VIRTUAL WORLDS Barbara McQueen: Immersive Education in Virtual Worlds

Saturday, 7 May 2016

10pm GMT, 11pm UK, 7am Tokyo (Sun), 3:30am New Delhi (Sun), 6pm New York, 3pm Los Angeles

Room Arthur

http://lancelot.adobeconnect.com/arthur

Barbara McQueen

Immersive Education in Virtual Worlds

From my first contact with virtual worlds, I have been enthralled by the opportunities they offer for immersive ESL courses. But I have been concerned that so many of the examples of in-world teaching are just replicas of traditional classroom instruction, rather than attempts to use all the advantages of virtual mediums. In this interview, I will answer questions about how and why to more fully use the phenomenal possibilities virtual worlds offer to learners and educators.

For three decades I have mentored fellow teachers one-on-one, through in-services, as an ESL teacher trainer for Oxford Seminars, and as a conference presenter for TESOL, the VWBPE, SLanguages, and MachinEVO. Now I am developing my own virtual world, Edutopia, for delivering online ESL courses that mirror many of the characteristics that are found in the video games that intrigue our youth.