Practicing the English Present Simple Tense in Active Worlds

The main purpose of the study was to determine the usefulness of using Active Worlds in teaching the English grammar. Specifically, the study examined the immediate and delayed effectiveness of using the chat feature of the Active Worlds' virtual environment for teaching the English present simple tense. In addition, the study explored the attitudes of students receiving this intervention as compared to a traditional approach. The sample consisted of 22 Polish senior high school students. The learners in the experimental group were subjected to innovative instruction and the students in the control group were taught in a traditional way. The data were obtained by means of a background questionnaire, a grammar test and a post-questionnaire. The results show that both groups benefited from the instruction they received; however, the experimental learners' long-term retention turned out to be much superior when compared with their control counterparts. What is more, the experimental students expressed more positive opinions of the lessons.

Ciberespacio y mundo virtuales: el caso de Active Worlds.

Las nuevas tecnologías de la información y de la comunicación, NTIC, básicamente Internet, alteran las formas de interacción social, gracias a las grandes posibilidades que actualmente ofrece el ciberespacio a las sociedades. A pesar de existir todavía una diferenciación de uso y de accesibilidad al ciberespacio, es probable que las personas, que tienen acceso a las tecnologías digitales, sientan que pueden estar ‘aquí’ y ‘allá’ de forma instantánea, lo cual causa —quizá sin percatarse, — alteraciones en las nociones tradicionales del espacio tiempo. Una de las tantas formas de comprender el nuevo espacio emergente, es decir el ciberespacio, es mediante el estudio de los Mundos Virtuales, entre los cuales se destacan los sub-mundos virtuales de Active Worlds.

Building Virtual Worlds for Informal Science Learning (SciCentr and SciFair) in the Active Worlds Educational Universe (AWEDU)

As a focus of its exploration of desktop 3-D environments for science outreach, the Cornell Theory Center (CTC), Cornell University's high-performance computing center, has been exploring the use of the Active Worlds client/server technology for implementation of a 3-D multiuser virtual science museum, SciCentr, that incorporates interactive simulation-based exhibits. We present here early lessons in accommodating the needs of several interconnected user groups as we move forward with establishing the SciCentr community within the greater educational community of Active Worlds Educational Universe (AWEDU) and the Contact Consortium's VLearn3D initiative. We learned that we must provide the user communities with both social and spatial frameworks within which to work and play. Social support ranges from one-on-one, over-the-shoulder help, to guidance and training within the environment, to coordination of “inworld” activities and inperson pizza parties. Spatial design requirements depend on the activities of the user group and benefit from study of real and virtual world examples. Our experience to date with a pilot group of teenaged participants is encouraging, and we believe that this medium has potential as a resource for constructivist informal science and technology education.