MSS Podcast #10 - Meet Daffodil Fargis

Second Life ESL educator and teacher trainer Daffodil Fargis (RL: Nergiz Kern) was gracious enough to join me on board the Xiphos Starship high above Corona Cay to talk about her thoughts and experiences related to teaching in virtual worlds. The result of our meeting is this tenth installment of Meet Scottlo Scorbal which is 35 minutes long.

Daffodil is making a name for herself as an influental and innovative language educator in Second Life. She recently wrote and has had published a case study account of how she began teaching English in SL for English Teaching Professional in an article entitled "Starting a Second Life." She was also a co-moderator in the 2009 Virtual Worlds and Language Learning session that was offered as part of the this year's Electronic Villege Online professional development series.

She is a founding member of the SLexperiments group and helps maintain that wiki. Her Teaching in Second Life blog was nominated as a Top New Blog in The EduBlog Awards for 2008.

I'm grateful to Nergiz for the chance to talk and hope you enjoy hearing what she has to say.

Asia Team Teaching - encore lesson

I nearly forgot about this great video CarolRB made for us of our second round of the Team Taught lesson at the end of the EVO VW&LL session. A big thank to teaching partners Lynn and Olam for such smooth and easy collaborative work.

I continue to think about this experience. Though I'm not doing much publicly with the blog or podcast, the experiences gained through the entire EVO session have greatly focused my thinking about possible uses of SL. These ideas will eventually find their way to these pages.

Until then, please enjoy this short excerpt of what was a fun and challenging lesson to "teach."



Thanks for sharing the video Carol.

Now what?

Through the support of a more senior faculty member who wants to bring his classes into Second Life, one of the institutions where I teach has tentatively agreed to purchase an island sim. As he is even less experienced with SL than I am, and as I am the one who has beem planting seeds and dropping hints about the potential and possibility of virtual worlds in an educational setting for the past half year, it appears that management of the estate will be my responsibility.

This is an exciting opportunity. It is one that I've been hoping for for many months. But as the Chinese are alleged to have said, "Be careful what you wish for - you might get it." The more I try to imagine my way through the path ahead, the more I realize how little of a clue I have as to how to proceed.

So here's the question - or the plea for help: what resources exist to help would-be estate managers gain the necessary knowledge to get such a project rolling?

I'd particularly be grateful to hear from anyone who's recently gone through the process.

Operation Accomplished

Going in to our Team Teaching session in the Edunation II sandbox, I felt that the 10 day experience of planning, preparing and practicing the lesson would go down as a success even if the lesson itself were to go down in flames. I think I tried to convey that deep impact that the opportunity to work with my group members sparked in my own thoughts on teaching and learning in virtual worlds in MSS #8.

Now that the lesson is over and I'm trying to make sense of it, I must admit to feeling a school-girlish sense of giggly-glee. The students responded enthusiastically to the tasks we'd set out for them. Situations arose and were dealt with. Kind words and praise were shared at the end. It has been a long time since I've had such a rewarding and enjoyable "classroom" encounter.

As inept as I am with written words, I feel the need to escape to recorded audio. At least that's not a permanent record, right?

With hope and luck, my co-conspirators will come together for a recorded conference call in the coming days. It is my intention to release that recording as MSS #09 sometime next week.

But first I need to do some more giggling: tee-hee, tee-hee....

MSS Podcast #8 - The Nutty Absent-Minded Professor

The eighth installment of Meet Scottlo Scorbal weighs in at roughly 32 minutes. Below is a list of the main points covered and approximate time-points in the recording.

• Introduction - (00:00-06:55)
  
• Message of appreciation to the moderators of the EVO Virtual Worlds & Language Learning Session - (06:55-12:49)
  
• Thoughts on our Team Teaching project - (12:50-19:35)
  
• Idea for project inspired by Zotarah Shepherd's Multiple Intelligences build on Koru - (19:38-26:00)
• Fishing for ideas & final thoughts on Non-Virtual World teaching matters - (26:00-32:15)

Note: Posterous is the name of the web service I mentioned at the end of the recording. Though it wasn't suitable for creating an enclosure in the RSS 2.0 feed (wound up using Blip.tv), it is still an excellent web-application which I recommend highly. Those interested can hear how our radio class are trying to use Posterous by following the link on our class blog.

MSS Podcast #7 - Waiting for Something to Happen

All credit goes to Daffodil for giving me the gentle prodding to explain the couple of recent twitter tweets that comprise the intended mainpoints of this 7th installment of Meet scottlo Scorbal.

I'm afraid I overshot my target of a 15 minute recording by 16 minutes. Even with all of that extra time, I was only able to cover the first of my two intended main points.

The bulk of the rambling monologue recounts the experience of sitting in an actual classroom with 17 students as they were introduced to and took their first steps in Second Life under the caring guidance of Professor In Yan (pictured above in the lab coat). Professor Yan is involved with both the virtual Digital Hollywood in SL as well as the actual campus based in Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan.

I imagine that some co-participants in the EVO Virtual Worlds and Language Learning session will come across this recording. All of you are cordially invited, as I mention at the end of the recording, to visit me at Waiting for Something to Happen to discuss matters related to this episode or anything else going on in the VW&LL session. If you do come by Corona, you'll certainly want to check out the Destination Station, too.

Where's the mic?

Once I can find a darn microphone and am able to remember how to connect it, we'll be back in business. Out of nowhere, lot's of interesting and interconnected SLish stuff bounced my way. An opportunity and a chance are knocking, the next installment of MSS will be an attempt to open that door.