Secondlife

http://secondlife.com

Second Life is an online virtual world in which everybody can participate and become so called residents and interact with other people through avatars. The registration is very easy and once one became resident, he/she can meet various people on all kinds of different settings created in the virtual world, take part in different kinds of activities and talk with each other and even create something together with other residents.

      Due to the nature of international connection all across the world, second life could be a good tool to use in classroom. I as a teacher will ask students to first to register and create a community together with all the students together. We can take it as a kind of English corner. We can then also go to some places like the US in the virtual world and have students to meet native speakers and talk to them to practice their English, or participate in some activities like creating a bridge and participating a meeting in the virtual world.

     Besides, when we teach English through some contents that related to some specific areas, like Washington or New York, we can have students to visit there with the teachers and make the whole class like an adventure and make the contents more meaningful to students.

   In addition, Second life also has some problem. First of all, the picture and the animation is pretty blurry compare to many other games available on the market for now. That would make it less attractive to students. Secondly, having students to get used to interact with other people on-line could make them addict to that and gradually lose interest in real world. The potential danger could be a major negative impact of Ts practice in the classroom, so we’d better be cautious using it or provide to students more alternative medium of interactions.