W10-Yunong photo blog

This week , I wen to "Chinese Island" where Amanda showed us in the first week. The buildings here are also ancient Chinese style architecture.
Most of the Chinese buildings are symmetrical. Some of the decorations also perfectly symmetrical. The lions in front of the gate and the couplets on the columns. I also see bamboos there. I think it could be a sign represent Chinese things in SL.

Buildings with white walls and black roofs are more like some Chinese buildings in Anhui province. Not like summer palace or Forbidden city with red walls and yellow roofs, these kind of buildings are common people live in.

I also find a building with the same features of a kind of traditional Beijing courthouse "Siheyuan." "Si" means four, "He" means harmony and happy, "yuan" is yard. It only has one gate and other three directions surround by houses, just like a square.

Through these weeks observation, I found that in SL, the sims represent China in different places are very similar. When we see these sims we know it's Chinese things.

W10 Photoblog- Amanda

For my assignment 2, I'm back to Chinese Island to look into Chinese language and culture study, I found this restaurant, just to see how the designer set up this kind of language study.

Many tables in this restaurant and on each table there has menus, click on it a notecard will pop up on the screen and teach numbers with counting units. Also provided audios to listen. All cards wrote in Pinyin, Chinese characters and English. The video on this wall shows basic knowledge of dumplings, even I watched it, very good video.   

Furthermore, many typical Chinese dishes are cooking, I could get a notecard with an introduction of the food by click on it. For learning a foreign language is always good to start with food, and here students can actually see how it looks like and get the recipe. 

Speak about China, tea couldn't be missed out, here students could listen to the introduction of different types of tea and where and how people drink it. Both English and Chinese are provided.

Going upstairs, non-Chinese would be surprised by the squat toilet and the avatar can experience by using "sit down".

The very important culture in China is table manners, before entering into this box, a study guide showing on the wall, students should guess where the main guest's position and clues are around.

Unlike the Spanish study center which I explored two weeks ago, this place is classify learning process by topics, such as ordering food, going to the airport, watching an art exhibition, etc. I think it's much better than only start with Pinyin without any topics, this could make students feel they are involved in a real situation. 

W9 photoblog, Habib

I searched for places to visit this week, but I couldn’t find anything new. Finally, I found something interesting

I walked in this place. It looks like a place for religious people who come to this place when they need to pray.

After that, I found a road and I followed it to find out where it was going

It turned out to be a very long road. There was a gas station as well.

And there were many other places on both the sides of the road. I got a bird-eye view as I was flying over everything.