Foreign Language Island

Tuesday and Friday of this week I am spending the day at Suffern High School - working with the 9th graders(who already have accounts from last and some 10th graders (new accounts)in the foreign language classes. Once again, what the momentum to bring the kids in started with a few brave teachers (who succumbed to the pestering pressure of a few good teen avatars!) Kudos especially to Ms. Alessi who teaches Italian. After taking my in-service teacher workshop for SL, she jumped right in developing her curriculum and collaborating with other educators to help develop best practices.

Firesabre, our content creation firm, listened to our ideas for the island and are creating the builds with teacher input including shared photos. Take a look at teh pics to see the rearkable work they do! We have started with basic architecture in the style of the particular cultures each language might represent and along with the kids we will be creating artifacts, holding events and conducting academic exercises. Voice will be enabled on this island but students are only able to "keep their headsets" if they stick to speaking in their language of study. The first exercise the Italian classes will be conducting will take place in the cafe where they will be sordering from a menu and role-playing servers and customers. In addition the kids will be researching differennt regions of Italy in order to identify and recommend cultural artifacts and scearios for the build!