Today I worked with Elecktra Abseguk on the Teen grid to help her plan out the floor plan of Lingualand which is a multi-language learning island for teens in Second Life!  Today we figured out where the various countries classrooms will be located! So far we have found room for a Spanish / Portuguese classroom, Italian, French, English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean location.  The idea is to have each classroom side by side with a nice main street that connects them all.  Then to the South students will find a beach area where they can meet and collaborate together.  I will be installing Sloodle / Moodle for Helen's class as well as hooking into Skoolaborate technologies.  With these two technologies connected, Helen will have a great system available to manage her distance education classes, and use Second Life as a delivery platform.

Since I was in Korea for five years myself teaching English, every day I saw a repeated scenario - kids wanted to play games - mothers wanted the kids to learn English - Second Life presents a great opportunity to marry these two together - deliver English through Gaming!  Now both camps are happy - the kids - AND the parents!

Today we also:

• defined the limits of the land with a prim in each corner
• decided to have six wider, 2-storey buildings along the back, rather than 10 narrower ones
• placed prims the size of the buildings on the land
• attached textures to denote each langauge
• assigned individual buildings to Chinese an English (likely to attract the greatest numbers) and paired the others
• placed a long oblong prim to represent the central ‘passaggiata’ (this will have an attractive texture .. )
• placed paths up to the front of the building from the passaggiata which in turn will separate the shared arcade areas (each side a different language)
• decided that TV screens would be a good way of separating the beach areas
• agreed to keep the area simple .. avoid items which could hamper navigation (especially for those new to SL)
• advised that sound parcels would define media limits, but that voices can carry beyond

The next stage for Helen and I, is to replace the 3D blocks with actual buildings, and then insert the SLOODLE/Skoolaborate tools - such as a 3D Flash card game, a quiz chair connected to Moodle, and a scavenger hunt system.  The beauty of all of these tools, is that by using them, Helen will be able to track her students using the Moodle / Skoolaborate learning management systems! Gear up for fun, and stay tuned for more reports!

If you'd like to start a Language Learning lab, or other educational lab in Second Life, don't hesitate to contact
us! Cheers!