{"id":83,"date":"2009-07-07T10:45:56","date_gmt":"2009-07-07T15:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/languages\/?p=83"},"modified":"2011-02-12T14:07:07","modified_gmt":"2011-02-12T19:07:07","slug":"new-virtual-world-berlin-twinity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/2009\/07\/07\/new-virtual-world-berlin-twinity\/","title":{"rendered":"New Virtual World (Berlin) \u2013 Twinity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Received news via <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/BryanAlexander\">Bryan Alexander&#8217;s Twitter<\/a> about a virtual world that&#8217;s in beta called Twinity.\u00a0 They&#8217;re going to create virtual worlds based on real cities.\u00a0 The current beta version is Berlin.\u00a0 At first glance, the layout seems very accurate and there is even a Google Map of Berlin embedded into the virtual interface.\u00a0 The controls are similar to SecondLife, though a bit more clunky at the moment.\u00a0 It is beta, afterall.\u00a0 There is in world voice communication as well and there are options for different languages.<\/p>\n<p>SecondLife still gets a fair amount of press among language teachers who are using it as a environment for speaking practice.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve never been much of a fan of the idea, mostly because the technical overhead, reliability, griefers, and the learning curve for SecondLife never seemed to justify the the activity of speaking via an avatar within a representation of the real world.\u00a0 With this version of virtual Berlin, the challenge would be to find an activity that took advantage of the representation and was engaging enough to justify the extra classtime.\u00a0 Ideally, this would involve interacting with native speakers as well.\u00a0 If anyone has suggestions, I&#8217;d appreciate comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Received news via Bryan Alexander&#8217;s Twitter about a virtual world that&#8217;s in beta called Twinity.\u00a0 They&#8217;re going to create virtual worlds based on real cities.\u00a0 The current beta version is Berlin.\u00a0 At first glance, the layout seems very accurate and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/2009\/07\/07\/new-virtual-world-berlin-twinity\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":776,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[98],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-virtual-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/776"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}