Second life for illiterates: a 3D virtual world platform for adult basic education

Illiteracy is still a dilemma, around more than 700 million adults in the world are unable to read and write. In the present modern society, technology is used to provide the techno-literacy solutions to help out the illiterates. Unfortunately, these solutions rarely consider the traditional learning theories and exploit two-dimensional (2D) platforms. Furthermore these techno-literacy solutions focus on desktop applications such as movies, recorded lectures on CDs and web-based application like 2D text-based instructional programs and games. These 2D applications are lacking the features such as self-presence, social-presence, situated-learning, embodied environment and learning by doing suggested in the traditional learning theories. There is a need to bridge the gap between technology-based solutions and traditional learning theories and to exploit emergent three-dimensional (3D) technologies to provide these lacking features. In this paper, we explore how the benefits of 3D emergent technologies like Second Life (SL) are exploited in coherence with traditional theories for Adult Basic Education (ABE). We present an immersive learning platform based on Multiple Intelligences (MI) Theory. We design and discuss an adaptive learning scenario for ABE in the SL. Finally we scrutinize the proposed platform to get an overview of the strengths and weaknesses in the intended area of application.