Serious Gaming

Looking at games to use for educational purposes, there are a great deal to choose from. One game that stuck out to me because of the current government shutdown, was the game Budget Hero. The game has a lot of great information in it, and I was learning new things as well, playing it the two times that I did.

If I were to have my student play this game at home, they would be more advanced speakers because they language would be very difficult for low or intermediate students. In class before they would play we would go over the vocabulary that would be used in the game. We would also have a walkthrough of how to play so that students knew what to do on their own.




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My language learning outcomes would be: Students will be able to define the following vocabulary: budget, deficit, interest, fiscal policy, debt, surplus, taxation, prioritizing, trade-off, and recession; students will be able to become and expert on a certain topic (defense, education, science, housing, miscellaneous, infrastructure, health care, social security, interest on debt, taxes) and will be able to defend their choices on that topic (what is necessary to cut or add); Students will be able to orally represent their ideas in English.

In order to assess my students, the next class day I would have them present to me on the topic that they chose based on the game. They would elaborate on why it would be important to cut or keep certain components of the topic. They would have to use the vocabulary correctly, and show that they understand the concepts that were discussed. They would be provided with a rubric of what would be expected of their presentation and could even use the game in their presentation to illustrate their points.

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