RBERNing Questions
RBERNing Questions is a professional learning podcast, produced by Mid-State RBERN, where we answer your most compelling questions about teaching, serving, and supporting multilingual learners. We connect teachers and leaders of English Language Learners (ELLs) and Multilingual Learners (MLs) with experts in our field who will address timely and specific questions relating to instructional practices, teacher collegiality, and outreach to students and their families.
If you are a K-12 educator, to receive CTLE credit for listening to this podcast, go to our website: https://midstaterbern.org/2023-2024-podcasts/.
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RBERNing Questions
Building Virtual Reality (VR) Worlds to Enhance the Multilingual Learning Experience w/Amany Alkhayat
Episode Summary:
This forward-thinking, tech-focused episode delves into the innovative work of guest, Amany Alkayat, an educator and researcher specializing in virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) for language education. Amany shares her journey from teaching English as a Foreign Language in Cairo to pursuing advanced studies in instructional technology at Columbia University's Teachers College. She emphasizes the transformative impact of VR on student engagement and learning through embodied cognition and interactive storytelling. The discussion highlights her various roles, including her contributions to TESOL, virtual teleconferences, and educational VR platforms like Frame VR and Engage VR. Amany also discusses the practical applications and benefits of VR in project-based learning, ethical concerns regarding AI, and her efforts to enhance educational accessibility and quality using technology. The conversation concludes with insights on necessary equipment, lesson planning, and the future of AI in education. If you have burning questions about using VR in your multilingual classroom, tune in now!
RBERNing Questions for this Episode:
1- What inspired you to merge your expertise in Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language with Instructional Technology and Media?
2- What is the greatest benefit of introducing Virtual Reality into a multilingual classroom, especially in terms of Project-based learning?
3- Tell us about the VR courses you have developed for educators on Udemy. Which one is most popular among educators of ELLs and MLs?
Full BIO:
Amany is an educator, researcher, author, voice user interface designer and VR developer. She has more than twenty years of teaching experience in the field of second language learning. She is also pursuing her doctoral studies in instructional Technology and Media at Columbia University, Teachers College. Her first MA was in teaching English as a foreign language from the American University in Cairo. She's a member of the steering committee at CALL-IS at TESOL International. She founded the TELL SIG and VIrtuaTELL conference at NYS TESOL. She also hosts events in virtual reality at the immersive learning research network as well as Educators in VR. Her research interests are focused on AI and VR for language education.
Resources:
Websites/Social Media:
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amany-alkhayat/
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/caesarsbox/
Other Resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLFKVQ4a2_Y
https://gatherverse.live/gatherverse-ai-summit-artificial-intelligence/
Publications:
Leveraging-the-Art-of-Medical-Illustration-to-Enhance-Anatomy-Instruction.pdf#page=357, AlKhayat, A. (2017). Exploring the effectiveness of using chatbots in the EFL classroom. Teaching English reflectively with technology, 20-36
To find out more about Mid-State RBERN at OCM BOCES' services, listen to season 1 of the show with host Collette Farone-Goodwin, or to receive CTLE credit for listening to episodes, click here: https://midstaterbern.org/
And so when you see things around you and interact, and this is what we call embodied cognition, It's like you experience things not only just reading it, but you also you are there in the situation and you see the pictures and images and part of the scene. It's like you go to a famous person's house and then you see how they ate, how they did this and that. So it's something like that. You relive the experience. it was really, powerful among the students.
Yasmeen:Uh, Minnie is an educator researcher, author, voice, user interface, designer, and VR developer. She has more than 20 years of teaching experience in the field of second language learning. She is also pursuing her doctoral studies in instructional technology and media at Columbia university. Teacher's college. Her first inmate wasn't teaching English as a foreign language from the American university in Cairo. She's a member of the steering committee at call I S at TESOL international. She also founded the tail SIG and virtual teleconference at nicety soul. She hosts events in virtual reality at the immersive learning research network, as well as educators in VR, her research interests are focused on AI and VR for language education. Her mission is to enhance the quality and accessibility of education with VR and AI, and to inspire the next generation of immersive and interactive creators. Welcome to RBERNing Questions, a professional learning podcast where we answer your most compelling questions about teaching, serving, and supporting multilingual learners. I'm your host, Yasmeen Coaxum, and through our talks, I look forward to bringing the methods, philosophies, and stories behind teaching multilingual learners to life. Let's get into the show.
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to our burning questions on today's show. We have a mini Al Kayat who is, actually really very active in New York state TESOL. So that is actually where I met her and She has a little bit of a fan club. I don't know if she knows this or not, but when I've gone on a couple of other virtual conferences, does the name Heidi ring any bells? Heidi, she is actually out, in Europe. I forget exactly where she's located, but Heidi, she, She was praising you, and she showed me your courses on Udemy. so I was like, wow, this is very impressive. So I'm really excited, Amini to have you on today's show. So welcome. Why don't we get started with some basics, like your current role in education. Just tell us about that.
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:Yeah. Thank you so much. Yes, mean, for your warm introduction, and it's the first time for me to know that, like I have, sometimes I meet people. People in events and say, Hey, you're a many and then I'll say, Yes, how do you know about me? Then you say, yeah, it's nice diesel or Udemy courses or educators in VR. So yeah. Yeah. Thank you. so my role in education has started, I think in 2005, when I started, developing a passion for computer assisted language learning. And, that was also during my first master's. And, I taught in, in different colleges, in different countries. And, I usually teach higher education. And now I'm teaching at, Hudson County Community College. I teach, ESL, ELLs, ELL students. And, I also, have, founded the Technology Enhanced Language Learning Special Interest Group. At New York State TESOL. And I was really passionate about it because I, I, presented at TESOL international in 2011 and, I fell in love with their call interest group and, and I wanted to establish this at a nice TESOL and I've gotten lots of help from, the past president and, then the current president, And also all members of nice diesel. They were passionate about, uh, the tell sick. And then later on, I also found that the virtual conference. And, the virtual conference was really, it was really interesting that it was founded before the pandemic. And then during the pandemic, there were lots of workshops about technology and more interest in technology. And I brought in educators in VR and many well known educators from TESOL, International, IETFL, and especially educators in VR. They had a great role in that. Because, I also, co, lead the, their, teacher training, for language learning, we're not doing anything now currently because it's like we're in the summer, but, it's also an active community of people who are passionate about virtual reality and also one of the things that really inspires me. I don't know. It was very ironic that, when I started the, Tel SIG, I had the passion of, spreading knowledge and, educating teachers about chatbots, conversational AI, because it was also part of my, thesis, my second M, for my second M. A. And, I published a paper in 2017 with the TESOL International and IETFL. And, I, there are many people, uh, who would say, no, no, no, we don't want teacher training, on conversational AI because they're going to take our jobs and I'm like, at least we need to understand them how to use them. And that was before chat GPT. And now everybody, like the last virtual conference was all about, The artificial, the new reality with artificial intelligence, with generative AI. And, I collaborated with you, John Han and, and Farah Akbar. You John Han was the chair. I stepped down from being the chair of virtual tell, and we were the best team. Only three people organized the conference, and
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:Wait, so that, that was you, Ms. Hahn, and who else? Who was that?
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:Farah Akbar. Farah Akbar. Yeah. Now she's a doctor now. Dr. Farah.
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:great, because I had Yoo Jung Han actually on this podcast.
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:Oh,
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:yeah, so yeah, that's great. I wasn't aware that she was chairing that. That's fantastic. okay. And I usually like to understand really people's origin story, so I know that you started off with an interest, in tech, in, in call. basically. But what really brought you to the field of education in general? I would like to frame this question by saying that I know that your first M. A. degree was in teaching English as a second or foreign language, from the American University in Cairo. And, but then you pursued a second M. A. in instructional technology. So what inspired you to really marry these two areas of expertise and to bring everything into this field of education in the first place? Because with this type of tech talent that you have, you could be working at some, so some really, I want to say highfaluting tech companies out there. So what made you decide to focus your talents and your efforts in the realm of education, specifically with English language learners and multilingual learners?
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:Yeah. when I first joined, did my first master's, I took this course, it's called computer assisted language learning. And, I've been passionate about teaching since I was young. So when I was, In school, my teachers used to ask me to help, my colleagues understand the grammar, and also conversations. And, I really realized that many people, they really struggle in terms of listening and conversation. And, I didn't usually study much, so the problem in our education is that it's more of, memorizing grammar rules than actually watching movies and stuff like that. And,
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:Do you mean in Egypt? I'm sorry. Do you mean in? Yeah. Okay. Okay.
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:so it's mostly if comes first, it should be followed by this and that it's not actually understanding why this happens. And, and I used to, advise even my sisters when, when they started complaining about their kids. Not studying English, but watching movies and playing games. And I'm like, yeah, this is actually what will make them speak English fluently. And actually they get the highest marks and sometimes they can be better than their teachers. And, and I've, this has have been always my way of learning English, watching lots of movies, reading, of course, reading is very important. And so I felt that there has to be another way of training teachers in the Middle East and all parts of the world. They're very passionate about teaching, especially ESL teachers, because I don't know, I always feel that, connecting with the ELLs or MLLs is way different than teaching or connecting with students of other subjects. And this is what I see in many TESOL conferences. is that we talk about our students with passion and we understand their needs because we're teaching language. And also this has to do with culture. So this what started the passion being an ELL myself and learning the language and understanding the background of language. Even when I speak with my hispanic students that I love so much, I always tell them about origins of some of their words. That actually go back to Arabic, or Latin or whatever. And so the conversation itself would actually include culture. And we see ourselves very similar. And so from my passion of teaching as well as computer assisted language learning, I wanted to improve my skills in technology and education. And, and that's why I took the second master's at Teachers College, Columbia University. And my thesis was on chatbots. And I had to learn actually IBM Watson, it's a chat bot that's driven by machine learning. And that was part of my thesis. And then my dissertation now at Columbia, is on mixed reality. So it's, it's like when you wear the headset and, and then you see an AI avatar in That's training you on job interview skills because we have a lot of immigrants, a lot of international students who learn, but sometimes when they, apply for jobs, they may, have anxiety, and this anxiety impacts the way they perform. And so this is the focus of my thesis, how we can artificial intelligence help these MLLs or ELLs to ace job interviews with confidence.
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:I think this is great. This is an amazing topic. I myself started to teach business English. so I, I understand the importance of these types of skills, presentation skills, which you will need once you, I mean, depending on what type of job you have, but usually you need presentation skills in general, and interviewing skills and things like, getting your resume together, your cover letter, understanding what is expected in terms of the norms here if you would like to get a job here in the U. S. is something that's, that it's a very important skill, I want to say specialty, to hone in on in terms of educating, uh, Ls and, and MLs. So, um, I would really love to find out some more about the courses that you have developed for educators on Udemy. which one is most popular among educators of ELLs and MLs? for example, I know that there's a free course, called Metaverse for Education Masterclass One, where you talk about, using VR platforms for education and field trips, and there's a live meetup every month. So can you tell us more about this particular course?
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:Yeah, so actually, um, yeah, I, I have like more than 2000 students in this course. But I actually used to have another course, unfortunately it was removed because the website itself that I was, that was the focus of my course. they stop, they close down. It used to be called wiki spaces and wiki spaces had, was the highest rated. but since wiki spaces closed down, so Udemy decided to, make it, like only private for the students who have taken, this course, but metaverse for education, started with, a passion for using virtual reality, for language learners and actually. the early, iterations of the metaverse was Second Life and OpenSim and all these platforms were English language educators. Were there many years ago. They had their offices and they had their worlds and they meet their students and the co create together. And also I've had some colleagues who teach poetry. they teach drama. They create lessons. And actually, many of these educators and I'm one of the co moderators. We do the electronic village. Silence. that's part of diesel international computer assisted language learning a special interest group and it's free for five weeks and I felt like why not just, create a course, a free course that would introduce people to some of these platforms and how they can teach in these platforms, how they can take students because I also published, a res, a paper. that was edited by Christine Coombe and, Georgia Scorpus. And, this paper was about our experience at TELSIG at NICE TESOL, through introducing, virtual reality. And the reason for writing this article in that book, and at the same time publishing this course was actually what I saw, during the pandemic is that many of us We're not allowed to use anything other than Zoom. although you can go to virtual reality and have a pseudonym. that's not a problem. If you want to protect the students' data, and, you don't need even to log in or to use username, it's just, a link that you send to the students. It's protected. Only the students can log, can go to this website. The other thing is I used, a theory. It's called the transactional distance theory, which means that the teacher has good skills. it so that the relationship between the teacher and the student is like a transaction. So the more the teacher understands pedagogy and the content, the more this transaction or this gap is bridged. Okay. And so I, in, in my article, I said, well, sometimes you may not need technology in order to, like bridge this gap between the teacher and the student. If the teacher is. is really good, but also you can augment learning Using technology. So that's the purpose of technology and also personalized learning. And so my argument was Zoom is passive transmissive, whereas virtual reality is more interactive. Students with their own avatars, they can walk in the area. They can actually look at certain things. They can look at the animations, three d objects. They can build things themselves where they can't actually do that in zoom. so like you can feel that you can feel people around you, even if you're not wearing a headset, and so it's more interactive and but of course, you have to prepare so you have to have a lesson plan. You have to prepare students need to understand to feel that there is a purpose of using this type of technology and then just taking them there and then trying to figure out what to do. So that was the purpose of creating this course.
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:Now in the description, of the course, it says it does not include techniques for actually teaching in VR. so can you share maybe one or two basic pedagogical techniques for this type of teaching? And then, um, What type of equipment is needed to get started with VR in a typical L or ML classroom, because I feel like This might be a barrier for a lot of educators, right? They are oh, do I need something? how can I build a lesson like you just said? How can I build, a comprehensive lesson around, This technology, or rather, because we don't want to, we don't really want to say that we're building a lesson around technology. We would rather say that we have our focus and our objective. And then as you said, you use this word augment, right? So how can we use, this tech to actually augment, our objectives and what we have planned,
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:yeah, that's a great question. So last year I co published a paper with one of my colleagues. She's in Finland and it's called language learning pedagogical affordances of the metaverse. And it talks about the examples of how we use the like pedagogy in order to engage students. And some of the, techniques that we use in virtual reality, can be storytelling. storytelling is very powerful and, uh, it depends on your learning objectives. So for example, one of my classes that was actually during the pandemic, I was teaching a gender equality, the topic. So it was for, it was a writing class. And, I was like, okay, I'm going to teach, gender inequality and, I'm going to introduce my students to the story of, that was written by Henrik Ibsen, Adol's House. And, actually we read the story and, I did the same thing like the other class. So we discussed it. so there were lots of classroom discussions, readings and so on. And, I tried to make them reflect on their culture. Okay. And, uh, the other class We actually also we read the story, but we went to a virtual reality where I created two scenes. So the first scene is an introductory scene that introduces the students to the story and the, the characters of the story. And also. That world was in frame VR. So in frame VR, you can also put a, like, um, uh, something like, um, a wall. inside your world that actually displays some news, current news. So I put a gender inequality and then it puts lots of news about gender inequality in the U. S. Or other countries. And and also when we went into the second scene, we saw some many scenes In the story. for example, she used to hide macaroons from her husband and, and, and so we have seen like an animation of this, and also the Christmas tree because the Christmas tree had a significance in the story. There were also some images of lark and birds because he used to call her my bird, my lark, which actually at that time in the 19th century, it means that you are weak. You don't know how to think. And so on. And so I asked the students to reflect on it by writing an essay. Guess what? The students who went to virtual reality, they were deeply affected by what they saw to the extent that even male students talked about the, gender inequality in their own country. And they sympathized with females, whereas students who read the story only they were didn't, they didn't see anything. they actually plagiarized
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:No.
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:all of them. They copied, I swear to God, they copied and pasted. And I checked that on turn it in because they had to upload it to blackboard and all of them, no emotion, no fee. There was nothing like, they didn't empathize. All of them, even males. It's just a story. It's just a story that we read, but the other ones who actually interacted with, the scenes, the images, and also she was angry. She was scared of her husband, in, one of the scenes and she was dancing and you feel like she's irritated. And, the dance was called tarantula. And it's a spy. It's a spider, I think. And, yeah. And so I actually put an animation, of that type of spider in my world. Okay. And so it would really it actually would feel cringy when you see the spider and you would feel scared. And actually, this is the feeling that I wanted to transmit to my students. And so when you see things around you and interact, and this is what we call embodied cognition, It's like you experience things not only just reading it, but you also you are there in the situation and you see the pictures and images and part of the scene. It's like you go to a famous person's house and then you see how they ate, how they did this and that. So it's something like that. You relive the experience. it was really, powerful among the students. So storytelling is one. Role play is one another one role play, and I would recommend engage VR and I would really, yeah, if I had the some, like some recordings I would have showed you. So engage VR is one of the most fantastic VR platforms, it's very powerful and teachers can actually create things without coding. What they can also do is that they can have two students, like practice, role play together, and then they will record them. They will record them in 3D. It's called, 3D, spatial recording. Okay. How that looks like. Imagine that you and I in the same room. And somebody recorded us. Okay. So basically what you feel like recording is what we're doing right now. No, if you replay. You will see two more of us in the same room talking to each other the same thing that we've talked while we were recording. And, you will see how we interacted. And you can also, do self, I'm sorry. you can give feedback to the students. The students will see their mistakes. And also maybe they can also comment on their performance. So it's one of the things that are really awesome, to see in a platform like this is the only platform that provides, high tech educational, tools for educators to use in the classroom. And, there are many, universities, over a hundred universities that are using it, especially also Columbia. We actually, we were planning, we actually, we have a license with, with engage and, and, uh, it's, it's really a great platform that you can do role play activities. You can record it. And then when you play the recording, you will see yourself, or you will see the students as if they are the same avatars. And sometimes I would do this trick when I take people. Into engage and then I would say hey, can I record? Like for one minute and let's see. Yeah. Yeah, okay They have no idea about engage recording and suddenly they see Their same avatar in the room and I was like how this happened. I see myself. I see myself talking like the same thing that I was talking about like a minute ago. How did this happen? And I'm like, yeah, this is one of the features of engage where you can actually do role play And then you can replay that to the students and then they can see their mistakes. You can do lots of things with that.
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:So those were two really excellent examples. I am thinking as an educator myself who. might want to experiment with virtual reality. two things. So number one, one of the big concerns with educators is normally time. So when you were talking about building this fabulous world and I have seen, I've participated in some of these, these VR, like Second Life and something around, it was a few years ago during the pandemic, when I attended, one of, I think it might have been one of your, presentations, maybe in collaboration with someone else. Anyway, I do remember trying to maneuver, around one, one or two of these virtual reality settings. so I think. it definitely does provide a different sense, a different feeling, like I think. Anything does if you bring it into a 3D perspective rather than something that's on a page, right? if we're talking about stories and storytelling, typically stories are on a page. and, You're reading words, but bringing in virtual reality, as you said, also allows you to connect in a more meaningful way to what's on the page. So going back to my, my questions. So I have two. Two of them, right, So I would like to go back to what do educators actually need in terms of equipment in order to or software or whatever it is in order to make this happen in their classrooms and also about this issue of time and how long they. does it take to, to build these elements that you were talking about that sound really fascinating and that, can really, enhance, these learning experiences for students.
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:Yeah, that's a great question. So basically now there are two, platforms, that, provide, educators, with an easy access. So you can just go to, frame VR or spatial.io. And, they, they provide, lots of templates and, very easy ways to, to create, their lesson, on VR and, frame. For example, you don't need to create things from scratch. you can actually have one of these, platforms and then, One of the awesome things that framed it, and actually they're working on it, to improve it, is that, you can use artificial intelligence in different ways to, create things in VR without going to mid journey or other stuff. one of these things is, you can generate images inside vr. The other thing you can generate the 3D objects inside vr. And also you can have a chatbot inside VR for free. and what's more is that, because large language models, when you use them, they are very general, so you can upload your lessons, or probably, any lecture notes or summaries or whatever into the platform for that chatbot so that the chatbot, when they answer the questions, they might sound like you. And so you choose the avatar and then you upload the content that you want. And so that avatar would actually draw its answers from this content that you have uploaded. One of the things that teachers need to learn, and we do that for free at Electronic Village and also in some of the things that we've done at Virtual Hotel, is that just understanding, having spatial knowledge. So usually when people start using 3D environments, They especially if you're using it on a desktop and not immersive VR like using a headset and they rely on their experience in using 2d interfaces Like websites and stuff like that.
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:Of course.
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:The thing is that I
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:people are familiar with, right? it's natural, yeah.
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:Yeah. Yeah, And what happened when I was training professors in a university in the Middle East? Is that they put something in the virtual environment and then when they come back the following day, They can't find it and i'm like, okay So imagine that you were in a city and then you put a rock in that city You have to go to the same place that you put this rock so that you can so you have to walk. Okay, so Oh, really? Yeah, I didn't realize that which is natural even when I teach students virtual reality You They have the same thing. And so sometimes it's really tricky. and sometimes, yeah, I mean, all these companies are trying to better, this, the performance of their, platforms. And putting something on the walls sometimes can be tricky. You have to go left and you have to go right to see that it's really on the wall. it's the same thing when you put, a photo or something on the wall. So you have to make sure that it's you put it correctly. yeah, I mean, you can actually create the simplest images. I've seen people, teaching about France. Let's go to France. So they just put pictures and the students go and then say, Oh, this is the Eiffel Tower. This is, so it's like more of an interaction and communication. and also sometimes it's appealing to students, especially K through 12. They play games and, they like maybe to see things that, that they see in every life, sorry, that they see daily. And, and I think, virtual reality doesn't have to be all the way like, Hey, we're going to do VR every day. It has to do with the lesson plan. understanding the pedagogy very well. Do I need really VR? for example, I'm teaching grammar. do I need VR for grammar? Sometimes you may. So for example, we asked in one of the events, we asked teachers to have two groups and actually I've, I realized that this has been done also in second life and they have to create. shapes from the platform itself. And we need to guess what idiom is that. And some of the teachers, they chose the very, the easiest idiom, but it was really interesting. So we've seen a bunch of cats and dogs and rain. And so I was like, yeah, it's raining cats and dogs. the other ones, they're. pulling someone's legs and it was really hard for us to guess because they had a dinosaur and a cat and two of them they're touching each other's legs and because of spatial distance, we actually realized that we had to go around the, the, these two objects to realize that it means pulling someone's leg. So it was difficult, but it was challenging. And it was also like, we enjoyed it and it was really fun. But I see it like this might stick into a student's head, when you have students create things like that in VR. And it's also one of the strategies. I always say make students busy. Instead of you lecturing or teaching, why not just ask students questions or ask them, show them an example, and then ask them to create something so that it would actually stick into their minds. because they will remember when they laughed, when they enjoyed it, when they were doing it and so on. And also one of the things that I do in my classes is that I use students who are, The most fun and they laugh about their mistakes. with other students, they don't feel like they should be ashamed. And I model this with the shy students and say, Oh, and so the shy students actually, they become the extroverts maybe after three, three weeks, because, when it's like, what's it called? Bandora's theory. when you see people doing something, you become relieved and you start doing it. And so when you have students in a group in virtual reality, they're creating something and then they're laughing. Oh, we made a mistake because the aim of education is actually to make mistakes and then You know, impasse driven learning or learning by failure. And then you learn from your failure and then you succeed. And this is also one of the things that VR provides is that you may, you fail, but then you can also make it better.
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:All right, so I, what I'm getting from your answer besides some really, interesting examples of how VR has been used and some of the benefits of it, in terms of the question of time really has to do with, what the teacher decides they're going to do, right? I mean, you don't have to, go all out in terms of, building these worlds. If you just have a few of the elements, that are needed to express the ideas that you want for your lesson, then it's fine. But I still want to know, typically, let's say, if I want to. even do the most basic thing in terms of building a role. First of all, so just having a PC, a Mac, that's fine. and then, I mean, do everyone, when they think of VR, they think of headsets, but I mean, do you need headsets or do you, or face sets or whatever they're called? I'm showing my complete ignorance on this topic now, but do you, I mean, so what, so, you know, in terms of like just that type of equipment, I'm figuring, okay, so you need those. And then can go to certain sites where you are able to get templates and then, and start your building. but how long would that, even with the most basic elements take for someone to dive into that? Are we talking okay, maybe it'll take an hour. Will it take half an hour? It depends on, your learning curve. I mean, I just want to get into those specifics in terms of, numbers.
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:yeah, basically a laptop is fine. And, so you need a laptop like a PC or Mac and, just, you can access through Google or through edge. it's fine. And, you just need to create, like your account so that you can be able to create things. so one of the things that, actually takes time is planning. So if you, know the lesson and you know that It's better to have it in VR. So it would actually take you probably from 30 minutes or one hour to three hours to build that world. And, and you can just do easy stuff. You can put avatars. of these platforms, especially frame VR and spatial, they have access to Sketchfab for free as Sketchfab is a 3d platform. So if you want to put a chair, if you want to put a character, star clouds in the sky, anything, it can be easily done, but one of the things that, I actually made mistakes, when I started building my worlds is, what we call optimization. So for example, I was really passionate about creating this game and it was, it's a pie, it was a pirate game and it would teach you something and, Because they are pirates so they steal many things And so I put lots of things in my world and then I asked people to come To give me their opinion and they were like, okay, so so the because this is virtual reality Many people might not see all of these things that you put in the virtual world because these will take from the bandwidth. Okay, so you can't put many things so the simplest the better Okay. yeah. So you just need to plan for your lesson and know exactly what you're going to put inside that world. You can put images, you can put a few 3d worlds and you can test it and see how students can see it and that's it. But it would only take from one hour to three.
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:Okay, and you have already talked about the benefit of students feeling more connected to material, when they are, when VR is used. But I would still like to ask what you feel is the greatest benefit of introducing virtual reality into a multilingual classroom, especially maybe in terms of project based learning.
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:Yeah, that's a good question. yeah, as I said before, I usually say, Make students busy and, so I don't want to lecture and, ask, or just ask students and another student is not doing anything. And so the best thing is as actually, so students usually sometimes brag about their presentations. I've had students in my class and I always love to ask them about their countries, food. tourist attractions and stuff like that. So you bring their culture into the classroom and when it has to do with, a project, when they have something that's solid in front of them, they would be more interested to collaborate and, uh, and discuss that, and also to create, their best. and in terms of project based learning. and virtual reality. I think this is the best thing because in any project you would, what you do with either what you can, have photos, you can have videos, maybe you can have artifacts, all of these can be in virtual reality. And students, can, can create, things in VR. I can co create things in VR. And the benefit of that is number one, Higher order thinking skills according to Bloom's taxonomy. So the highest one is creation. So they are creating things Okay, so what's involved with creation is negotiation for meaning and of meaning So they negotiate meaning so what is that food in English? Okay, let's google. Okay. Can we find the Something that looks like that in 3d objects, or maybe we can bring pictures so they will Co collaborate in english. I always make sure that they speak english. They're not speaking another language and and sometimes if it doesn't have to do with their own culture. it, so I actually grouped them in different groups with different cultures in each group. And they can have photos. So it's like a gallery that you visit for each student's project. And then they show their photos, they show videos. They show artifacts that they have created. Maybe they took pictures of these artifacts or maybe they created these artifacts with AI, because in AI, there are some techniques. So there are some websites now that you can ask the website to create something for you in 3d. And sometimes it's very difficult for AI. To understand what you want or to visualize it and give you a 3d object. So what we do is that we look for an image for that thing, and then we upload it to AI so that it can provide us with the prompt. And then we put that prompt again into AI, and then it will create this same things. And this is what happened with me when I wanted to create a world Named Hamlet. I love, I'm a big fan of Shakespeare, and I wanted AI to create, uh, the, um, outfits for people in the, in Elizabethan age, and, AI failed.
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:This sounds fascinating. ha.
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:failed drastically. And what I did was that I looked for a photo on Google and then I uploaded this photo to, I think it's called shade or shade. I don't remember, the name now. And then, what this, platform does is that it, it scans your photo and then it gives an exact, description. And then I put the prompt and then it actually gave me Very beautiful, character without a head. and so I had to change my prompt a little bit to
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:Yeah.
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:someone has a head.
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:Yes. Yes.
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:And then it gave me actually something that's good. really beautiful thing was actually the Elizabethan outfit. It was very meticulously made. And I put this in my world. And then I just repeated the same prompt with different colors. And it's the experience itself. see, when you actually ask the student to upload the image, so they understand the language itself, how it described the image. So that's language too. And then they use it and then they modify the prompt. So it's all about language input in the activity.
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:So, There's a lot of other things that I wanted to, share with you. talk with you about, but maybe we'll have a conversation another time. but I really would like for the listeners to know where they can follow you, where they can follow your work, if there's something that's coming up. For you. I know that you recently, that you spoke at the a WE 2024 conference, so the augmented world, expo, and that's, and it was, during the, careers and Colleges Roundtable. that's something I would've loved to, to talk with you about, but we let's, we, we'll save that for another time. Um, so. So, yeah, any events or, projects or publications that you have coming up? I also know that you are, you founded LinguaTech, so where can people find out more about your company? And also, uh, About trainings, some of the courses that you offer, but also where can educators go to, to get training in this if they're interested?
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:Yeah. first, maybe they can follow on LinkedIn. so I'm always, like share useful stuff on LinkedIn and also whether there are upcoming, conferences for nice diesel. So I'm currently the chair for the, nice diesel, virtual, conference. That will be on October 19th. And, yeah, and, and also, we're gonna have, virtual next year, hopefully, in May. and, some of the papers that I have, That I have, I'm going to publish, is, there is a paper, a very interesting paper about culturally relevant pedagogy and, uh, artificial intelligence and plagiarism, that was, my co authors are Professor Cheng Lin, And Professor when land hiles and, uh, this paper is really amazing because we are talking about AI from the perspective of culturally relevant pedagogy. We have shared some interesting insights from our experience and it's, it's one of the papers that I really anticipate is going to be published. It's, actually was submitted to the, journal of second language writing. It's a special edition about artificial intelligence, and I also publish papers about virtual reality So Yeah, but that's more coding and design. It's, it has nothing to do with language learning. yeah.
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:a woman of many talents, ladies and gentlemen, many talents.
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:want to talk about that startup that I founded. It's called Linguatech and Linguatech. has been like behind the Udemy courses, that I was, offering on Udemy. And there is an upcoming, class. It's also about, virtual reality. And, uh, I will have, some guest speakers, from, fluent, some of the founders and, those who had the. have done funding the European funded projects in Europe, who built in Second Life, OpenSim and other platforms. And the main focus of the course will be on, like instructional design for language learning, because, I believe that One of the most important instructional design frameworks, which I'm not going to talk about, you have to, yeah, you have to see the course, it's going to be published soon, because even if you're not going to do virtual reality, it will tell you what is the best platform for this. And I really love it because I explained it, one semester to some students and they were like, Oh my God, everything now falling play fell in place. Like we were, they were confused. But then after I explained this model, It's an instruction design model, and in this instruction design model, there are techniques that would tell you whether virtual reality or videos or this and that would be better for the students and how to assess them. And yeah, lingua tech was one of the things that was behind many things that I've been doing.
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:It sounds very exciting. so I'm really looking forward checking that course actually on Udemy.
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:and also, sorry, lingua tech is also behind the app that I'm going to launch. But it might take some time. It's for the job interview skills, with that's going to be driven by large language models, but because I have experience in design. It's going to be different from other from the way that I interacts with you.
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:okay. So the last thing that I'm going to ask today is, the question that I ask all of my guests here on, the R Burning Questions podcast. And that is, what burning question should today's educators consider in order to improve their service to the L and ML community?
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:Yeah, that's a very good question. So my question is how can educators navigate the growing trust and reliance on AI by students to ensure it complements rather than hinders the language learning and critical thinking skills. So I have noticed. well, although that many people talk about plagiarism, and they were angry about using p students using ai, for plagiarism, but plagiarism was like, many years before, then, p like there was a study by Stanford University and, uh, they found out that 70% of students. plagiarize. Okay. In high school and, middle school and, uh, or they cheat. And so with the advent of artificial intelligence, there's no significant difference. It's the same percentage, okay? So it's not about artificial inte. It's about the school culture, how teachers actually navigate plagiarism and talk about plagiarism and, and academic conduct in, in class or in doing assignments. and also it has to do about like how we, so for example, I started to think that we have the AI natives. Okay, so these are the students who were born when we people started to use Google Assistant, Alexa skills and stuff like that. And so now you see, many people, they are asking Siri and, and also I have seen, even in my kids, when they argue together, during dinner, the one who settles the argument is Alexa because Alexa, can actually Google things. And so they might. Oh, my God, she was going to talk. so what happens is that, they argue about something and instead of googling and looking for websites now you can actually ask and then this can bring information. And so I feel that in the future there will be emotional connection with artificial intelligence. There actually have been research about that, especially replica. And, there will be also trust, especially from a very young age where students can see that AI probably can no more because it's AI. It doesn't have a brain. It doesn't have cognitive load. It can bring any information. And so how we can, make students aware of the role of AI And at the same time, draw their attention to the possibility that AI can make mistakes. You need to verify the information that AI provides you with. And we need to draw their attention to many things, many ethical issues around the use of artificial intelligence, or even using artificial intelligence and getting information. For example, AI Can have a hallucination so if your input is weak The output will also be weak and ai will just fabricate anything also, there is a another thing which is called sycophancy and sycophancy means that While the trainers or the developers are training artificial intelligence, they give it 100 percent or 80 percent or 70%. So say AI is seeking approval and AI is also trained while you are using it. So you are training it also. So it tries to seek your own approval and it might become that sycophant who would just do anything to treat you, to please you. And so how we can understand all these challenges, so that, We have ethical and responsible use of artificial intelligence among students and teachers as well.
yasmeen_1_06-28-2024_090735:Ladies and gentlemen, Amini Alkayat. It's been a pleasure talking to you today, and it's been very eye opening and just, it's just so interesting, so. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us here today on the R Burning Questions podcast.
amany-alkhayat_1_06-28-2024_090732:Thank you. Thank you so much. It was really a great pleasure, to be invited by you. And I didn't even imagine that I would, I was really inspired while I was talking and, talking about all these stories and all these strategies. And, I really hope that, This, uh, podcast, it was beneficial today for, teachers. And I hope that we can connect, like if any teachers out there who want to connect and know more about VR, please, yeah, please just connect.
Yasmeen:Thank you for tuning in to Our Burning Questions, produced by MidState Arborn at OCM BOCES. If you would like to learn more about today's guest or any of the resources we discussed, please visit MidState Arborn's webpage at ocmboces. org. That's o c m b o c e s dot org. Join us next time where we hope to answer more of your burning questions.