I discussed with an ELA teacher what Second Life is and how it can benifit ELA instruction. We talked about possibly creating an online world with the entire 10th grade English classes to discuss current novels they are reading. She was a little concerned about the students not being able to work from home since our school blocks the program. We thought that maybe we could have permission from the tech department to allow access but then we (me and the ELA tearcher) will be held responsible if there are any inappropriate uses of the site.
She was very supportive of applying the concepts of mutimodality to the teaching of ELA but thinks it will work best in a secure, private environment. The use of digital media and visual text has been used in her classroom before through power points and online gaming and she supports the idea of using these tools to create a culture friendly learning classroom.
I agree with you that a secure, private environment would be much more appropriate for an educational setting then SL. Some great examples are Edmodo and Ellumnate. It is great that you work with someone who supports the idea using media and visual texts in the classroom. She sounds like a great person to work with.
ReplyDeleteI like this idea a lot but also agree that students may not have the ability to access this from home. I often feel that requiring all our students to use technology tools at home is not realistic. Perhaps in the future this will be something we can require.
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