I have to say that experimenting with SL in last week's class was a total shocker. Initially, I was hesitant to even sign up for it because I did not know what I was getting into. Getting involved in a virtual reality has its limitations and definitely has no place in the classroom. After reading the articles for class last week, I was still not convinced about using SL in the classroom. I found SL to be hard to use, and very complicated. Yes, it is true that students can practice typing in the target language, listen to voice chat, and 'teleport' to different cities, but the truth of the matter is they are experiencing language learning in a virtual world. Language learning should be done in the real world, because in the end we want to communicate with real people. Students should strive to actually visit other countries, taste the food, speak the language. etc. In an age where it is more popular to become someone else, to escape from reality with technology, we as educators will be stooping to the lowest level if we encourage programs like Second Life in the classroom. If you want to do it for fun then so be it. But it has no place in the classroom and I will not try to justify its use. Technology is a good thing but we cannot pretend to implement every new program into education.
1 comment:
I also think that virtual reality has no place in the classroom. It is a good extra activity, but it doesn't sound reasonable to me to include it into the syllabus. Why do we need teachers and real people then? We could all stay home and play our life. The problem is that in real life one has to deal with people and different situtations, and not just to pretend being somebody else.
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