I was familiar with the SL games since my childhood. They
were very interesting but I was not among the kids who were addicted to these
games and it indeed became their second lives.
When I heard from my professor that SL can be applied in an
EFL and gerenally in any class, I was impressed. I thought “what an interesting
and creative way to organize classes”. As
Cynthia M Calongne mentions in her article with SL you can organize a lesson in a beach
or in a forest. Another advantage of a SL can be the fact that SL games are a “mix
of media-rich course materials”. The students that have missed a class can go
back and learn the content they missed. Exams are places where the students
have to give solutions to problems. (http://moodle.aua.am/file.php/28/Course_Materials/Virtual_World_/VirtualWorlds_Calogne_2008.pdf).
However, in spite of all the above mentioned advantages, I
don’t think they can be used in an Amrneian EFL classroom successfully.
Firstly, this not a very safe space(http://moodle.aua.am/file.php/28/Course_Materials/Virtual_World_/VirtualWorlds_InterviewWelch_2008.pdf).
When teacher assigns homework he/she should be sure that the content is appropriate
to the students’ age and is safe. In the SL it is not safe in a way that the
students can go beyond the assigned material and see different avatars doing inappropriate
things. Secondly, I don’t like this second life thing at all. If we have our
existing life, why do we need to go beyond and find a second life. Yes, I
agree, sometime it is very fun to imagine that you are a different person,
living in a totally different place, however I think that this may make our
students to be afraid of the obstacles they meet in their own lives. I mean
they may think “if you don’t like your real life make a second life!”. But I don’t think this is a good idea. We have
to make our students to be creative in a way, were they have to think about
solutions to the life that they have. In our real life situations, we can make
our classes fun and creative why should we think about making a fool life and
engaging our students to pretend as if they are different people. Technology is providing us different
interesting tools which can be applied in the classroom without forgetting our
real lives, were we can connect and reflect on our real lives (Like blogging
for example). I like those tools more…
These SL games are fun games; the students will probably
play them even without our assignments, so I don’t think that exposing them to these
games even in the classroom is a good idea. Eventually they will live only in
their second lives forgetting about their real ones…
No comments:
Post a Comment