Virtual worlds

Imagine being able to take your class on a trip to meet another set of learners from another country.
Imagine getting your students talking to the foreign students, finding out about their lives and cultures. Finding the similarities and differences between their lives.
Imagine joining with these students to carry out a language task together, working together to solve the clues to a mystery.
This kind of trip is impossible for most schools. The costs of travelling to and staying in another country is far too high and organising an event like this far too complex.
However, it is becoming increasingly easier to do just this kind of collaboration and exploration through the internet in a virtual world.
Virtual worlds are three-dimensional worlds where users interact with objects and other users using a graphical representation of themselves called an avatar (see the picture). 
There is usually a large community of other users who also use the virtual world.
Virtual worlds have been developed as areas to play games or interact socially. One of the most famous virtual worlds for social interaction is called Second Life.
In Second Life users can build within the environment. 'Residents' can buy land or 'islands' and create realistic buildings and other objects. This has enabled users to make creative use of Second Life and build a large interactive world online. Of course, you don't need to build anything, most users just go into the world to meet other people.
To get an idea of what Second Life looks like watch this promotional video of the British Council's area in the teenager section of Second Life.
[If you cannot view YouTube for any reason, you can click on this link to open the video in a new window - note this will take a little while to download.]
Because the users of second life have control over their environment, the content of Second Life is as diverse as the World Wide Web, with all its wonderful content - and not so wonderful content.

To keep young users in a safe environment there is a separate section of Second Life for teenagers (known as the Teen Grid).
Virtual worlds can be very engaging for users and educators are interested in how they can be used in language teaching. Recently, users have been able to use headphones and microphones to communicate with speech within virtual worlds which opens up language learning possibilities.
That foreign school trip may not be as impossible as you thought.
Further reading:

• More from the British Council's Second Life island: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aERvhgSjiH0 
• Getting started with Second Life http://sl.nmc.org/wiki/Getting_Started
• Talk to the Avatar: Guardian Weekly article by Gavin Dudeney and Nicky Hockly about Second Life and education http://education.guardian.co.uk/tefl/story/0,,1929335,00.html

If you are interested in using Second Life with your users, contact your local British Council office for information on how to take your students into the British Council area of the Second Life Teen Grid.