In this lesson I wanted students
1.) to practice using maps, giving directions, finding locations, using North, South, West and East instead of up, down, left and right; this would be useful for moving around at schMOOze;
2.) to understand and write short descriptions of people; guests at schMOOze University are asked to give a short description of themselvesthis what others on campus will "see" when they look at them.
3.) wait the second class with anticipation.
I also wanted to break them up into small groups (hoping that these groups would not change much for the second lesson).
For the first activity I gave each student an incomplete map. The names of some of the buildings were missing and the groups had to piece together the information they each had in order to come up with the full map. However, they were not allowed to use up, down, left or right to refer too location; they had to use North, South, West and East instead.
For the second activityI prepared a simple quiz to practice descriptions. I gave short descriptions of famous people (film stars, politicians, etc.) and three names the groups could choose from. At the end of the activity I asked students to write short descriptions of others in the class.
Finally, I gave them a "sneak peek" about the second class.
Now that students knew all the basic vocab necessary to communicate and navigate around schMOOze, we were ready to do just what the name of the place implies. Instead of telneting into schMOOze University, however, we used a small but very useful freeware program called MUDWin which has a lot more user-friendly interface than what telneting would give you. You can, for example, scroll the accumulating text and therefore are able to respond to somebody even if twenty more people connect to schMOOze before you could finish your answer. Another very important feature of this program is logging. If you turn it on at the beginning of your visit, MUDWin will write everything that you see on the screen into a file. This would make Robert's life (and the students', for that matter) a lot easier: the groups used the log files as raw materials to write their short stories.
Once we let MUDWin send a telnet command to arthur.rutgers.edu 8888 we connected by simply typing connect guest. Then each group chose a name and typed in a short description about themselves. As the place was new to all of the students we took advantage of the University's "crash course" and went directly to the classroom. Choosing from the lessons on the board each group learned about moving around the campus (learn move), looking at things (learn look), talking to people (learn say), or expressing emotions (learn emote). Finally I had the groups report on what they learned and we pieced together the information we had.
We took a quick look at the map of schMOOze University and we were ready for adventure. (I gave the groups a photocopied version of the map as MUDWin tends to mix up some of the characters.)
The last thing we did together was that we went to the Student Union Building, found the Game Room and played some language games like Hangman, Boggle, etc. Then, finally, the students were free to discover the University for themselves and to talk to others on campus. (By now most of them had already initiated conversations, mostly with one another.)
Some important URLs about schMOOze:
There is a General Introduction to schMOOze University at http://www.cc.rim.or.jp/~awaji/schMOOze/ENG/general.html.
If you want to take a Tour around the campus then go to http://www.cc.rim.or.jp/~awaji/schMOOze/ENG/general.html.
Those unsure about the Comands they need to type in should visit http://www.cc.rim.or.jp/~awaji/schMOOze/ENG/ocommands.html.