Immersion and Interaction via Avatars within Google Street View: Opening Possibilities beyond Traditional Cultural Learning

The optimal approach to learning a target culture is to experience it in its real-life context through interaction. The new 3D virtual world platform under consideration, Blue Mars Lite, enables users to be immersed in existing Google Maps Street View panorama, globally. Google Maps with Street View contains a massive collection of 360-degree street-level images of the most popular places worldwide. The authors explore the possibility of integrating these global panoramas, in which multiple users can explore, discuss, and role-play, into the classroom. The goal of this chapter is to shed new light on merging Google Street View with the 3D virtual world for cultural learning purposes. This approach shows itself to be a promising teaching method that can help EFL learners to develop positive attitudes toward the target culture and cultural learning in this new cultural setting. Ya-Chun Shih National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan Molly Leonard National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-4979-8.ch037