Expert Discussion Session: Real Places, Virtual Spaces: Cibola as a Hispanic and Portuguese Island

Cibola is designed as a hybrid virtual space in the Second Life virtual reality platform to dissolve the boundaries between SL's pedagogical uses and its importance as a social space. Based on the recreation of five real spaces in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Spain, Cibola is a site for real-time language learning inside and outside classroom environments, establishing innovative distance learning connections that can also serve as revenue streams and as a laboratory for studying the relationships between real space and virtual places and how that complex dynamic works.