Chaplaincy Matters

Teen Second Life Discussion Ideas

// March 15th, 2009 // Classroom Activities, Education, Technology, second life

This afternoon I will be taking my yr 11 Studies of Religion students into our Teen Second Life Island for the first time. My objectives for the lesson are

1) familiarise the students with our ‘code of conduct’ for the island

2) allow them some time to get used to navigating around the island using their avatars

3) have a discussion about how how they have found the course so far this year

I have created some ‘tools’  to facilitated discussion in second life.

The first is a discussion gazebo  for philosophical discussion. The students can gather here, sit on a pillow and ‘feel on top of the world’ as they discuss some of the big issues that we think about in life. See picture below: 

The next tool to help facilitate discussion is a number line from 1 - 10. to create this I just found a free image of rocks and inserted the writing over the top using ’snagit’ program (see previous blog post). I then uploaded the image as a ‘texture’. I then created my object and selected the picture as the texture for my object.

How I will use this is to either say or type a question like this “on the number line indicate your enjoyment of the course so far”. The students will then stand and walk over to the number that represents how they feel eg to stand in front of ‘10′ indicates they are loving the course.  Another suggestion could be to ask students to show whether they agree with a comment that had been made during the discussion by standing and walking to the number line.

see image below:

A third tool I created is the creation of 4 teams. This is to aid the division of the class quickly. I might say or type “form into 4 even teams” and the students will stand and walk to an area. I could then give each team a topic to discuss and say meet us back at the Gazebo in 5 minutes ready to share with the rest of the class.

Another use could be for a class multiple choice quiz. I (or a student) could ask a question and the students had to choose a team A square for answer A etc. To make things interesting a question could be asked and then students had to ‘run’ down to the water and back up and stand in the right box.

See picture of team squares below:

I look forward to my class this afternoon.