Teaching with Digital Technology

Escape in Digiworldz is a new creation of James Abrahams who owns Mi Casa in SL. The sim is so incredible because it is the modern version of Mi Casa meaning that it has more interactive tasks for students to do without teachers.I had to visit the sim many times to get an idea of all the possibilities a teacher has for teaching Spanish in the sim. First of all I love the people in the square (bots), they may look like decoration, but they are interactive and help students practice small talk, then the people sitting in the café help students review the verbs and the tenses while they sit there and enjoy the Mexican atmosphere and surroundings.

Kitely is a 3D world that needs donations, it runs with the money people pay monthly for their plots. There are lots of private plots where only registered people can enter, that is why it is so popular with primary and secondary schools, but also with private schools like the one I am going to tell you about. 

Today I am going to talk about a beautiful island called Edutopia whose owner, Barbara McQueen, is known as "The Games Queen" amongst her friends and neighbours in Second Life.

One of my recent visits to Kitely World, where many schools have private sims, led me to a public sim dedicated to the famous Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen.

The medieval town has rivers, mountains, lakes, castles, a market, huts, cabins, a wind mill, an old house, carts, ships, animals, a pub and a shop where you can get the figures that are spread around the sim and a few other articles for free.

Mi Casa is a very special sim to learn Spanish in a totally immersive environment. It was created by Calisto Encinal for his students, people who visit the sim are astonished by all the learning activities they find. I think it is the best language learning sim I have ever visited.

Vasili Giannoutsos spoke about Networking and Exhibitions at VSTE Virginia's Society of Technology and Education in my last mooc. Exhibitions and networking in Sl are an important part of education too, people learn there to value the meaning of cooperating and doing projects with colleagues around the world.