Misy Ferraris

कार्मेला दल'एरिया A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.. in truth it pictures not my destination but my life...And now I know that we must lift the sail and catch the winds of destiny wherever they drive the boat…But life without meaning is the torture of . She is currently a teacher of English and Italian as Foreign language and a specialized teacher for students in special needs in a secondary school (S.M.S. “R. Franchetti”) in Palermo (Italy). She is also an independent researcher in the fields of virtual world use in teaching and learning. She got her Laurea (Italian equivalent of a Master Degree) in Foreign Languages and Literatures from the University of Palermo (Italy) in 1990. She also got her second Laurea in "Language Teaching Technologies" from the University of Palermo (Italy) in 2007. She has been a contract Professor of Computer Assisted Language Learning at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of the University of Palermo from 2007 to 2009 and actually she’s investigating the potentials of MUVEs for foreign language learning, as well as the factors that impact the learners’ language performance. She has been teaching Italian as a Foreign and Second language since 1999. Since 2007 she has been carrying out Café Italia, an experiment about teaching and learning Italian in SL. For this experiment she designed courses as part of the main project, around small groups of foreign students. She has been involved in many projects in SL such as the teacher training at LanguageLab, BABEL Project (by Ana Alves), ANITEL, WiAOC (Webheads in Action Online unConvergence), Tesol’s Electronic Village online (EVO), Second Life English Community. Her main current research interests are also learner motivation, encouraging learner autonomy, ICT and the use of Web 2.0 tools in teaching and learning languages, non verbal communication, investigating the use of MUVEs in education, social networks.