them who spoke, not me.

The notecard then was given to the people involved in the scene . they read it again, loud, acting the scene. Here we corrected pronunciation and made little changes when necessary.

Gizmo: I’d like to talk about  my experience of creating my part in the story . It was easy for me to invent the character of a speaking cat as I am a great cat lover anyway. In our story the cat introduces the other characters with a monologue, and later has a dialogue with Andrea, played by Marino. This dialogue influenced later parts of the story because of material that came up and was taken up later. The monologue came to me fairly quickly and was then written down by Anna. The dialogue was a joint effort between Marino and me. We created it whilst Anna was recording another part of the story. So bits of the story were developing independently and we had to edit some details later so that the story flowed and made sense. In the dialogue Marino did suggest a few of the Italian phrases I used, but  it was a good dialogue exercise because we were really trying to invent something new, add a new twist to the story, not just put together a collection of phrases. We then acted it out again for Anna, who transcribed it, and did 3 or 4 takes for the final filming. Even after a few times of repeating it it was still enjoyable to do.

Gizmo preparing her monologue

Anna: For me, to have a native speaker with me (Marino) was an help. Let me say that I had to “educate” him a bit, since he is not teacher, and he is italian (Italians love to speak). They like to speak a lot… because it’s natural and easy for them, and for non native speakers it can be difficult to understand everything and to participate in a conversation with a native speaker. Or for instance, in dialogue, they tend to suggest too much, try to put their words into the learners mouth, because of course their Italian is stylistically better.
But having another native speaker who could help a couple rehearsing their dialogue was wonderful, a big help.
Of course it was not everything went smoothly. We had problems. Let’s see them.

• I was the only Italian person who typed quick enough to transcribe dialogues. So when I was writing what a couple said, the others often had nothing to do.
• Paloma disappeared without notice, and we had to find someone who substituted her. Luckily my colleague Cvetcka Nackt convinced one of her student to participate.
• The day we had to shoot the scene in a bar our barman could not come. So we were stuck. But in this case, the difficulty gave us the opportunity of practicing some more Italian: everybody was scanning his/her friend list looking for Italian speaking people (often native speakers) who could come to help. They had to wrote many IM in Italian before we found someone who agreed on being our barman.

Cvetkca "lent" us a student

The whole process took quite a long time: we started at the beginning of December and the “premiere” was at the beginning of March, but we were proud of our work, we were proud of having overcome the various difficulties, and to have a little film to show to our friends.
Because of it, we decided then to go for a second one.

This time we decided to use a real SL setting, and Alice Mastroianni offered WDT planet, a wonderful Italian Sim.

WDT Planet

 

Let’s see who were the people in the group this time
Gizmo, Karelia, Marino, Claudio, Grinta.

Then Claudio and Grinta got some misunderstanding SL and Grinta stopped coming. And Gwen Arrived.

Then Marino fell in love in RL and he disappeared (and we understood it) but we had to look for a substitute. And Bea arrived.

Later on Donatuccio and Kalyan arrived, Donatuccio disappeared, Bernard arrived and Bea disappeared.

Gizmo: the story line that we first mooted was about Greek gods who turn out to be the opposite from what one would think , like the huntress Diana becoming a vegetarian. However as more participants joined us after the start , the plot turned out to be too complicated because a greater number of contributors wanted their say  and other story lines became added.   Indeed it was difficult to remember what the plot was and perhaps that put off some people from returning.

There was fairly frequent change in the composition of the group with some avatars from the first film leaving the group  or not turning up for the rehearsals and then the arrival of some competent speakers with many  new ideas.

Some participants who were near beginners, joined relatively late on in the process of the ‘script writing’. It was difficult to cope with this as a group when we also had native speakers who could sometimes introduce idioms which were unknown to us or a few who would come along for the camaraderie but did not want to take part in the film. That said, I did like the mixture of  both learners and native speakers in the group . They were mostly friends of Gizmo and Karelia anyway! Perhaps there was the need for firmer boundaries, but in the SL environment that is difficult.

And…Was there ever a title? The first film had a title which encapsulated the main point.

Anna: You are right Gizmo, but every time I tried to discuss the possible title, the conversation went somewhere else….(sigh)
With all this coming and going of people, I was starting to feel that it was impossible to introduce ourselves, explain the story, how we worked, to the newcomers as I would have liked to.
On the one hand, to work together you have to create bonds among people, and people to collaborate in something so complex, have to feel commitment towards the group. They as well need to understand what is involved in participating in this kind of activities, and decide if they want to join in or not. They also have to understand how everything works, and why it works in this way.
On the other hand, I could not ask people who were in the project from the start to introduce themselves each time, to repeat the story we had thought of, to change it to let the newcomers participate, or to try to find a substitute for those who disappeared and where playing a central role. And do it over and over again.

We started at the end of March and at end of July I had to admit that we were stuck. So I decided to finish it.

Gizmo: Personally I felt a bit disappointed at the sudden ending of the project, which was done unilaterally, without discussion. If people start something together it is better to end it together whatever the ending might be. This brings the process to a cleaner end and allows everyone to reflect on the process and extract the learning points for themselves. Anna probably got fed up with the whole thing in the end, but I do think she can sometimes be quite impetuous ( well she is Italian!!!)

Anna: yes, it was like finishing a love affair with a sms. You are right.

After a couple of months of reflection, we want to share with you we learnt

• In the first italianiamo-the movie we had a group, people knew each other and had had time to develop bonds.

comparing the two groups

In the second Italianiamo-the movie, the group started with some bonds, but then due to RL issue, new inclusions and drop off, we did not have a group anymore.

• In the first italianiamo-the movie I knew well my people, how they are, who is more shy, who is more dominant, and had my trick to balance the situation. In the second italianiamo-the movie sometimes I did not even had time to understand the language level of each newcomer, and I lost control of the situation, above all with native speakers who tended to monopolise the conversation.

• In the first italianiamo-the movie, almost everybody had time to understand the process, and many, being themselves language teachers, understood as well why I was doing it this way.

• In the fist italianiamo-the movie, we all knew it was an experiment, and we all knew it was risky and difficult, but wanted to give a try, because if it worked, it was going to be great.

In the second italianiamo-the movie, many came because saw the result, the movie we proudly showed in our premiere, other just to practice Italian, other just for curiosity.
Since they did not live the fist experience, where we all learnt together how to do it (me included, I’d never done anything similar in my life) and since we did not spend much time with each new comer explaining it  they did not get it. Many, for instance, did not understand why we spent so much time talking about the character and the relations among characters. They would have preferred to have me telling them, deciding for them. But if they have to create a story and above all play their character, this is a fundamental step.
However, there were some good learning moments and some unique moments. I will explain just one. Gwen Gwasi, who had to try to play aloud her monologue, said “i will stand up to say it”. And we all were expecting her avatar to stand. But not, her avatar stayed sit. The one standing was Gwen, in RL. She was so involved in what she was doing, that she needed to stand up in RL to say her monologue.

Gizmo: now a few memories of mine

• As the character of  Diana the huntress, I spent a lot of time  shooting rabbits which I had rezzed and cloned, with a bow and arrow , whilst others were going through their scenes.
• And  Karelia as Juno having to change her avatar shape to become more Juno-esque ( that is,  curvy and well endowed).
• And i won’t forget the verb bisbigliare  to whisper .- Claudio often had to speak in a whisper because he was online when members of his family were asleep.. Claudio bisbiglia…

• Anna: to conclude, some advice to those who want to try this out themselves:

• It’s a very exciting, satisfying learning experience. But to be successful it has to be done with people who know each other quite well.
• Keep the group small, be sure they understand what is involved in the task and ask commitment from the start.
• If you can, try to involve native speakers, but remember that you will have to restrain them from talking too much.
• Don’t be afraid of learning yourself
• Be ready to become a builder (but you can find many ready to use settings and things), a personal shopper, a location finder, a film director and of course, a machinima maker and editor and many other things. Your task is to make their task easier, to that their only concern will be the language.

And enjoy the process, because the film, the result, it’s only and excuse. It’s all the other part that’s important.

Gizmo …….Well, Ok the second film didn’t ever come to light – but the result of the different stages of Italianiamo was that some of us have been enthused to take our learning and develop it outside the virtual environment in forming real friendships  with people from different parts of Italy. That must be encouraging for any language teacher!

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.

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.

testing builder buddy

How came that Anna gave a workshop on prims, textures, scripts, all bundled together

Warning: this is a long post. Danger of extreme boredom

Introduction:

Once upon a time there was a little and young avatar called Anna Begonia. She was in her early twos, and like all young and inexperienced avatars, she thought she was “old” and “experienced”.

One day a white fairy-avatar appeared by teleport in front of her and said: “Anna, We, the Muvenationers, have a mission for you”.

Anna had heard of the Muvenationers and knew that they were a big international guild of Educators, so she waited a bit nervously to hear what her mission was.

The white majestic fairy avatar said: “You have to prepare a workshop, a hand-on workshop” and teleported away.

“A hand-on workshop? What the hell is it?” – Anna Begonia used sometimes very strong expressions, but we have to be indulgent since she was rezzed from simple, anonymous pixels and never knew what a avatar-father and an avatar-mother are, poor thing.

She then noticed that the white fairy-avatar left a “link”, a magic object that gives you information if you click on it. She clicked, and after some deciphering and turning around in the cyberspace she came up with the information she wanted: instructions!

Following instructions she started to explore the wide territory she was living in, also called The Metaverso, looking for Workshops: she had to understand what was a workshop to be able to deliver one.

In her wandering she learnt that:

1)workshops are something where sometimes a person called “instructor” does not show up,

2)that they can be cancelled at the last moment with strange excuses,

3) that they can be places where everybody is sitting down and one person is standing in front.

She also noticed that usually your view is blurred by a huge amount of green text, able to hide half of your screen in few seconds and that sometimes, for some mysterious reasons, avatars sitting around are popping out. This phenomenon increases with time and with the difficulty of the workshop.

Now, after much observing, she was ready to carry out her mission: to organise a workshop herself.

She had to admit to herself that the task the fairy-avatar gave her was not an easy one and that she needed to reflect and look inside her pixelmind to find out what she wanted to do and what, of what she knew, she could pass on to others.

To do so she retired on a very high, isolated and bare square: her skybox. There she searched, she searched deep inside herselfand, why should she deny it, also in her inventory.

After many hesitations and change of mind she decided that she was going to lead a group of adventurous Muvenatoners on the path of “Texturise-Link-add-Script”, a path she was familiar with and found very useful indeed. Along it she had organised more than one activity or event. In addition, to her it seemed an easy walk for all ages : there was no prim twisting or script climbing and she was quite confident that she could lead all the fellow avatars of the Educators Guild without too much danger.

But as we all know, if youngster avatar think the know all when they know nothing, half experienced avatars, as Anna was, think that all they do is pretty easy and that everybody can do the same.

We will see later the consequences of her ill judgement. Let’s focus now what actions she took to prepare for this perilous trip.

First of all she thought on the disposition of things and people: what was the right distance to avoid avatars stepping on each other feet and at the same time keep the group unite; how to be sure that everybody could see what she did in the difficult parts and follow her example.

Then she turned to some magic, usually known as scripts,to prepare an enchanted rope of green words able to lead everybody on the same direction and some large projecting images to give visual instructions and aid to those who were less used to walk on uneven surfaces.

She went along the path infinite times to be sure to remembered all the twists and turns of it and that no dangers or wild animal was waiting for them hidden inside the prim-forest.

At last the big day arrived and she thought she was ready.

Avatars start appearing: greetings, chit-chatting, the usual. She send out a last telepatIM, and then they started. Everybody positioned in its place, ready to listen to instructions. Anna wasn’t very nervous. She had prepared but she knew by experience that the result will not be as she had planned. It never is.

She began pressing the magic green words producer and the Muvenationers started to follow the thread. Yet very she noticed some flairs in the words thread and she tried to stick here and there some blue words to keep it flowing.

In addition the path, that when alone seemed easy and even, revealed all its difficulties. More than once the group had to stop to wait for those who could not keep the pace. The better trained were getting nervous while those who hadn’t much practice in the healthy sport of building looked sweaty, tired and confused.

Time was passing. She knew she had to hurry up: the worst enemy of all Metaverse residents, Real Life, was outside there, hidden in the woods, ready to strike.

She could already hear her whisper: “Stop struggling with edit windows and textures tabs! What for? You can be free: just pretend to crash. Come, come back to me. Crash and you will be free.”

She had to go on, uncaring of those who were every time further behind. As she pressed the pace she saw them falling, leaving around heaps prims and shattered textures dripping unused scripts.

Now the party was formed by only a few brave Educators, some deeply wounded, with only half the prims needed, others tired but in better conditions. But only one, it was evident now, would been able to fulfil the task.

… * …

Anna Begonia asked me for feedback and my opinion, and here I’m, reflecting on what I observed from the other side of the screen. Ah! I always forget to introduce myself: I’m the other half of Anna’s brain, or soul, call it as you want.

First of all I have to reassure you: Anna is ok, this little defeat is nothing compared to some other big Waterloos she went through.

The mistake, both in past occasions and now again, is always the same: expect that everybody knows what one knows and don’t obey to the first law of wise organisation: keep it simple.

The trail she choose was not a Sunday walk, there were too many different skills involved, each of which is an occasion for someone to get stuck.

The mistake/s in the Speakeasy notecard helped as well. She’s still wondering how it could have happened: she read it many times but one can never check too much instructions.

In any case, let’s be positive! One avatar managed to do it and we are satisfied with that by now.

summarising my workshop

many dead avatars on my soul! Well, thanks everybody for being my laboratory animal for a while. You showed endurance, patience, strengh and skills.

I’m trully sorry that so many were lost on the sandbox field, and I feel deeply responsible for it. ;o)

You can take your revenge on me whenever you want!

The workshop from the point of view of the instructor

Carolrb Roux Stackable cubes experiment at Muvenation

STARRING: Carolrb Roux  – Samu Lorenfield -PeterGeorge Slade -Lju Lupindo -Evelyn Michalski -Danic Magic -Daffodil Fargis -Daf Smirnov -Misy Ferraris -Gizmo Latte -Cvetka Nacht -CorDeRosa Loire -Astra Marian – Antanc Aabye -Anna begonia -Alpha Lorgsval -Narci Shan -Gloriagdiago Galicia -Evelyn Michalski -Wonderalica Alturas

And some I forgot to write down ;o)

Yesterday Carol came to Muvenation to show us her  stackable cubes. An experiment, or better said,  a performance all muvenationers were invited to, and who had a good participation in SL terms.

Carol is an old friend of mine in SL. She’s an educator and a scripter, and she does wonderful things, many educational (she did more than one tool for Daf Smirnov) others more ludic.

This time, beside the letter cubes she brought us as well a modifiable pannel of one single prim that can host 100 different sounds, each linked to a specific spot of its surface. And the fact that she gave it out with mod perms says much of her generosity.

The idea came from the discussion Carol and me had recently on wether this tool was easy or difficult to use. I tried to use something similar with a student of mine and… well, we had some tecnical problems, and end up doing without the verbs textures on prims I had prepared.

The questions we were asking ourself were:

a) is it easy to use for the average of avatars, indipendetly from his/her skills?

b) would people enjoy using it?

c) can they be used to stimulate discussion or collaborative activities?

I’m very intersted in collaboration in  SL. Language learning today is more the result of team work than the effort of solitary students. And collaborate in SL is not so easy as it would seem at first sight. I had the chance to experiment it first hand in the almost 6 months that I offered mysefl as a laboratory animal for language teachers.

In this experiment with Carol’s letter cubes,  I think that the real collaboration was the spontaneous trasformation of the space we had around. The moving and spreading of coloured prims all around, the writing of words, the possible, casual or wanted, dialogue between words and shapes people were creating.

My only regret is that I could not put a fixed camara in a corner to record the dismatling and scattering of the original letter cube piles Carol prepared for us. Playing it with the right speed would have shown a very beautiful collective coreography.

But putting aside my visual side, there is still a question I would like to ask to those who took part to the experiment:

Did you worked alone or did you work in little groups? And if you worked alone, did you feel that you would have worked well with other people (may be if you knew them a bit better…)using this tool?

Did you get any idea of possible educative aplication of this took (being it with letters on the cube sides or with other shapes and elements) in you field?

And to finish I would like to thanks Carol on behalf of all Muvenation, for giving us this possibility and for her wonderful work. Her explanation are simle and clear and her disponibility and care is amazing.  And thanks to all the Muvenationers who came and played with us.