I strongly believe that virtual reality can significantly improve reading and produce greater reliability and validity in assessing Caribbean students whose first language is Creole. How? through virtual reality. I know it sounds crazy, but really its not:)
Social networking technology such as Web 2.0 may make constructivist, culture-based, collaborative knowledge making assessments tools readily available. Web 2.0 technology can potentially construct socio-cultural knowledge through dialogic reading assessment. Dialogic assessments (Macrine & Sabbatino, 2008) shifts learning to an integrated, socially constructed process of meaning making for the reader. An adaptation of this model of dialogic assessment utilised in this paper employs struggling readers’ language (such as Creole) to construct an assessment through dialogue representative of the learner’s culture.
The aim of engaging Web 2.0 tools with assessment is to include student-constructed knowledge (Vygotsky, 1985) through a socially constructed culture, maximise assessment efficiency and to begin and develop a collaborative community of practice. Web 2.0 is a cluster of Internet-based technologies (Moore, 2007; Spivack,2006), which emphasize online collaboration and sharing through social networking sites (Facebook), wikis (Pbworks, wikispaces), communication tools (Google Docs), blogs (Blogger), podcasts and three-dimensional virtual environments such as Second Life and Active Worlds- globally, reading challenged or not young people have eagerly embraced Web 2.0. Students, labelled remedial are navigating their way through complex virtual worlds (SIMS, World of Warcraft); such navigation requires reading skills. Web 2.0 can authentically assess reading students’ needs by engaging them in a medium that is of interest to them.
So are you reay to try it?
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