Collective+Learning+Community

The proposed e-Learning Virtual Worlds in Education Collective Learning Community comprises two groups of students from two schools in New South Wales, Australia. Whilst both of these schools are multicultural public co-educational schools, School A is located in the Sutherland Shire of Sydney and School B is located in the country town of Parkes, NSW. These students aged 15-16 years of age are learners of English for Speakers of Other Languages. 'School A' students originate from China, Korea, Vietnam and Nepal and 'School B' students originate from Sudan, Thailand and India whilst three students are indigenous Australians. Both classes include mixed-level English speakers including pre-intermediate and intermediate level students. These students will be engaging in a Virtual World within Teen Second Life to build their English reading, writing, listening, speaking, and grammar and vocabulary skills.Classroom teachers and Learning & Teaching Support staff are also engaged in this Collective Learning Community.In total, theiry learners are involved in this proposed e-Learning Virtual Worlds in Education Collective Learning Community. These learners include twelve students and three teachers/support staff of School A in Sutherland, and twelve students and three teachers/support staff of School B in Parkes.

This aim of this Collective Learning Community is to support the school student's learning of English. An initial individual assessment of each of these student's level of English skills will be undertaken one week prior to the first e-Learning Virtual World in Education session which will last for 30 minutes. This Virtual Worlds in Education pilot project is to be conducted over a three month period initially. It will be closely monitored by four e-Learning researchers including one child psychologist and one teacher respectively from the Bathurst Campus of Charles Sturt University (CSU), and also the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).

Ethical considerations will be uppermost throughout the above-mentioned project. In particular, the safety and well-being of the young learners engaged in the group will be constantly monitored. The 'Teen Second Life' platform to be used for this project will be especially designed to ensure that students activities whilst engaged in virtual worlds are closely monitored and that adults may intervene in the case of inappropriate intrusion, language or behaviours arising at any time.

This study will include consideration of the health effects of the use of Virtual Worlds in this educational project. Both the positive and negative effects will be observed by the researchers and support staff. All staff involved in the project will be given pre-training sessions to enable them to detect any negative effects of this pilot study; for example, incidences of motion sickness amongst the young learners, when engaged in the Virtual World, 'Teen Second Life'.

In the first instance, a social networking evaluation checklist will be conducted prior to commencement of the learning sessions involving the students from School A and School B. This checklist will include considerations of 'a) membership types b) age restrictions c) profile privacy and moderations settings, member's tool kits and file/digital technology uploads (Childnet International, 2007). In addition, consideration of the social networking services available to the group of learners will include 'group settings, group tools, mobile, other collaborative tools, search, templates, content and /or design customisation, and adverts (Childnet International, 2007). Consideration of security and access factors including content ownership, adult content, managing inappropriate content, age-specific functions and safety information will be established prior to online activity (Childnet International, 2007). With regard to viewing and moving content, guidance concerning 'getting external content in, content out, privacy policy, terms of use and community guidelines' will be provided (Childnet International, 2007).

The potential benefits for the learners engaged in e-Learning Virtual Worlds in Education will be assessed with consideration to '1) young people as social participants and active citizens 2) young people developing a voice and building trust 3) young people as content creators, managers and distributors 4) young people as collaborators and team players 5) young people as explorers and learners 6) young people becoming independent and building resilience 7) young people developing key and real-world skills (Childnet International, 2007)'.

Furthermore, the opportunites for English language learning will be considered and facilitated throughout this Virtual Worlds in Education project including ' 1) development of e-portfolios 2) literacy and communication skills 3) collaborative and group work 4) learning about data protection and copyright issues 5) learning about self-representation and presentation - thinking about how they will be viewed across different contexts 6) learning about e-safety issues 7) producing public showcases for work, events or organisations 8) forming communities of practice (Childnet International, 2007).

Potential barriers and risks to exploiting social networking services will be identified in the preliminary phase of this project including issues relating to '1) educators' confidence and experience 2) negative views of social netorking services 3) blocking and filtering rpocedures within Austrlaian education 4) digital media literacy policy 5) risk evaluation and management tools 6) control of data (Childnet International, 2007)'.

Childnet International, 2007, Young people and social networking service, URL: http:www.digizen.org/socialnetworking/
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