Create Your Online School with a Great Virtual Classroom

Webroom has to be one of the best free virtual classrooms for online synchronous teaching I’ve seen. It’s very easy to set up a class. Just type in your email address and name and the classroom launches.

Once the class opens there’s a very easy to work through on-boarding task that ensures anyone entering the classroom has the correct browser (Chrome works best) , sufficient connectivity, and has set up their video and audio so you can be sure everyone can see each other.

Once you are set up you can invite students by email or share the link to the classroom.

Webroom has a lot of really great easy to use features including really simple to set up breakout rooms for getting students into pairs or groups, screen sharing, an interactive whiteboard for sharing images and text, file sharing and best of all link sharing.

As well as sharing links to websites, the link sharing feature allows you to share links to videos from the web and collaborate on Google Docs, Google Slides or Google Spreadsheets. This takes Webroom beyond the usual presentation and chat type class and enables teachers to do work on writing skills too.

Webroom also has a number of features that can help students takes notes and remember their classes. When using the whiteboard students can download any screen they see and keep an image of it by simply clicking the download button and then at the end of the class students get an email summary that includes any of the links shared during the lesson as well as links to any files that were uploaded.

You can use Webroom very simply by creating a new class session each time or you can register for free and log in to set up class schedules.

If you find this type of class is effective for you and your students then it is well worth looking at: https://iteach.world/ This is the commercial version of Webroom and it enables you to set up online course and to start charging for them. With this tool you can launch your own online school.

There is a free (forever) account that enables you to get started and build your courses, but you can only use this for one teacher and two students. Scaling up isn’t expensive though and the fees are a flat monthly rate, so this is a great way to open your own online school without too much risk.

I hope you enjoy using Webroom and that it helps you to get your own online school launched.

You can find 100 + more tools and resources like this in my ebook Digital Tools for Teachers - Second Edition or if you want to train other teachers to use these kinds of tools check out the Trainers’ Edition.

My Books:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers 

 Best

Nik Peachey

Build Your 3D Virtual Reality Classroom Today

Edorble is a fantastic tool for creating your own 3D virtual classroom. Just download the software and claim your room code. You can then share the code with your students and they can join you for virtual tutorials, social events or film and video viewings.

The standard classroom is a theatre space on an island. Students can move around the island using a 3D virtual avatar and meet up in groups away from the main class.

Students communicate using a headset and are able to chat and socialise. Sound is location sensitive so avatars that are closer together can hear each other clearly, whereas those on other parts of the island can’t be heard at all. This makes group work much easier and more meaningful.

There is also a screen in the main auditorium and this can be used for browsing the internet or showing videos. You can also open and operate an online whiteboard from within the browser.

This is a great tool for running online group classes or social events for online students. There is also now the capability to build course materials and launch commercial courses through: . You can also take free courses that can help you use the platform.

Edorble is a great tool to get and give your students a first experience of VR. I hope you find it useful. You can find links to many more tools like this and activities for the digital classroom in my ebooks at: http://peacheypublications.com/. All my ebooks are available for iOS and as PDF.

Sign up for my twice monthly free newsletter and get a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/ 

Related links:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers 

 Best

Nik Peachey

Coffee With Dennis Newson

Sunday 15th February 2009 (GMT 18.00 = 10.00 PST) sees the return of Coffee With.

This is the forth in our series of 'Coffee With ..' educational chat shows on Edunation III in Second Life, so please do come along, join our audience and meet other people interested in developing education and learning within Second Life.


In this show I'll be interviewing Dennis Newson (aka: Osnacantab Nesterov) Formerly: University of Osnabrück, Webhead and member of SLexperiments

In the show I will be talking to Dennis about his experiences of starting off his Second Life as a digital immigrant, his observations of language teaching within Second Life and his recent foray into teacher training and development.


If you would like to come along and watch the show and join in the discussion, then go along to Edunation III and click the sign-up terminals or email Gavin at: dudeney@theconsultants-e.com. The event is free, but we are limited to 100 places. The show starts at GMT = 18.00 (GMT is 8 hours ahead of Second Life time, so that's 10.00 PST and 19.00 CET)

If you don't have a Second Life avatar but would like to know how to set one up then you can download instructions from here. Setting up a Second Life avatar

Related links:

• Coffee With Kim Anubis
  
• Coffee With Kyle Mawer
• Coffee with Gavin Dudeney
• Filming in Second Life 1
• Teaching Speaking in Second Life
• More Second Life Tutorials
• Building in Second Life
• Lip Sync for Second Life
• Materials design for Virtual Worlds
• Teaching English in Second Life
• Second Life Teacher Training Videos

Best

Nik Peachey

Wonderland Virtual World and MMORPG

Wonderland looks like a great free online role playing game for younger students. The game is based around the story of some travelers who become shipwrecked and have to survive by doing various tasks, quests and challenges. The graphics look like the typical Japanese manga cartoons which are so popular with kids and teens.


What I really like about this is that the 'things to do' type quests and challenges are already there and built in so , unlike virtual worlds like Second Life and There.com you and your students don't have to think up things to do.

I think this is really good motivating game to get students using English to solve problems and work collaboratively. If you can get your students hooked on a game like this they'll do the learning for themselves.

On the negative side, they will need to download the software and that's over 500Mb, so they'll need broadband and a reasonably up to date computer. The game is also quite complex and I can't find any information regarding minimum ages for registration.

That said, if your students are keen gamers and have an intermediate level of English or higher and you want to motivate them to work on their own, this could be a wonderful tool for getting them to do that.

Best

Nik Peachey

Related postings

• Google's Lively Competitor with Second Life?
• 3B Village 3D browser
• Machinima with Moviestorm
• Looking at There.com
• Materials design for Virtual Worlds
• Immersive Image Environments
• Teaching Speaking in Second Life
• Creating multimedia stories

A Virtual Language Learning World for Kids

Well what kid wouldn't want to be a language learning panda? Panfu has used this premise as the basis for a new virtual world for kids in which they can play games and learn languages at the same time.

They create their own panda avatar, dress the panda and have their own panda tree house to decorate and invite friends round to.

On the whole this looks pretty good and I'm sure my 9 year old daughter will be keen to try this out (she's already a Webkinz fanatic). Panfu are offering two levels of membership; Free and Gold. Gold entitles your kids to get extra customisation for their panda avatar and his lodgings.

Getting your kids involved in virtual worlds or any kind of social networking is always slightly risky, but it does look as though Panfu are taking this seriously.

The service is available in a range of languages. If your kids register as being English, then they get to learn some Spanish, if they register as other nationalities it looks like they get to learn English.

I haven't tried this one out yet myself, but it does look like a serious and well thought out educational effort. Definitely a step in the right direction.

Hope your kids enjoy it.

Best

Nik Peachey

Google's Lively Competitor with Second Life?

Have Google joined the online 3D virtual world market? Well it looks like they have, but it looks like it's still pretty early days with the Beta release of Lively.

Lively certainly seems to have a lot of potential and a lot of good things going for it, in addition to having the might of a company like Google behind it.

• The 3D rooms run in the browser and only require the download of a very small plugin (about half a MB) as opposed to the huge downloads that Second Life and There.com require.
• Anyone can create their own room, pretty quickly and easily, and embed the room into a web page like the one below.
• The rooms aren't connected so if you want to use this with students, it's less risky as they are less prone to 'wandering' into unsuitable areas.
  
• The amount of customization of both avatars and rooms is limited at the moment, so this might well help to discourage the more 'adult' orientated users who tend to crop up in Second Life so much.
• Word is that you can add and watch YouTube videos within your 3D room, which could make a nice addition to a distance course and enable your students to have film / video night together.
• The 3D comic book type graphics look good and would surely appeal to teens or younger learners.
  
• It's free at the moment at least.

Here is my 3D room embedded into my page

But this is what it should look like!



Before you get too excited though:

• I've had more than a few problems getting this to work for me either in Firefox 3 or IE 7 and you can't run it on a MAC yet.
  
• Lots of the tools for editing the room and avatar that appear in the help instructions, never seem to appear on my screen, so once I've created my room, I don't seem to be able to edit it at all.
• There's no voice chat only text chat.
  
• Because it's only just been launched the actual population is still pretty small, so actually meeting someone to talk to is a bit of a challenge

Anyway, despite all this, I think this is still one to watch, not only because it has Google behind it, but because if it can be made to work well and run in the browser with lower demand on bandwidth and small downloads, this could open up the potential of virtual worlds to many more people and that can't be a bad thing.

Some of my other postings on virtual worlds.

• 3B Village 3D browser
• Machinima with Moviestorm
• Looking at There.com
• Materials design for Virtual Worlds
• Immersive Image Environments
• Teaching Speaking in Second Life
• Creating multimedia stories

Best Nik Peachey