Teaching Speaking in Second Life

For me, one of the main blocks to really developing online language learning courses has been the inability to supply real communicative speaking practice. VOIP software like Skype has certainly pushed the bounds of what is possible, as has the development of more effective web based video conferencing platforms, but in my opinion the biggest step towards making this possible has been the developments made in virtual worlds like There.com and Second Life which not only enable the use of voice, but can also help students to develop an understanding gesture and spatial relationships while speaking.

For anyone interested in giving it a try, here are four basic tutorial videos to help you get started with how voice works in Second Life and how you can use it for pair and group work.

Setting up voice
This video shows you how to activate the voice client and make sure that the quality of your sound is good. It also shows you how to select the correct input and output devices for sound in case you are having any problems.



Using the active speaker window
This video shows you how to find and use the active speaker window. This enables you to find out who is within 'voice range' of you, as well as enabling you to balance out the volume of the voices around you and even to mute other speakers if you just want to listen in to one person.



Using 'IM Call' for pair and group work
If you have large groups of students all in close proximity to each other, running activities like pair or group work can be chaotic as everyone hears what everyone else is saying. This video shows you how to use the 'IM Call' feature to put the students into pairs or groups, so that they only hear the people they are working with. Then you as the teacher can move between the groups monitoring, without having to hear the whole class all at once.



Balancing out relative volumes
Second Life has a lot of different sound sources, such as the ambient sound of trees and water around you, the sounds of gestures, background music, media players and th voices of people speaking. This video shows you how to balance out the sounds and turn off the ones you don't want to hear.



I would be really interested to hear comments from anyone who has used Video conferencing and or Second Life. Which do you prefer?

If you are new to or haven't tried Second Life yet, then I hope you find these videos useful and they encourage you to try it out. The videos were originally commissioned by The Consultants-E and are part of an introductory course for teachers they deliver on Edunation Island II and are used with their kind consent.

Best
Nik Peachey

My other postings on Second Life and virtual worlds

• Materials design for Virtual Worlds
• Teaching English in Second Life
• Second Life Teacher Training Videos
• Looking at There.com
• Machinima with Moviestorm
• 3B Village 3D browser

Visit my YouTube Channel to watch more of my videos
http://youtube.com/NikPeachey

Skype Part 2 Online Workspace

Anyone who uses their whiteboard for ELT / EFL classes will know what a really useful teaching aid it can be, so how about using one with your distance learners?

In Part 1 of this series on Skype plugins, I looked at how and where to find and install plugins for Skype and I also looked at how to use Pamela to record audio materials and interviews with Skype.

In this posting I'd like to have a look at an online collaboration tool called Yugma which allows you to share files, share your desktop, make live presentations and have a shared online whiteboard all running along side your Skype application.

This quick tutorial takes you through some of the basic features.


You can download a version for your computer in Quick Time here.
Or
Open the tutorial in a new window here.

How to use this with ELT / EFL students
Well I think this is definitely a distance learning support tool rather than some thing to use in the classroom / multi media lab with students. It could be ideal for teacher who wants to teach online 1 to 1 especially if you are doing this independently and don't have the support of a company to provide you with specialist software. I think it's also a pretty useful tool for teacher training and development if you have groups of teachers spread around the country or the world even.

• You can show students how to use specific software for their course and talk them through the various processes.
• You can show students around websites and use them as the basis for online discussion
• You can share documents with your students and get them to work on them collaboratively
• Students can share projects they have been working on with other group members
• You can play games online such as Pictionary (a game where one player draws a picture and the others have to guess the word it represents)
• You can share notes as you deliver presentations
• You can record presentations and reuse them
• You can set up a whole programme of different online business simulations such as
• Presenting information about a company
• Presenting a sales report of the results of survey findings
• Students try to sell a fictional product to investors (your other students would be the investors)
• Carrying out online interviews, with students presenting and talking about their CVs

• The ability to record these presentations would make it much easier for your students to review them and for you to offer feedback on their work.

What I like about Yugma

• As tools like this become a more widely used and accepted part of international business, developing the ability to use such tools is going to become a valuable 'real life' skill.
• It's free (at least some parts are) and quite easy and quick to install and use.
• I really like that you can record your meetings to watch later etc.
• Great that this integrates with Skype
• It seems to offer a pretty comprehensive package of functions

What I wasn't so sure about

• Some of the functionality is limited after the first 15 days, unless you choose to pay for an account.
• You have to be sure that your firewall / anti-virus doesn't block it, so if you have any problems getting it started, then that's the first thing to check.
• You'll also need to get your students to download and install it.

Well I hope you find this tool useful. As I said, this is really one for the distance / online tutor and I'd love to hear from anyone who has tried it out with their students.

Best

Nik Peachey

Skype Part 1 Recording Audio

This is the first in what is going to be a series of postings looking at Skype and the range of plugins freely available for it and how these can be used for teaching languages and creating ELT materials.

As most people know, Skype is a freely available VOIP program which allows users to make computer to computer 'telephone calls' for free. What many people don't know is that there is also a huge range of 'plugins' available for Skype which expand and enhance its functionality and turn it into an even more useful tool for teaching and learning.

This first video shows how you find and install these extra plugins and focuses on one in particular (Pamela) which helps you to record your Skype calls.

Click the play button and turn up your sound

I hope you can see how easy it is to start installing and expanding the functionality of Skype.

Having this ability to record calls really helps as us language teachers and as materials creators to get a lot more out of this free program.

Watch the movie tutorial to see how to start recording your calls.

Click the play button and turn up your sound

So how do we use this with our students

• This is great if you are doing any business training or training students involved in Call centres or customer services where the phone is a major means of interaction with customers. You can set up telephone role plays record them and give your students feedback on their performance.
• You can record example / model phone calls for them and get them to listen and analyse how well the callers performed.
• With general ELT / EFL students you can also set up a range of telephone role plays and record them (These could be job interviews, ringing about renting a flat, booking a hire car etc.) There are a whole range of real world tasks for which we need to use the phone for and giving your students the ability to try these scenarios out and then listen back and evaluate their own performance can be very empowering.
• You could record some dialogues or interviews with friends or fellow teachers for students to listen to.
• Students could interview each other and record and create their own tasks for each other.
• You could ask students to use Skype for collaborative work (group conferencing is possible) and record their meetings for you to give them feedback on.

What I like about it

• Pamela is free, easy to use and records audio to Mp3 format which can easily be edited or imported and used in other multimedia projects.
• The Mp3s can also be used on i-pods or other mobile devices
• The plugin is easy to configure and quick to download
• Using voice only for communication with no visual cues from facial expression or body movement is very challenging for language learners, so this is a great way to practice and perfect this.
  

What to be careful about

• You can only record up to 15 mins on the free version, but that should be enough for most purposes.
• Never record people without their knowledge, it's actually illegal in some countries
• Both Skype and Pamela need to be downloaded and installed, so if you are working with computers in your school, then you might need to persuade a few people before they allow you to do this.
• Make sure that if students are using their own Skype user names and accounts that they are careful about who they share these with, as Skype does attract some nuisance callers.

I hope you find this a useful addition to your teaching toolkit. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who is already using these tools, and especially if anyone is using other Skype plugins to record or extent their Skype functionality.

Best

Nik