A Boon to Second Life Language Schools

Technology Review Magazine has an article online about the upcoming addition of voice to the Second Life world. 

A Boon to Second Life Language Schools: New technology will allow high-quality audio in a virtual world

The article discusses the coming addition of voice to the Second Life client, and how several language schools and universities will be implementing this new technology for their courses:

“Starting in September, a language school called Languagelab.com will offer English and Spanish classes. The cost of the classes will be comparable to those in the real world, which can cost several hundred U.S. dollars for a semester-long course. “You won’t be taking classes in LanguageLab because it’s a lot cheaper,” says LanguageLab founder David Kaskel, an entrepreneur and PhD candidate at the Center for Computing in the Humanities at King’s College, London. “We think it’s a lot better than in a physical space because there’s more you can offer than in a classroom.” “

The demand for voice from online educational institutions, as with our project PacRimX Island, is high with so many educators adopting Second Life as a training platform:

“Seventy-four colleges currently have Second Life operations. “They’re dying to get their hands on voice,” says Joe Miller, vice president of Platform and Technology Development for Linden Lab, the manufacturer of Second Life.”

The environment of Second Life has advantages over the recent technologies employed in teaching language over the Internet:

“Teaching language in Second Life has an advantage over the other Internet-based methods, from blogs to podcasts to text chat, that have overwhelmed foreign-language teachers with teaching opportunities. It has what Graham Stanley, the project manager for the British Council’s island in Second Life, calls “a sense of place.” “This sense of place makes learning, and indeed socializing in a virtual world, a more ‘human’ experience than many other online environments,” he says.”

This article is well worth a read.  Technology Review magazine is a publication of MIT.  They are well respected in the industry and give this new development in Second Life a good review.