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Showing posts from May, 2007

Computer Games & Language Learning

Kyle Mawer, my colleague and co-presenter at WiAOC2007 has started a wiki where he has been adding more ideas about the exploitation of computer games (especially free online games) for language learning and teaching. The URL is http://kylemawer.wikispaces.com

Why give a Power Point Presentation in Second Life?

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There's an interesting discussion going on in the Webheads list about replicating Real Life (RL) features in Second Life (SL) . There are lots of interesting points here (why put roofs on buildings, add stairs, etc?) and whilst I agree totally that SL becomes more interesting when you don't try to replicate the limitations of RL, I do think there are occasions when showing a Power Point presentation, for example, is valid. I've been thinking about this recently, especially as I'm presenting at the SL Best Practice in Education conference this Friday: ESL, Second Life and Teenagers : Learner Autonomy for the Digital Natives Friday 25th May @ 11.00 GMT http://slbestpractices2007.wikispaces.com/PresentationSchedule I'm hoping to stream the presentation (it'll be a Skype conference call) through World Bridges on Sandbox A All the presenters have been encouraged to give a Power Point type presentation, or at least start with one. This makes sense for various re

Playing with Presentations #2

Slideshare is a great tool for sharing presentations too. It's easy to embed the resulting slideshow on your blog, etc., and the site has social software/community tools too (you can send other users messages, post comments, choose slideshows as favourites, add slideshows to your library). It does have one problem though - once uploaded, it doesn't seem like you can delete a slideshow (or at least I tried to find out how to do it and failed miserably - I uploaded the wrong version of a presentation and wanted to replace it with another one) - so, be sure that what you upload is something you don't mind being there forever. Here's our presentation on Slideshare:

Playing with Presentations #1

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So, my question is, 'What's the best way of displaying a presentation online?' Not only if you want to give people access to your presentation after the event, but also when you are giving the presentation live. There are now so many different ways of doing this, that it's difficult to choose which one to use. For example, we used the Elluminate virtual classroom for our live presentation on Gaming & Language Learning last Friday, using Learning Times . But, it might not have been the best way of showing people our slides (see post below). Of course, there are advantages to using this type of platform - the recording is done automatically, and the images are shown at the same time as the audio. However, you cannot access the recording or attend live unless you are a member (it is free to join, and an easy process, but, even so, it is another barrier), and you cannot simply download the audio only to listen to when on the move (i.e. a podcast) During the WiAOC , th

WiAOC 2007 Webcastathon

The Webheads in Action Online Convergence ( WiAOC 2007 ) is now well underway, with so much activity going on it's impossible to keep up. Fortunately, most of it, if not all, is being recorded, so we can go back and listen and watch to the presentations that we missed becuase we were too busy to attend them live, or because time zone factors made them impractical to attend. Details of the presentations to come are here : http://schedule.wiaoc.org/ I really do encourage everyone to go along to some of them I gave a presentation yesterday, with my British Council colleague Kyle Mawer . It was essentially a repeat of the presentation that we gave at APAC and IATEFL , on ' Computer Games & Language Learning: From Space Invaders to Second Life ', although we end up changing the format every time we do it: adding or removing slides, etc. It's also been interesting to see how we have decided to change the pitch depending on the audience and how the experience has differ

Second Life and Language Learning discussions - part 2

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Here's the transcript of the second discussion that took place, on Saturday, in Edunation , during the IATEFL Conference : Background: To demo Second Life at the British Council stand at IATEFL, I (Baldric Commons) had to squeeze into a closet (for various connectivity reasons that aren't worth going into). As I took part in the chat, a small crowd of people would appear, and so I'd come out of the closet to talk to them, and then pop back in to chat with the participants in SL. The chat drew a lot of observers at IATEFL. Kyle Mawer (Frank Spearmann), my colleague, was in an Internet cafe in the centre of Aberdeen, and he also drew a crowd of interested onlookers - many people in the cafe who'd seen Second Life on TV and wanted to know what it was all about. [2:35] A group member named Baldric Commons gave you EduNation - An Education Island , EduNation (96, 215, 22) [2:37] Fim Fischer: Hi! Frank [2:38] Baldric Commons: hi frank [2:38] Frank Spearmann: hi baldri