I was introduced to
English as a Second Language virtual school in SL and it's staff by my new friend Violet1 Meili. Giovanni Tweak (italian principal of the school), Bracken Homewood (official ESL teacher), Inge Qunhua (official ESL teacher) and Violet1 (classrunner, mentor) were my guides.
Classes are not free for students but the first class is always free of charge so that one could see and hear how does it work, is it efficient, worth for money spent. Classes are taxed by an hour. Text classes cost 500 L$ and voice classes cost 1000 L$ per an hour (270 L$ = 1 USD).
After discussed with the principal I got a possibility to be present in a text class and he said if I liked it I should contact with him or the classrunners to join in the Help Team of the Drive Through ESL School. As a volunteer for four hours per week I could participate in all the classes for free. It sounded quite good: I had got no money at all :). So the possibility fascinates me truely. I will think about it for sure.
First lesson, vocabulary, nationalities and addresses (Mr, Mrs, Ms, Miss). Seikatsu Koba was as teacher. I thought first she was he and called her Mr Koba :). She introduced as a venezualan teacher who lives in the U.S. She seemed to be very nice person, patient and very well skilled as a teacher. In the class there were 4 students but one more arrived late with no excuses: a French-Canadian, Spanish, Polish, Ukranian and me, Finnish. Everyone could write English quite Good and therefore Mrs Seikatsu changed subject to the idioms.
Time passed rapidly and students chatted quite fluently on many different issues so the main goal might had forgotten from time to time. I did not hold my horses either but noticed that it was not so nice to the teacher who had prepared to the class and we just chatted what so ever. Well Mrs tried to restrict the discussion first and suggested that we wouldn't must use the short exprerssions such as "idk" (I don't know) nor uncapitalized nationalities or names. Class ended after 45 minutes and Mrs Koba let us discuss freely from then on.
Afterwards I contacted Mrs Koba by SL Instant Messenger and told about my remarks. She was not offended because of how the lesson ran and how the students acted. Inher opinion teachers must respect (adult) students will and she felt that free discussion was that students wanted. I told her I enjoyed her class and got a pretty good image about virtual learning.
It is not as easy to teach virtually, but I think the environment itself is very motivating. Every student has their own learning goals so the learning assesments are not so easy to set in advance. It would be best if the virtual teachers were experienced, well prepared allthough flexible. Also the expectations of the students might vary a lot and in the class everything might happen because of the nature of virtual life and different goals of students.
Some notes:
- MS = for a single woman who may have been married or who is not all that young to be a Miss
- a SCAPEGOAT = someone who is blamed for everything; a custom for people to write down all the things they had done wrong, they would all pin it to a goat and chase it out of the village.
- IDIOM - is an expression (i.e., term or phrase) whose meaning cannot be deduced from the literal definitions and the arrangement of its parts, but refers instead to a figurative meaning that is known only through common use. In linguistics, idioms are widely assumed to be figures of speech that contradict the principle of compositionality; however, some debate has recently arisen on this subject.
- FILL OUT = to complete something, for example a form
- FILL IN = to complete parts of that form
Later I met Violet1, Bracken and Monkicat (ESL teacher) who invited me as a partner in a virtual tour around the most interesting places in SL. We decided that each of us would pick a place after others and would send a teleport offer to each other. The first place was
Virtual Starry Night -gallery - a tribut of the paintings of Vincent van Gogh. Some of the motives of the paintings were redesigned as three dimensional artistic works so that the visitors could actually walk in or through the "painting". I must say that was a really good way to make the idea of the paintings more conrete and in an entertainment way.
The second place was a virtual redesign of
Sistine's Chapel that is of course very famous by it's respectful artists (ie. frescos of Michelangelo and tapistries of Rafael)The virtual chapel was meant to be like it's real version in Vatican...as much as possible. The amount of every single detail was almost uncountable and there were lots of information about the paintings, the chapel and the redesigning project itself.
The 3rd and last place in our tour was Paris 1900 - some districts of an old Paris including
Tour de Eiffel and
Moulin Rouge -theatre.
