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TALK WITH METhe social way to learn a language

The attractivity of web-based social networks has been the starting point for “Talk with me” as a new, interac-tive, deeply socially motivated way to learn. The project makes use of the potentials of a blended-learning approach, using Second Life™ as a virtual 3D interactive social community environment combined with a powerful learn managment system.

The platform provides content for the level A (basic user) of the languages Czech, Slovak, Hungarian and Slove-nian. It will motivate target groups that are less inclined to traditional language learning and will stimulate a rich multi-directional intercultural dialogue between the participants and the 'outside world'.

MISSION

NEWSLETTERNOVEMBER 2009

The mission of the 'Talk with me'-project combines several important intentions:

* It supports the European strategy of Multilingualism and motivates people to learn less known and less spoken European languages. As the countries where the languages are spoken are geographicaly close , the project can exploit the existing cross-border relationships and common �elds of interest.

* It uses the possibilities of state-of-the-art technology including a learn management system, Web 2.0 and 3D-virtual worlds to build an attractive setting for a creative and respect-ful learning process.

* It combines several elements of experience pedagogy and task-based learning as well as emotional and social learning with powerful information technologies and to integrate them in an immersive, engaging, user-friendly and e�cient language teaching system.

* It addresses learners who don´t like classical languages classes, who need a distance-learning o�er because of geographical or personal reasons and for whom social motiva-tion is especially important for their learning success.

TALKADEMY PROMOTES “TWM” AT THE ONLINE EDUCA FAIROnline Educa, an annual conference that's held in Berlin, claims to be 'The Largest Global E-Learning Conference for the Corporate, Educa-tion and Public Service Sectors'. Indeed it is one of the major events for the huge community of educational institutions, research institu-tions, public bodies and companies who are involved in distance learning. This year there will be delegates from more than 100 countries who will have a hard time to choose between up to 10 parallel sessions and activities in the plenary, the sessions and the exhibition area.'Talk with me' will be presented in the 'Crossing Borders Through Borderless Crossings' track, together with a talk by Ria Jacobi from Leiden University about assisting the acculturalisation process of foreign students and Michael Tighe from U.S. English Services about cross-cultural virtual teamwork.We expect a high interest in 'Talk with me''s approach because of the focus on the social dimension of learning and how far virtual worlds can provide appropriate settings for socio-emotional experiences (in comparision to 2D conference systems, etc.)

SLOVENIAN SENIORS INTERESTED IN “TALK WITH ME”The group of Slovenian seniors – members of the Maribor University for 3rd life period has been very active in Life Long Learning, curious enough to try and “risk”, something new. Almost all of them are using ICT quite successful, but they were not close with other social cyber nets. But they expressed interest to educate themselves in this way. By learning languages and being at the same time a “native guide” for other cyber colleagues, looks attractive to them. Because most of them are people with high educational level (teachers, social workers, psychologists, technical engineers, lawyers,..) they want to participate in developing and pilot phases of the project. They are interested to learn Czech the most, and want to establish foreign exchange between “Senior Students”. Their favourite learning topics are: general information about the country, culture and culinary, history & tourism, useful conversational phrases and emergency phrases.