How does one offer students an "immersive" Italian experience to practice their language skills and explore the many regions of Italy? Yes! Put them on a plane and take them to Italy! Or... invite them to fly there themselves...

Giorgio Massei and his students in Italian 232 Popular Culture Italian 232 Popular Culture ventured into Second Life to explore Italian cities and talk to Italians about the virtual and the real. Second Life is very popular in Italy and there are recreations of several Italian cities so it wasn't hard to find places for the students to visit: Mantova, Sienna, Venice, Ancient Rome, Torino, Napoli, Milano, Genoa, Sicily, the Basilica of Asissi, the Sistine Chapel....

Orientation did not take long at all and within 2 hours, students had created an avatar, got a new outfit and were ready to visit Italy. Giorgio carefully structured the experiences for the students. For their first venture, the group of students, accompanied by Giorgio were invited to visit Mandova. Very generously, two of the staff of virtual Mandova gave our students a tour of the major attractions. Then, for the second activity, students explored a city of their choosing with a classmate. The task was to explore the virtual and compare and contrast it to the real city. On their third venture into SecondLife, students were to engage in conversation with an Italian speaker who was a native of the city to gather information perspectives on the comparison. Students posted their experiences including excerpts of their chats into the class blog so they could discuss them and share new vocabulary and expressions with their classmates.

Source: SecondLife

Here is a photo of a piazza in Florence ... but have you ever flown up to the top of the archway to read the inscsription?

Source: Wikipedia

Source: SecondLife student blog post

For one student it was the first time she had spoken to a "real Italian" and for one Italian it was the first time he had spoken to an American! It was a unique experience for students to learn about the cities from residents rather than textbooks and to get people's opinions and perspectives on life in their town. In addition, the Italian residents were curious about our students and their lives and many conversations developed into interesting dialogue. For example, after the tragic university killings in the US, one student was asked if she wore a bullet-proof vest to class...

Most all of the residents of SecondLife Italy were very helpful to our students and some went out of their way to show students their towns.
Have you ever been taken on a magic carpet ride of Sardinia?

At first, I was hesitant to use Second Life. I did not think that the city would be realistic. Also, I was shy to talk to the Italians, I was afraid not to understand them. But, Second Life is not what I expected. Later, I met a lost, Bari from Sardinia. We flew on his magic carpet! At first I was shy. It was my first conversation with a real Italian! But, it was fantastic! Yes, there are some words that I did not understand, but it was a good conversation. He showed me much of the city. And I often asked if these places are real, and they are! It was fantastic to see these places and later (because Bari told me the names of these places) to read and to see the real places online! [translated from the blog]

I think we can learn a lot about the culture from the Sarda sim. There is a small group of inhabitants of Sardinia, and they love to talk about
Sardinia. I met some people that explained a lot to me about the geography and history of Sarda. My general impression has been that Second Life is an impressive and effective way learn about Italian culture. [translated from the blog]

More snippets .... [translated from the blog]

It was a little difficult to understand (the slang). Overall a nice experience to visit Sicily and talk to Italians.

I spoke with a man who was very nice. [...] He said that I spoke "very good Italian! I was very happy with the comment.




We talked to a person from Rome and he said it is called the Bridge of Sospriri because lovers kiss there. He said the bridge of Second Life is not accurate because it is too small. He said the people of Venice are crazy, but have good seafood. He said there is a small town near Venice, Murano, which is famous for the production of glass art (animals, etc.).

We talked about many other things .... I think the representation of Genoa is very realistic when I see the photo on the Internet and talking with residents. It is a beautiful city, very interesting culture, I want to visit the city one day!

BENEFITS

• engage in conversations with native Italians
• personal perspectives vs. learning facts from textbook
• lots of new words and expressions (slang, regionalisms, internet abbreviations)
• certain level of confidence, overcoming shyness
• fun, engaging
  
• discuss chat logs in class; observations about language and culture
  

CHALLENGES

• somtimes no one was in the SL cities
• sometimes difficult language (slang, abbreviations, regionalisms)
• pace of conversations too fast
  

CONTACTS / RESOURCES:
Giorgio Massei (masseig)
Philomena Meechan, UMich Language Resource Center (phili)
Italian 232 class blog
SecondLifeLanguages Yahoo group
SLEducational Uses
http://sleducation.wikispaces.com/educationaluses
SecondLife Education Wiki
http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life_Education_Wiki