This paper presents the outcomes of a short intercultural exchangeproject involving pre-service English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher trainingestablishments in Sweden and Israel. The project comprised three online meetingsrecorded in Zoom in which student teachers gave feedback on each other’s projectassignments involving lesson planning and the use of spoken English in theclassroom. The sessions were moderated by a highly experienced teacher trainerwith contributions from other teacher trainers in the institutions involved. Withrestrictions imposed on physical meetings and student mobility by the Covid-19pandemic, the exchange helped to shed light on a number of perennial issues inEnglish language teaching methodology and offers a feasible model for futuresustainable virtual exchanges in EFL teacher training.

In recent years, schools, municipalities, and universities have madeincreasing use of educational technologists (edtechs) to support teaching staff inthe delivery of technology-based courses in face-to-face, blended, or purely onlineformats. This paper is a case study focusing on the types of training and supportprovision provided by three edtechs within the arts and humanities faculty of a largeprovincial university in southern Sweden. The edtechs also identify a number ofobstacles in the way of developing Information and Communication Technology(ICT) and computer assisted language learning expertise among teaching staff.

This article describes how remote supervision of teacher trainees was set up and carried out during the period from autumn 2015 to autumn 2017. In the autumn of 2015 Linnaeus University in southern Sweden started an operation to remotely supervise teacher trainees doing one of their teaching practices outside Sweden. The operation entailed each teacher trainee being lent an iPad Mini, loaded with the apps they needed, so that they could record lesson elements on their teaching practice. These lesson elements were then uploaded to the university's Moodle platform and the trainees received formative assessment of their performance on an ongoing basis throughout their 5-week teaching practice.

The relentlessly accelerating global educational demands for teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) in multiple, diverse, and often remote geographic locations constitute new challenges for academic institutions, teacher training and preparation programs, and teachers themselves. This study describes a novel approach where five elementary school preservice teachers teaching ESL/EFL borrowed an iPad mini from their teacher training institution customized with specific apps to record a series of five teaching sequences during their teaching practice placement in elementary schools in Tanzania and Kenya. All recorded sessions were uploaded to a Moodle Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)site specially constructed for the purpose of the teaching practice course. Results indicate that, apart from their experienced instructors’ feedback on their teaching practice, the recorded sessions formed constructive tools for self-reflection, self-evaluation and the pursuit of possible paths for improvement.

his paper reports on the evaluation of student teacher information and communications technology (ICT) projects in English language didactics in accordance with recently proposed frameworks of digital literacy in both language-teaching and wider working and educational contexts (Dudeney, Hockly, & Pegrum, forthcoming; Hockly, 2012; Pegrum, 2011). The challenge for teachers, regardless of what stage they are at in their careers, is to be able to operationalize in Hockly’s (2012) terms the notion of digital literacy in the foreign language classroom while at the same time encorporating these concerns into a task-based framework in which communication is balanced with a focus on linguistic form. Students in their second term of studies in language didactics were given the task of creating an ICT-based project in English, encorporating both internet and classroom-based inquiry activities aimed at either lower or upper secondary levels in the Swedish school system. The project brief given to the student teachers more VSHFL¿FDOO\DGGUHVVHGWKHLUDELOLW\WRSODQDQGRUJDQL]HDVHWRIOHDUQLQJDFWLYLWLHVDURXQGan extended webquest in addition to demonstrating the procedural usage of a wide range of ICT tools such as wikis, blogs, podcasts, etc. in English language teaching (ELT). The four areas of language-, information-, connection-, and re-design-based digital literacies, as proposed by Pegrum (2011), form the basis for the evaluation of the projects.

This graphic novel is the documentation of Places, People, Stories, a conference held at Linnaeus University in Kalmar, 28–30 September 2011. The conference was the culmination of the research project Places as Stories (see page 31) and attracted more than 175 participants from around the world, including Scandinavia, United Kingdom, USA, Japan, Argentina, Israel, India, the Marshall Islands and Australia. A wide spectrum of disciplines was represented including Anthropology, Archaeology, Architecture, Art, Business Studies, Design, Heritage Studies, History, Human Geography, Literature, Media Studies, Pedagogics, Religious Studies and Tourism Studies. Professionals working in the education, landscape and heritage sectors were also invited. The conference, which took place at the conference centre Brofästet close to the Baltic Sea, just outside the centre of Kalmar, featured four keynote lectures and more than 120 academic presentations in 18 sessions as well as six artistic contributions. Some sessions may be published separately in traditional academic formats. The conference was supported by grants received from Linnaeus University and the Swedish National Heritage Board. During the three conference days a multidisciplinary discussion took place about human narratives and their connections to places. The aim was to create a platform for unpredictable dialogues between professional scientists and artists, while providing opportunities for personal encounters and conversations that may lead to a new understanding of how cultural phenomena emerge.

This chapter addresses the issues of assessing student performance on courses run in virtual worlds. While best practices for assessment in education in virtual worlds are not yet established, our applied practices and experiences help to develop these.

Working in a virtual world creates new opportunities available for both students and teachers and introduces new challenges to their skills and resources. In particular, virtual worlds such as Second Life (SL) offer revolutionary and innovative modes for learning. These learning spaces are referred to as Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) (Gredler, 2001; Jenkins, 2005). The guiding principle for the adoption of new VLEs by educators is that the particular features of each new Information and Communications Technology (ICT)-based tool should be used to provide specific benefits to the students' learning environments. While virtual worlds like SL are visually very rich environments where many types of stimuli and materials can be made available to students, the question is: what 'mainstream' university campus activities may be carried out completely within VLEs such as SL? We propose to explore this question and identify the potential to support teacher and learner interactions and activities within a virtual campus space of SL.

In this presentation we will describe the Kamimo project, a two year cooperation (2007-2008) between the University of Kalmar (Sweden), University College Molde (Norway) and Central Missouri University (USA) and sponsored by the Norwegian Open University (Norgesuniversitet). The project aims to investigate the potential uses of virtual worlds in higher education by carrying out a number of courses, projects and collaborative work in Second Life.  The project has established two virtual islands, Kamimo Island and Virtual Montmartre in cooperation with external consultants who have assisted with the building and establishment of the islands.   The main objectives of the project are to:  1) Create a stimulating virtual learning environment in SL   2)  Test and evaluate different teaching and learning activities in SL (courses, projects, meetings, roleplay)   3) Test and evaluate how effectively SL can be used in fostering cooperation (between faculties, universities, business)   4) Test selected learning tools or elements together with the virtual environment  The project supports learning activities for different segments of the partner organizations student populations as well as allowing for cross communication between the student bodies. We have offered two courses in English presentation skills run completely in Second Life, several student projects designing and building virtual environments in SL as part of an ongoing degree program, courses for information technology majors and further integration and testing of the virtual world elements for learning and for support of learning and communication between groups within the business sector. These activities are being evaluated and we aim to present research papers based on the findings at a later date.  Our partners at Central Missouri University have built a simulation of Montmartre, Paris as it was in the 1920s in order to provide students with an engaging and immersive learning environment for studies in Afro-American culture and in particular the growth of jazz in post-WW1 Paris. The use of virtual worlds to facilitate immersive role play and enable students to recreate convincingly the era they are studying is being investigated as part of the project and will be presented at the conference. In the evaluation of the project activities we have focused on examining how far teaching methods used in Second Life exhibit affective support for the involvement of learners. We examine how the use of virtual worlds can add a social dimension to distance learning not present in existing learning management systems.  In this presentation we will describe our reasons for working in Second Life, conclusions based on our teaching experience there, ongoing research and thoughts on the future relevance of virtual worlds in higher education. The presentation will use PowerPoint slides as well as a live demonstration of Second life and a meeting on our own Kamimo Island. Several of the project group will participate via Second life as well as possibly a representative from one of the other universities we have collaborated with over the last year.  The Kamimo project group consists of: Björn Jaeger, University College Molde (Norway) Judith Molka-Danielsen, University College Molde (Norway) Dr. Bryan Carter, Central Missouri University (USA) Alastair Creelman, University of Kalmar (Sweden) David Richardson, University of Kalmar (Sweden)  Project blog - http://kamimo-islands.blogspot.com/

This article explores the development of a course for teaching a language in a virtual world. In particular we evaluate the course entitled, “Social English for Doctoral Students” that is in progress in the fall semester of 2007. This course will activate learners and educators using a variety of support media including Marratech conferencing system and Second Life virtual world platform. The pilot course part of a one year project sponsored by The Norwegian University program (NUV) is entitled, “A Virtual Platform for Life Long Learning”. In addition to the development of this course, we contribute with the development of an evaluation framework that may be applied to other courses taught in Second Life as well.