Direct link to the lesson plan

Punctuality

Students arrived very late except two who were punctual. This cost a lot of time but on the other hand, I had a change to chat with those two and they had a change to speak a bit more (they are eager to speak). 

Etiquette in SL classes

One student excused himself and left in the middle of a pair work activity. I wonder if this is plain impolite or something we have to accept in online or Second Life classes. I do not want to say here what his excuse was but it did not sound urgent to me. 

Visitors

We had two visitors but one couldn’t hear me and left after a while. The other was there but didn’t participate except saying hello once and yes that he would like to participate. Later, I completely forgot to teleport him to the new location 🙁

Classroom management

I had forgotten to set up the notecard giver. So, I had to hand out tow notecards to every individual students. Cost time.

Dictation took too long because I was distracted with visitors. The guessing of my dates was too long, too, although I did want them to practise asking questions, 5 dates would have been enough. This meant that there was less time for the story writing/telling.

Transition worked perfectly as I can teleport a whole group of people at once. No time lost here. In RL this would have taken much longer or would have been impossible.

Boys and girls and parcelled houses

For group work, I had the girls work together and the boys. The reason for this was that the boys like to use voice but the girls don’t want to use voice while the boys are around. This is why I chose my house as a location for the groups to discuss and come up with a story. My house is divided into two parcels and what is being said in one cannot be overheard in the other half or from outside. I was hoping to give the girls a chance to practise speaking with this setting. Unfortunately, the girls did still use text chat only and the boys used IM. The stories both groups came up with were very different and funny, though, and students enjoyed the activity.

Conclusion

I told students to be more punctual. In future, I will not wait that long for students to arrive, so they do not get used to my waiting and see they actually miss something when they arrive late. I will not accept visitors after the second or third lesson. They can observe (I cannot prevent that anyway if lessons take place in public places) but cannot participate (maybe some exceptions, e. g. if the class is very small and observers have the necessary SL skills and level of English). I would do the dictation much more quickly and would only use 4 or 5 dates to be guessed and tell students they do not have to guess them in any particular order. I have to find a better way of monitoring students during pair work when they use IM. I will meet with the girls and let them test the parcelled house and see for themselves that they can really speak without being overheard hoping that next time they will use voice.

There is neticet, wiki etiquette, etc. Is there also SL etiquette? What is acceptable behaviour in SL? Are there any guidelines we and our students can follow? Do we have to establish them?

Update, 1 Augsut 2008

Student Feedback

All students who filled out the form, state the lesson was the right level, they learned a lot of new words and liked all activities. Most say they practised speaking a lot and one student says it was enough. They all liked the activities. Replies to best activity were: the Coca-Cola story, homework, conversation. There was nothing they didn’t like. All found the homework useful and some also fun.