Machinima in Language Learning Introduction “Many universities and organisations have found their way into virtual worlds over the past 10 years to offer courses and seminars with qualifications and degrees. However, there are numerous organisations as well as individual teachers, who are still sceptical about learning and teaching in virtual worlds. One of the main factors that prevent teachers from getting involved with virtual worlds is technical insecurity and the fear that their learners might be well ahead of them.” (1) In order to help teachers or individual learners with virtual worlds and trigger interest for further use, the authors produced a series of films called machinima to: • promote learning in virtual worlds, • make access easy through simple and visual instructions, • trigger interest in learning and teaching in virtual worlds, • demonstrate what can be achieved by learning in virtual worlds, • understand the benefits and challenges of learning in 3D worlds. “Our vision is that ‘It is never too late to learn something new’ and this is what one of the machinima was devoted to. It was produced to encourage people, in this case especially older people or people with disabilities, who are not able to go to places or travel around and are bound to stay in their home, to get involved in virtual worlds and maybe learn a language or visit other places and meet people to talk to. In virtual worlds the avatar, which is the graphical representation of a computer user representing himself/herself or his/her alter ego, does not show – unless you wish to do so -‐ age or impairments.” (1) A Virtual World - MUVE A virtual world is a 3D (three dimensional) environment where people from all around the world can come together in space regardless of their geographical location. Second Life is one of the numerous virtual worlds existing in the metaverse. At the time of writing Second Life has the equivalent of something like 24,000 square miles of developed landscape in nearly as many privately-‐owned regions of every conceivable design with thousands of free artefacts. Virtual worlds are known by the acronym MUVE -‐ Multi User Virtual Environments. Virtual worlds are great places for language learning where learners may mix freely with native speakers of their target language. “MUVEs like SL have unique affordances that can provide opportunities for a richer embodied social presence, sensory immersive experiences, hands-‐on activities, and authentic contexts for experiential learning.” E-‐LEARNING DESIGN AND SECOND LIFE: A RESEARCH ON AFFORDANCES LAURA FEDELI An Avatar
People in the virtual worlds are presented as avatars, a graphical model of themselves. People can choose to look like a human, animal or almost anything imaginable, who can move around the 3D world, flying, walking and talking to others. When people make an account in any virtual world, the first thing they do is to create or choose a starter avatar.
The avatar is controlled by the mouse, track pad, or letter keys. What we see on screen is from just behind the avatar looking forward. Why teach in a Virtual World? The virtual world offers something quite different to what is available in the physical classroom. The things that are good for learning and teaching are call affordances. The affordances of a virtual world for the learners are: • They can interact with people both within and outside of the virtual world at the same time. • People with all different languages and cultures are able to meet, interact and learn collaboratively regardless of their geographical location. • They can take part in simulations of events which would be impossible for many in real life situations -‐ such as going on a rocket into space, working on an oil rig or mending a pipeline under the sea. • People can do things which they can’t do in their physical life such as fly, walk under water, sky dive, fly aeroplanes or helicopters and, in fact, anything one can imagine doing. • They can visit place such as virtual Morocco, take part in the virtual Hajj, fly up the Eiffel Tower, visit Berlin of the Twenties or climb Big Ben, either alone or in groups. • People can completely change their identity, personality, gender, size or shape and become non-‐human such as a robot, vehicle or an animal. • There are no physical disabilities in a virtual world unless someone wants one. • Being able to record oneself and peers in a great number of places as an infinite number of characters and in many different situations, and these recordings can be edited together to create machinima. The affordances of a virtual world for teachers are: • They can offer learners a place to meet and engage in social, cultural and entertainment activities. • They can prepare field trips to the most wonderful places to engage and inspire learners. • They can prepare simulations of life changing events such as a sinking ship, a plane crash or maybe a massive industrial fire, which their learners can learn from without being in any danger. http://youtu.be/WrIFDl9Gaus Tornado simulation • They can simulate many everyday situations which may occur when visiting places such as a bank, the hospital, the supermarket or a hotel, thus enhancing the immersive environment and experiential learning aspect, particularly for language learners.
The affordances for language learning in virtual worlds and the use of avatars which can adopt any shape, age, gender or costume, so can become anyone from Mary Queen of Scots to President Obama, a cat to a dinosaur, give people the scope for creating motivating videos. What is machinima? Machinima is simply a word composed from "machine" and "cinema" and it has become the collective name for films or videos made in virtual worlds and gaming environments. Machinima can be very simple, just a recording of scripted narration, dialogues and role plays, or they can be very elaborate with several film clips or images woven into the action. Call outs, subtitles, blocks of text, speech bubbles, music and special effects can also be
added to produce a more complex and satisfying machinima. Examples of the simplest to more complex will be used to demonstrate techniques through this book.
What this book is about This book is a guide which concentrates on using Second Life, a program offering “Your World -‐ Your Imagination,” that is completely free to join. The authors have used examples from Second Life www.secondlife.com rather than OpenSim or any other virtual world as Second Life is the most sophisticated virtual world for the creation of machinima. Everything about making machinima written here could also be applied to other virtual worlds.
Who is this guide for? This book is written for teachers and learners of all subjects with a special focus on language learning. Those people new to virtual worlds need to follow some basic instructions in order to log into the virtual world and create their avatar before they can get started with making machinima. There is lots of orientation material available but that is not being covered by this book. See: Getting started with Second Life -‐ a video guide http://youtu.be/TPHTknDn9Fo and http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Second_Life_Education/Get_Started a written guide and in-‐ depth help wiki.
Pedagogical underpinnings Experiential Learning “Experiential learning can exist without a teacher and relates solely to the meaning making process of the individual's direct experience. However, though the gaining of knowledge is an inherent process that occurs naturally, for a genuine learning experience to occur, there must exist certain elements. According to David A. Kolb, an American educational theorist, knowledge is continuously gained through both personal and environmental experiences. He states that in order to gain genuine knowledge from an experience, certain abilities are required: • The learner must be willing to be actively involved in the experience; • The learner must be able to reflect on the experience; • The learner must possess and use analytical skills to conceptualize the experience; and • The learner must possess decision making and problem solving skills in order to use the new ideas gained from the experience.” Wikipedia (4) Index
Experiential learning is learning by taking part in an activity, actually doing it and then reflecting on that activity. Learning in Second Life or other virtual worlds and using the experience to make machinima ideally supports this learning method. One can take part in an activity, for example making a pitch to some prospective customers in a business language learning class, or visiting a restaurant and ordering food and drinks in a social setting for tourism. It can be filmed ready to make a machinima. If ordering food and drink in the restaurant for example, then the vocabulary, remembering to say please and thank you or any other cultural conventions will all be important. In a business language learning pitch the actual presentation skills and pitch associated vocabulary may be the learning objectives. Also a teacher and other learners present may question the performer at length, thus again the learner is reflecting on the experience and revising or updating their thoughts. Whilst developing the machinima itself, it is necessary to reflect quite deeply on what has been done in the lesson to ensure the machinima is true to the learning intentions. Sharing the machinima helps the learner to analyse the outcome and further practice the language. Index The Six Learnings of Second Life When teachers move into a virtual world, the temptation to simply replicate their classroom, so that they are comfortable and familiar with their lessons is quite powerful. However, teachers need to be encouraged to try out new styles of teaching. This is really difficult especially in the first instance where it is hard to see how to do anything different from their usual classroom practice and they do not have well developed virtual world skills. New methods and learning perspectives such as the “Six Learnings Framework”(5) offer approaches which will help teachers think differently when they come to teach in Second Life or any other virtual world. It is easy to see, when reading down the list, that machinima could give great language learning potential within this framework.
The six learning perspectives are: • Learning by exploring -‐ for example learning results from exploring virtual world builds such as a virtual museum or art gallery where specific vocabulary would be introduced into the conversation. A virtual tour to Renaissance island Virtual tour to Renaissance Island Virtual Museums in AvayaLive
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Learning by collaborating -‐ here learning results from working together for example by planning, designing and filming a tour guide for one of the sims, or solving a puzzle such as reconstructing the rocket where one partner gives the other instructions in the target language. http://youtu.be/CAo-‐fC3O-‐eo Building a rocket Learning by being -‐ There are many role-‐play sims in virtual worlds where learners may be encourage to explore and take part with native speakers. Also there are any number of holodecks which can be used for small dialogue scenarios such as booking into a hotel, visiting a doctor, ordering food in a restaurant and more. Making machinima of these activities give opportunities to revise and correct any language issues.
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Learning by building -‐ for example the conversation based around building a simple poster display based on a theme where new vocabulary is needed would ensure new vocabulary is learned, used and committed to the long term memory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajc-‐BfrRhv8 How to build a window in a wall https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO9pi3kN0kw Setting up a presentation in Second Life Learning by championing -‐ for example learners could make a machinima to teach everyone how to use a new teaching tool such as the Opinionator. Lim, in his paper, suggests championing a real-‐life cause and there are many in Second Life such as Cancer Research or Aid for Africa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz10N2G0MwQ Fantasy Faire Learning by expressing -‐ this is to focus learners on expressing and articulating their learning by sharing it with others outside the virtual world, in this instance machinima could act as a huge enabling resource, the potential is vast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km_afd0_dEI Why Second Life (or any virtual world)
Situated Learning Situated learning “Lave and Wenger (1991)[1] argue that learning should not be viewed as simply the transmission of abstract and decontextualized knowledge from one individual to another, but a social process whereby knowledge is co-‐constructed; they suggest that such learning is situated in a specific context and embedded within a particular social and physical environment.” Their theory is that adult learning may take place through socialization, visualization, and imitation. Socialization -‐ A virtual world gives access to situated learning as it is a) a place for anyone from anywhere to meet socially, chat, dance, make music and more. http://youtu.be/TZP54zcZQfc The Drumming Circle Visualisation is a major factor in learning in a virtual world, it is possible to walk through molecular cell structures or be in the middle of a tornado without danger. http://youtu.be/WrIFDl9Gaus Tornado Simulation Imitation is doing the thing that you are learning about. Imitating what you are learning in the physical world, for example in a language learning context one may go shopping with the group and rehearse buying clothes to familiarise themselves with the experience. http://youtu.be/invu_jwfql8 Einkaufsbummel
Who is this book for? The first section of the book deals with ideas for teachers and learners to use machinima either in the classroom, the virtual world, or individually. A scheme of work and several lesson plans can be found in the appendix for further reference when planning classes. All of these can be adapted to different groups and levels of learners. The educational potential of machinima in virtual worlds for language learners is vast. So long as they have access to a digital device, learners can listen to a machinima created by a teacher; practise the language whilst trying it out in the 3D reality of a virtual world simulation. For higher level learners planning, preparing, filming and editing their own machinima is an interesting way to involve other learners using their target language. Virtual worlds can create an immersive environment which is not possible in the physical classroom. Simply practicing booking into a hotel, making complaints, ordering food and similar scenarios make the language learning experiential. Learning is more likely to be committed straight to the long term memory in these situations. Interviews for business language learners, people looking for jobs or learners hoping to get into university are powerful, realistic and easy to manage rehearsal opportunities. A machinima (video) of the applicant’s mock interview can be studied, discussed and verbal techniques can be improved, all simply by conducting the interview in a virtual world and recording the action. The second part of the book is showing teachers and learners how to make machinima. There are some very good reasons to make machinima: they are fun, cheap, students can produce their own, avatars can do the impossible, creators have ownership and machinima is cheaper than film. There are many instructional machinima being made, how to use various pieces of equipment for nursing or farming as simulations for example, these can be made and shared very cheaply. With regard to language learning we have seen machinima made to teach
students what to expect when they go to a new city or country to study. Also there is marketing potential in machinima making, both producing for companies and developing one’s own to sell. (NB if you have a mobile phone or tablet and use the Augmented Reality program Aurasma, each machinima image will play the machinima) INDEX Introduction • • •
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What is a Virtual World -‐ MUVE? What is an Avatar? Why teach in a Virtual World? o The affordances of the virtual world for the learner o The affordances of the virtual world as a teacher What is machinima? What this book is about? Who is this guide for? Pedagogical underpinnings o Experiential Learning o The Six Learnings of Second Life o Situated Learning
Section 1 Chapter 1 Example of Machinima in Different Genres • Documentaries • Poetry • Storytelling -‐ Aesop’s Fables • Grammar • Idioms • Conversation Practice • Heritage • Humour • Informative Machinima • Instructional Machinima • Project Based Machinima • Role Play • Sketches • Intercultural Issues • Advertising •
A Case study of making and using machinima in a language lesson o Using machinima to give feedback o The teaching steps are as follows o Integrating quizzes o Further Ideas for role-‐play and where you could film them
Chapter 2 Ideas for how to use Machinima • Before watching the machinima • Whilst Watching the Machinima • After Watching the Machinima
Section 2 Chapter 3 -‐ How to make a Machinima in a virtual world Six Stages 1. Finding the Idea 2. The script 3. The machinima plan 4. Filming 5. Editing 6. Post production Machinima group management
Case Study -‐ The making of the Two Travellers and the Bear • Stage 1 Getting an Idea • Stage 2 The Script • Stage 3 The Machinima Plan • Stage 4 The filming • Stage 5 The editing process • Stage 6 Post production Making your first machinima in a virtual world • The Software Needed • Decide Where to Film o Studios o Holodecks • Getting Ready for Filming o Set the window for HD video o Check the lighting for your scene o Prepare your shot o Hide the buttons o Use an invisible avatar o Capture video o Check continuity • Add Interest to your Machinima o Use animations o Use gestures o Use different clothes o Obtain and use Props • Edit the video o Adding Transitions o Titles or Call Outs o Making and Adding Audio Files § Making a vocal recording § Music and Sound Effects • Sharing your machinima Chapter 4 -‐ Challenges • Dialogue and Script Writing
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Adding text to your Machinima -‐ do or don’t Dealing with Copyright Issues o Copyright o Creative Commons Licensing o Second Life Permissions Music and Sound Effects Things don’t always look right Griefers or Griefing
Chapter 5 More Advanced Machinima Techniques • Graphics Card Settings • Draw Distance • Depth of Field • Getting the light right • How to make lights in a virtual world • How to use the Windlight Settings • Green Screen or Chroma Key • Creating a Photobox or photosphere • A demonstration of using Greenscreen • Using a 3D Mouse • Second Life and other virtual world Short Cuts and Settings Appendix Machinima in Transmedia A Scheme of Work -‐ using Machinima in a Language Class Lesson Plans • Dog Idioms • Simple Past Talk • Talking about the weather Story Starters Machinima List Machinima Festivals and Competitions Useful Web Links Other video editing software Free Sound Effects and Music Research into Machinima Bibliography