 Hello everyone and welcome to the 1pm to 1.30pm session of the 2017 Open Simulator Community Conference. As a reminder to our in-world and web audience, you can view the full conference schedule at conference.opensimulator.org and tweet your questions or comments to at opensimcc with the hashtag PoundOSCC17. This session we are happy to introduce a terrific session called A Mind Palace for English and Immersive Worlds. Our speakers today are Shelwyn Corrigan and Heiker Philp. Shelwyn Corrigan has a master's in linguistics, a master's in digital media and learning and a certification in multimedia studies. She worked in digital design since 1994 and taught ESL and EFL in Europe, South America and at the University of San Francisco and won two USF awards for innovation in teaching with technology. Shelwyn teaches graduate courses in the digital media and learning program and for the new online MA TESOL program at USF. Four years ago she launched Learn It Town, a language school located in the virtual worlds of Second Life Unity 3D and Open Simulator. Heiker Philp is CEO of Let's Talk Online SPRL based in Brussels, Belgium and she's a provider for technical support for language learning and events in real time via the internet since 2003. Philp co-initiated four European funded projects to develop accredited and certified teacher training courses for language learning and learning in immersive environments. These EU projects are Lancelot, Avalon, Camelot and Guinevere, which starts in this month, December 2017. Philp runs her own web conferences, virtual world round table web conference on language learning technologies, DAF webcon for teachers of German and ESL languages, the annual symposium. She owns Edunation Islands in Second Life. Welcome all, let's begin the session. Thank you very much Lea and Cynthia for this wonderful introduction. I'm very, very pleased to be here and I'm just about impressed, not only by the sheer numbers present, but also by the wonderful organization of the organizers of the Open Sim Community Conference. You've done an awesome job and I've not seen anything crash nor lag. I mean, there was a bit of lag obviously with the many other jobs. No, fantastic program. Thank you so much for organizing this. And I'm thrilled to present today about the Mind Palace or Memory Palace for English in Virtual Worlds, which we conducted in Edmondo. Now, as you've seen on the program, Letizia Chinganotto was originally planned to be co-presenter. And I would like to just say a few words about Letizia and the wonderful work that Indiere, which is the research organization of the Italian Ministry of Education, is conducting in Virtual Worlds. They do have their own Sim. It's called Edmondo and they've been running it for about 10 years. It's protected. It's user protected because they take children in this virtual world. And here in the audience, we even have some of the teachers who've been regularly taking their children in Virtual Worlds. Can you, in the text chat, Annie and others, can you just wave hello because the work they've been doing there is just about tremendous. A lot of dedication, a lot of love. And Edmondo has provided for us, especially, I think it was a total of five sims in the end of the day, for conducting English language training courses, as well as methodology courses. And the slide you're seeing up there, we created a project, a methodology course for them, for the teachers called Village. And Village was the purpose of this methodology course was to create games in Virtual Worlds, but to teach the teachers on how to build their own games. Now, this program Village led to now the New Year Funny Project, which I will talk about later, after I'm passing over to Sherwin, because Sherwin is the genius behind the method of loci which we're going to present here. And warm welcome because Sherwin is just awesome. And she's done two courses in Second Life over a period of six months, actually 12 months in total. So we've been working in Edmondo for about two years. And over to you, Sherwin. Okay. Thank you, Heika. Hello, everyone. Well, you know, the method of loci came to me when we learned of a man, he was actually on a podcast, Bernard Drax podcast, and he had an organization called Love Arabic, and he wanted to use this method, the method of loci. So his students could memorize words and remember things. So he introduced us to the idea, but he wanted my company at Learn It Town to help him learn to teach this in a virtual environment. So we worked together for quite a while, and then he disappeared. So don't guess he went back to Canada and kept going, but I decided I was going to try it. And the idea of the method of loci, well, let me just give you a little history. Let's just read this first slide, this history I'll read it to you. In the fifth century, Simonides of Seos, a Greek poet, went to a banquet one evening. He left for a moment and stepped out of the building. At that moment, the palace collapsed, killing everyone at the banquet. No one knew exactly how many people had been in the palace. Simonides was approached by the families who wanted to know if their loved one was inside. Knowing the families were anxious to know who had attended the banquet, Simonides did a creative and unusual thing. With his eyes closed, he imagined the scene in the palace. He visualized his arrival and departure going through the palace in his mind. He saw himself entering the banquet hall and remembered the scene in which he thought, ah, I nodded, hello, Seudalus, on the way in. And remembered wondering how he had gotten a date with that cute philia. He recreated in his mind's eye the scene and the seating arrangements. In this way, he was able to recall an amazing number of those in attendance. So they used this in the true method of loci to actually memorize verbatim with great detail. So we wanted to put a little twist on it. So we said let's instead use it to create a context and we'll make language learning not a memorized experience but a more memorable experience. So we decided we would create a mind palace or a memory palace. And so we started out with the floor plan, which you can see here. We had a blank floor plan. We wanted something that was mutually common to everyone that everyone could relate to. And each week when the students came to class, they never knew which room would pop up. So every week we had a new room. And you'll see in the next slide we had a dining room scene where we covered Thanksgiving, American Thanksgiving traditions, and then we covered traditions in their own countries, which was this time Italy. So all of the Italian teachers are learning their secondary teachers and primary teachers and they're learning by this example. We're teaching them, we're modeling how you teach in a virtual world, and then they're going to their students and they're modeling that same behavior. So we can spread this sort of new teaching methodology of situated cognition, but also building an environment. Now each of these rooms related to some real life experience. So in a room like the kitchen where we started talking about food and what people cook in their country and what kinds of things we like and what kinds of things you find in the kitchen. And then we would make a trip to a restaurant. So that would relate to something very real life. It would relate to something in the home, but also something in real life. Then we would go into the office of the home. We'd build an office and we'd talk about home offices and then that would relate to a discussion on business and real life. So we could go from the personal, something that people recognize and jump out to something outside of the home and relate these things to real life. They're all very relatable. Okay, so let's see what is on the next slide. Yes, have you ever had an English class in a bathroom before? We thought that was interesting. Everyone thought they were quite tickled by it. So we had a very beautiful bathroom with a fireplace. And then this went from what's in a bathroom, what you do in a bathroom, to physical features, health issues, and then the real life experience. We went out to a hospital and had real life ailments and did some role play on that. So next we had a sunroom in a garden. One week a sunroom cropped up and one week a garden cropped up. So we had a lesson in a sunroom in a conservatory and what kinds of things you do there. And so the students really had a lot of time to role play in these places. So we gave them things to do. We gave a party, garden party. And another thing they did is they went to a place called Welcome to the Crazy Cabin Country Resort. So you check in here and then later you come back and you file your complaints to the right. So there are many problems with these cabins. You'll notice you go into them. They're very unpredictable. The couch is upside down. The bed is too big. The nightstand is up in the air. It's just a mess. So they have to use their imagination, go back and make a complaint of all of the problems in the rooms. The chairs are on the ceiling. There's no bed. There's a toilet in the room. There's a Christmas tree on the bed. There's a log in front of the door. We can't get out. So very unpredictable situation so that everybody had a lot of fun, but they had to use their imagination. Now here's our restaurant. It's called the Problem Palace Restaurant. Welcome. We specialize in rude servers. So you come over here after you've been to the kitchen in the dining room and you actually have a meal in a restaurant, but there's a problem with these meals. So every table has a problem. The fried eggs has a spider. The tomato soup has a fly. Some one spaghetti meal was served right on the table without a plate. I mean, really? So they all have little role play boxes. You'll see to the right and something was wrong with each place setting and they had to role play with the waitress or waiter and express their problems. Okay. And now we have a little video we'll play for you. The beginning, the sound isn't so great, but it will show you a lot of what we did and a lot of the fun that the students had. You'll hear the students voices. Okay, Haike, you want to play it? I prefer the classic garden. I love the fountain and the fountain with the game of water and the flowers, the colored flowers are beautiful. In this house, I like this bedroom because there is a fireplace, there is a piano, and I like music. What time can I come back to take my car? It's 11 o'clock. I think it's too late. Too late and... Yes, I need before. Before? Yes. I will work this night and so you can have your car at 7 o'clock, okay? Oh, it's very kind to you. Thank you very much. You're a friend. There is a tree on the bed, and then a trunk near the door. The coffee table is upside down the floor. I have a salad, but the lettuce is not washed. It's dirty, very dirty. Did you say that your lettuce is dirty? Yes, I say it. I think it seems very clean. It's green, and it's very nice. Oh, I take my glasses. Now I take my glasses. Thank you very much. Those who have just been in the middle of watching the video, you can watch it later. I would just like to close this presentation with our beautiful announcement that indeed we have last Friday on the 1st of December, we started the year, which is now the fourth year funded project, Quinevere. Quinevere stands for games used in engaging virtual environments for real-time language education. And this is the year we will actually teach or we'll try to develop a teacher training course and a accredited one for language educators to learn on how to develop games in virtual worlds, which is absolutely exciting for us. As I said, what laid basis to this was the work we did for India and also the Evo Sessions we ran on developing games. We've done a beautiful work on education. The teachers have been very, very, very innovative. And now I'm looking forward to two years of working with the University of Central Lancashire and the University of Istanbul, also an Italian university, the University of Uille Institute, the online University of Italy, and other commercial partners to develop this expertise on how to develop games. With that, I'm already finished. So this was the slide actually for Quinevere and I'm sorry about using this commercial picture for the game because this is what we associated with. I thank the audience so far and I would like to ask you for questions if you have any. Do we have five minutes for questions still? Thank you, Heiker. Let's see, I'm scrolling up to see if we had any questions. Are there any questions? I have a question to the audience actually. Who of you has learned the language in a virtual world? While they're answering, Heiker, I remember the English Village in Second Life and I spent some time there through the sled list. I was invited to participate in a game, right? And I remember how transformational that was. Thank you, thank you. Art Blue had a question, I think. Art Blue, let's see. Sorry, it was quickly gone. I think it's okay. Well, I'd like to thank you, Shaowen and Heiker, for a terrific presentation. As a reminder to our audience, you can see what's coming up on the conference schedule at conference.simulator.org. Following this session, the next session will begin at 2 p.m. in this keynote region and it's entitled The HyperGrid Panel. Also, we encourage you to visit the OSCC 17 poster expo in OSCC Expo 3 region to find accompanying information on presentations and to explore the HyperGrid tour resources in OSCC Expo 2 region, along with the sponsor and crowd funder booths located throughout all of the OSCC Expo regions. Thank you again to our speakers and to the audience.