Virtual Worlds

This chapter discusses the author's experience in virtual environments, with particular reference to virtual reconstruction. The events are narrated from the perspective of a student who at first developed his skills in this specific field at school, and then became competent and passionate enough to teach what he had learned in the course of time. He describes his experience from early school projects to the personal ones; from his award as a “Master Builder” to his early teaching lessons. Other learning activities that can be carried out in a virtual world are also illustrated, with particular reference to “coding”, which appears to be of great interest to the author. The main objective of this paper is to highlight the potential of a 3D virtual environment for the reconstruction of monuments, i.e., the author's area of expertise. It also provides a description of other activities that can be performed in a virtual environment, while illustrating the most common issues that can be experienced and suggesting how to solve them.

Communication 2.0 at School

Today, among social networks, video games, selfies and video recordings, adolescents' lives are mainly centered on their web devices. This is a constantly and rapidly changing world where grown-ups are often hard put to keep up with teenagers' fashions. Therefore, schools have an absolute duty to help students find their way in this jungle of tools that provide both huge possibilities and serious risks. Teachers must therefore act as guides for their students, proving to them that they know, appreciate, and are not prejudiced against the tools used by them daily. A teacher-student relationship based on these premises is a requirement for any innovative educational approach. Therefore, creating a Communication Lab 2.0 in school is of great help towards several goals: building a good educational relationship, constantly updating teachers about teenagers' web mores, providing information about Web security and hints about possible new and innovative educational paths.

Learning by Doing in 3D Environments

Learning by doing using 3D worlds is a relatively new approach for teachers and students. To date, a limited number of teachers have had the time or money to take university courses on this or otherwise develop in-world teaching that fully takes advantage of the unique opportunities virtual worlds offer. In this chapter, the authors will review the various virtual worlds teachers have been collaborating on to teach different subjects to different people in different languages. The authors will also detail the twists and turns they've encountered in their own attempts to teach together in-world. Finally, the authors will look at new developments on the horizon and how they might impact what is already happening.

The Added Value of 3D World in Professional, Educational, and Individual Dynamics

The author focused her studies on the series of professional competences which have grown within virtual worlds, and which have been made possible thanks to two main peculiarities: the highly intuitive software and playfulness gaming. The research allowed to classify the various professions born within the Second Life virtual world, these have allowed also to become a viable economic opportunities in real life. In parallel with the observations on the dimension of “work” within Second Life, the author gave also attention to the relational and educational dynamics. The author decided to enact her sociological and didactical experiment in the occasion of the event Salerno in Fantasy, a yearly convention dedicated to the Fantasy world.

Virtual Reality as a Tool for Enhancing Learning in At-Risk Students and Increasing School Inclusion

The contribution aims at exploring previous and current practices of use of virtual environments, 3d Virtual Worlds also, for inclusion in education. There are many experiences of developing and using virtual environments for the inclusion of disabled and problematic students (autistic student, Asperger Syndrome students, dyslexic students, etc.). The majority of the experimentations gave important beneficial results. In particular, the essential technological characteristics of VR that are beneficial for inclusion are: immersion, presence, interaction, transduction and conceptual change. The design of those environments is sometimes conceived together with the final users, applying participatory design techniques. Virtual environments and Virtual Worlds are being used also in the management of drop-out rates and school failure, by using it for curricular diversification classroom with students in a situation of educational exclusion or academic failure. The contribution will discuss 7 cases of successful use of Virtual Reality at school, ranging from primary to secondary education.

Pedagogical Potential of Virtual Worlds

Every year, the number of people using virtual worlds is increasing. Virtual worlds and their avatars is a unique 3D experience for users. It is expected that virtual worlds will soon become the primary platform for all online activities. Looking at the increasing usage of virtual worlds, educators have started to use virtual worlds in their classes. Virtual worlds have the potential to provide a plethora of opportunities for meaningful learning. The objective of this chapter was to explore the potential applications of virtual worlds to enhance teaching pedagogies. This chapter explored many strengths and weaknesses of virtual worlds in academic settings. Some important issues were highlighted and specific recommendations were provided to make virtual worlds a more powerful and effective environment for student learning.

Foreign Language Teaching Practices in 3D Multi-User Virtual Immersive Learning Environments

3D multi-user virtual environments (MUVE) bring new opportunities to foreign language teaching and learning as a platform for teaching practices. Due to immersive and interactive nature of 3D MUVE, these tools have gained popularity in the field of foreign language learning and teaching. The power of virtual learning environments lies in creating immersive 3-D spaces that give users a sense of learning by doing. Moreover, the environment is interactive and is much the same as real world interaction. MUVE provides strong support for synchronous collaborations, interactions, and immersive environments for experiential and constructivist learning settings. Some key features of the virtual worlds comprise the ability to construct 3D environments that simulate real world situations, as well as the ability to have a virtual identity to create a cross-cultural self and the ability to have participants from around the world acting virtually in designated roles that convey new types of learning within this environment.

Coding CLIL Paths Inworld

Cross-curricular, content-based CLIL learning paths have been experienced extensively in a middle school class TEFL context, with students aged 11 to 13 for a period of three years. A Learning Management System (Google Apps for Education), fully integrated with free/open web tools, open source software and a school virtual world 3D environment based on Sim-on-a-stick and OpenSim, through overlapping ‘making' activities based on coding (Scratch animations), textual collaborative editing (Google Drive/Doc), web design (Mozilla html tools) to graphic design of 3d shapes (Blender) and virtual world texturing, building and scripting “learning objects” on prims. The primary aim has been the cooperative construction of ‘one' three-layered (real world + web + virtual world), synergic, learning environment that would increase students engagement by challenging their cognitive, socio-emotional and making skills and propose itself as a functional model of blended environment for the whole educational community.

Dante Project

Experiencing virtual world teaching had always the purpose to understand its role and possible uses in education. It is easy to see a direct use of 3D worlds in teaching: give the possibility to the students to work and practice different things in a free and flexible environments. This was always the dream of teachers in our era, that tries to put at the centre of the education their students. Giving a sense to 3D world teaching is not only to define what, when and why it can be used. Other requirements to understand better this process are a positive response from past experimentations, to have a feedback to evaluate; and a basic “training” of professors with the aim to put them in the condition to efficiently use (before the students) those virtual environments. These can also be described as “augmented environments”, not always linked to 3D world because the intrinsic value of this definition.

Geometry and Pastry Making/Tesselations and Decorations

One of many projects in virtual worlds in Opensim, platform devoted to teaching, perhaps the most distinctive and significant, was the one that had as its purpose the application of mathematics to the culinary art in a hotel school. It was an experimentation iTEC (Innovative Technologies for an Engaging Classroom) and innovative teaching methodology was used, with the help of new technologies, using Opensim and several useful widgets to your project. Studying geometry, using various geometric shapes conceived, designed and processed, they are built in 3D tessellations in opensim, then reproduced in laboratory confectionery, sugar paste and used to decorate cakes with colored geometric elements and special shapes. All through insights, searches on the net, development of concept maps, team work, aimed at the development of pupils' blog and lots of fun. Was also attended by the industry's most experienced students and faculty kitchen, for processing geometric tessellations cakes.