Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Virtual TV Media presents
Thank you Letty for the kind introduction
Many, many thanks to the MetaverseTV team notably
Dousa, Mal, Letty, Petlove and Robustus who are recording this keynote
with exceptionally high quality.
May I ask the audience to let us know what your professional background is? Could you write it in the text chat, in form of a 'one liner'?
May I ask the audience to let us know what your professional background is? Could you write it in the text chat, in form of a 'one liner'?
Whilst you do this, I would like to get started by giving a brief overview of my history with real-time communication in language learning.
Here is the 10 year history. In 2003 I started with a live online language school using virtual classroom technology.
Today we know this technology as Adobe Connect, Blackboard Collaborate, WizIQ and many others.
This then led to the first EU funded project LANCELOT. LANCELOT stands for LANguage Learning with CErtified Live Online Teachers
with 7 EU partners coordinated by the University of Vienna.
We developed a teacher training course for language educators.
In 2009 I started my own web conference called Virtual Round Table Web Conference, in the same year when AVALON started.
AVALON was the 2nd EU funded project which I co- initiated, this time exploring language teaching and learning in virtual worlds.
AVALON stands for Access to Virtual and Action Learning Live ONline Again a teacher training course was developed.
Currently I am the co-owner of EduNation Islands, two sims with a community of universities,
language institues and language teachers.
Also I am co-organizer of 3-day SLanguage Annual Symposium, which takes place during and the 2- day annual web conference for
teachers of German DaFWEBKON.
When Letty approached me a few months ago, whether I would want to do this keynote, I knew then that we will hear about the result of our
proposal in July, but it was a bit of a gamble to announce the project in the title of the talk.
In fact, only 7% of all proposals got accepted and CAMELOT is one of them.
CAMELOT is an EU funded development project starts in December 2013 and runs for 2 years.
Machinima is the use of real-time virtual worlds and 3D video games to create a cinematic production.
The Consortium consists of 9 EU partner in 8 countries, 4 universities, 4 SMEs and 1 NGO. Coordinator is UClan, University of Centra
Lancashire, Dr. Michael Thomas.
We will create a variety of machinima with a variety of language learning conversations
and a variety of language levels for a variety of target groups.
This is the EVO in MachinEVO – It is a global event where about 2000 English teacher spend 5 weeks in what would be called a MOOC today.
It has been running in its 10th year.
These are organised by TESOL’s (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) CALL-IS (Computer Assisted Language
Learning – Interest Section).
We were utterly grateful to meet Draxtor, who was part of a German TV production Login2life, Pooky Amsterdam, Natasha Randt, Fluffee and
many others.
Also the complete film crew of “My Avatar and Me”, a Danish TV fantasy documentary.
In the end we conducted MachinEVO Award Ceremony, the OSCAR of language learning machinimas.
We ran this award ceremony every time and last time with a fabulously professional jury of our expert advisors.
We will now see a mash-up of the various machinimas produced for MachinEVO, only with music, no voices. All of these productions
use voice. What I would like you to focus on is – whether the visuals are so powerful and of high quality. Remember, we are only language
teachers.
AVALON stands for Access to Virtual and Action Learning Live ONline (2009-2010)
www.avalonlearning.eu
Who of you knows the Gartner Hype Cycle? Who knows what this peak is called?
Any guesses when roughly Second Life experienced this Peak of Inflated Expectations? Around 2006/2007.
The maximum of concurrent users recorded at that time was 88+k. And who knows what follows the Peak of
Inflated Expectations?
Yes, the Trough of Disillusionment. Roughly what time do you think we went through that one?
Well, at that time we, Dr. Randall Sadler of the University of Illinois Urbana Champagne and myself took over the two islands EduNation
from the previous owner Gavin Dudeney.
Gavin wrote a condemming blog post and a gloomy picture of the future of SL.
In the same month, Lindenlab announced the abolishing of the educational rate and the residents on EduNation were depressed.
I personally felt that I had bought the Titanic.
The so-called Plateau of Productivity.
Well, I believe that machinima clearly are a part of this level of productivity and so are developed courses.
This is my last slide and I invite you all to our 3-day SLanguages Annual Symposium at the end of September 2013.
http://www.avalonlearning.eu
I am very grateful to Lindenlab for re-introducing the educational rate
CAMELOT, It stands for CreAting Machinima Empowers Live Online language Teaching and learning.