A big feature of the VEL vision is the establishment of a community of practice that will act to mentor and support members of the community in fully developing and utilizing virtual worlds and task-based (language) learning to enrich the learning experiences of students learning foreign languages in the foreign language classroom. Just as we are sharing the resources and experience we have developed over the years with other interested educators, so we hope that as other educators become more experienced with developing and using virtual worlds as an integral part of their teaching they will be will to share their experiences, insights and resources with the VEL community.

Actually, there is already a well established community of educators around the world developing, using and researching the educational use of virtual worlds. A new group of highly experienced and very active users of OpenSim for a range of different educational purposes was recently established on Google+. The community is called the “Virtual Worlds Teacher Network”. We would strongly anyone interested in virtual worlds and education to join this vibrant community on Google+.

Looking for collaborators

There is still much to be done in terms of further developing the VEL approach to task-based language learning in a virtual world environment and the associated resources. If you are interested in collaborating with the VEL team to customise the VEL resources to your teaching needs and/or collaborative research into this approach, please feel free to email the Project Team Leader at any time to discuss things in greater detail.(scott.grantATmonash.edu)