wa.amu.edu.pl A DAM M ICKIEWICZ U NIVERSITY IN P OZNAŃ Faculty of English Virtlantis, Facebook and Second Life: web2 scaffolding for virtual world language learning community of practice Włodzimierz Sobkowiak (FL) & Wlodek Barbosa (SL)

2 Presentation plan 1.What is Second Life (SL)? 2.What is Virtlantis? 3.Virtlantis on Facebook 4.Community of Practice/Interest: definitions 5.Instructional scaffolding: definition 6.Web2 scaffolding for SL CoP 7.Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall 8.Bibliography

3 What is Second Life? "Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. It was launched on June 23, A number of free client programs, or Viewers, enable Second Life users, to interact with each other through avatars (also called Residents). Residents can explore the world (...), meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another." (

4 What is Virtlantis? (1) "VIRTLANTIS is a free language learning resource and community of practice in the virtual worlds of Second Life® and OpenSim. We offer activities for a growing number of languages. All of our activities are offered free of charge by kind and generous volunteers. We have been offering free language learning activities since We are a language learning community with members from all over the world. You will soon meet friendly people from many different countries who, like you, are very interested in learning about other languages and cultures." (

5 What is Virtlantis? (2) "The VIRTLANTIS Community is not only present in the virtual world of Second Life®. Community members often connect and communicate on other social platforms such as Facebook, Google+, Skype and Twitter. In addition to our in- world activities, we are especially active on Facebook. We often discuss in-world activities and topics related to language learning there. It's also a great place to find help if you ever have any questions about VIRTLANTIS, language learning, etc." (

6 Community of Practice/Interest: definitions CoP - "group of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis." (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder 2002:4) "A community of interest is a community of people who share a common interest or passion. These people exchange ideas and thoughts about the given passion (...). Participation in a community of interest can be compelling, entertaining and create a ‘sticky’ community where people return frequently and remain for extended periods." (

7 Instructional scaffolding: definition "Scaffolding is the support given during the learning process which is tailored to the needs of the student with the intention of helping the student achieve his/her learning goals (...) Reciprocal scaffolding (...) is a method that involves a group of two or more collaboratively working together (...) The scaffolding is shared by each member and changes constantly as the group works on a task." (

8 Web2 scaffolding for SL CoP "As a virtual world it [Second Life - WS/B] is currently not adequate as a learning environment on its own. There is a need to construct an additional information space in order to gather all information regarding the course and to display this information outside the rather distracting, graphically rich and socially dynamic virtual environment" (Petrakou 2010:1027).

9 Need for Facebook (Fb) scaffolding lower hardware/bandwidth requirements of Fb portability/ubiquity of Fb (e.g. smartphones, tablets) ease of access (friendly interface) on Fb easy asynchronous communication across time zones on Fb there is no group 'wall' in Second Life group chat can be (re-)entered at any time on Fb easy multimedia sharing (pics, audio, vids) on Fb Fb is given/home; SL is new territory (to most residents) First Life member identities are more common on Fb all text is more easily legible on Fb

10 All text is more easily legible on Fb

11 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall Some textual statistics (March 2013) 1026 posts and comments word tokens 4748 word types Some top-freq words: like, English, activity(-ies), comments, language, welcome, words, learning, TOEFL, practice, dictionary, Scrabble, relaxing Some top-freq posters and commenters: Kip Boahn (626), Martina Zeiner (483), Lynne Hand (103), Montse Veyrat (87), Włodzimierz Sobkowiak (70)

12 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall Types of posts 1.Pre-activity announcements 2.Post-activity comments 3.E-teaching/sharing 4.Information requests 5.Social bonding

13 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall Pre-activity announcements (1)

14 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall Pre-activity announcements (2)

15 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall Pre-activity announcements (3)

16 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall Pre-activity announcements (4)

17 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall Post-activity comments (1)

18 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall Post-activity comments (2)

19 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall Post-activity comments (3)

20 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall Post-activity comments (4)

21 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall E-teaching/sharing (1)

22 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall E-teaching/sharing (2)

23 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall E-teaching/sharing (3)

24 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall E-teaching/sharing (4)

25 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall Information requests (1)

26 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall Information requests (2)

27 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall Information requests (3)

28 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall Social bonding (1)

29 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall Social bonding (2)

30 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall Social bonding (3)

31 Scaffolding on Virtlantis Facebook wall Social bonding (4)

32 Bibliography Petrakou, A. (2010). "Interacting through avatars: Virtual worlds as a context for online education". Computers and Education Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W.M Cultivating Communities of Practice. Boston: Harvard Business School Press

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