SLanguages 2009

This year's SLanguages conference promises to be the best ever - it starts later today at 20.00 Central European time and continues for the next 24 hours.

I'm excited to be speaking several times, first as part of the AVALON project, a European Union funded initiative, with 26 partners in 8 European countries. AVALON stands for Access to Virtual Learning live ONline, and our goal is to explore the potential for scenario-based language learning. This (tonight and then again tomorrow morning - see schedule for details) will be the first time we've spoken about it in public together - looking forward to it.

I'm also speaking as part of the panel discussion plenary on language teacher training in Second Life, with Nergiz Kern, Nick Noakes and Dennis Newson, although I think Dennis can't make it after all. We'll be talking about our experience organising the TESOL Electronic Village Online session on Virtual Worlds & Language Learning. The social network, http://evovwll.ning.com, that was set up for the EVO session has now just under 3000 members, and the discussions and meetings have been continuing, even though the actual EVO session finished back in February.

Finally, on Saturday I'll be talking about the Virtual Tourism CLIL course I organised earlier this year in Second Life. I'll mention how it went, include references to what the students thought about it (collected here), and finish off by taking people on a short tour of some of the places the students had to visit.

If you're interested in innovative ways of language learning and teaching , be sure to check out the SLanguages conference - hope to see you there!