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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Don't Forget to Play Your Video Games

Most parents are trying to get their kids to lay off the video games and do their homework. However, what if playing video games was their homework?

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Gamification, according to the article 7 Things You Should Know About Gamification, is "the application of game elements in non-gaming situations, often to motivate or influence behavior." Gamification provides students with a fun filled environment while learning material. The article also states that gamification "offers instructors numerous creative opportunities to enliven their instruction with contests, leader boards, or badges that give students opportunities for recognition and a positive attitude toward their work. Students enjoy friendly competition that allows them to work together or separately toward attainable goals. Gamification is a positive way to motivate students into doing work while they are under the allusion that they are playing and having fun instead. Using games in not a new concept to teachers, it is a great way to get all students to participate in class. This is especially true in the language learning classrooms of ESL because constantly going over vocabulary can become boring and rudimentary. Games give a new level of creative learning that can occur in the classroom. When talking about the benefits of using games in the L2 classroom, it can be beneficial to discuss the article A Comparison of Computer Game and Language-Learning Task Design Using Flow Theory, by Stephan J. Franciosi. He talks about Digital Game Based Learning (DGBL) and Task-Based Language Learning (TBLL) and how in both, "skill are learned and/or improved through participation in activities that require that application of those skills." The article discusses how in order to provide a beneficial DGBL experience, there needs to be three conditions meet; goals, feedback and skill/difficulty balance. "Goals should be concrete, quantifiable objective, and appeal to learner interests; feedback as a means of fostering flow should be considered in addition to feedback as a means of supporting reflection; task difficulty and player skill are ideally balanced moment-by-moment as the individual level." Using DGBL in a language learning classroom can be beneficial to students, if teachers keep in mind these features.

Looking at games for the ESL classroom, there are a great deal of games that can be used. One genre of games that I am focusing on is Escape the Room games. According to the post Focus on genre: Escape the room games on the blog Digital Play, Escape the Room games are "point-and-click adventure games where players have to escape from imprisonment by exploiting their surroundings." One the blog, Larry Ferlazzo's websites of the day..., I read the post The Best "Fun" Online Video Games For English Language Development and played the game Phantasy Quest. I played the game the first time without reading the walkthrough and died swimming around in the water. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing or where I was supposed to be going. I feel like the game is a little difficult at first, especially to someone who is not a constant gamer. However, once I read the walkthrough and followed the directions, it was much easier and I was able to complete my quest. It was fun and I believe students would enjoy getting to play a game like this.

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If I were to make a lesson based on using the game Phantasy Quest it would have the following language learning objectives: Students will be able to learn the vocabulary coconut, bottle, ladder, telescope, island, waterfall, stick, tree, lantern, plank, skull, cave, boulder, sand, crab, berry, pirate, boat, hut, village, fishing pole, beach, gold coin, skeleton key, rope, and sword, and students will be able to follow directions instructed by the teacher in English.The students would all be on their own computer, playing the game independently. The teacher's role is to function as a mediator and tell student directions. I am imagining that I would be working with very low level students, so I would be using the walkthrough to tell the students where to go and what to do. I would tell each step to the student, and they would (try to) appropriately follow them. We could use both pictures from the game and other media to show images for the vocabulary they are learning. We could add the images, along with the words to our classroom word wall. I would assess students on if they were able to follow directions correctly, of if they needed more mediation and guidance through the game. If students could do the game on their own, I would allow them to play on their own for next games. if students had a great deal of difficulty following my directions, I would change the wording of the walkthrough, or I would give them games where the vocabulary is easier and more familiar to them.

I'll Tweet to That

After reading more about the benefits or Twitter for teachers, I see it more of a tool that can be used in the classroom. It can be a fun and interesting way for students to participate in the classroom learning experience. 

In the article 6 Best Twitter Tips Every Teacher Should Know About, they provided 6 different tips for teachers using Twitter. The first tip was to maintain visibility. This is important because having a Twitter account it one thing, but you need to be using it. If it is just sitting there, collecting digital dust, it isn't doing you, or the Twitter community any good. Secondly, you need to "rally up support". This is similar to my last post about Twitterchats. Having conversations and tweeting at others allows for information to be shared between community members. Thirdly, you need to "show your fans some Twitter love". This includes following those who retweet you, favoriting tweets, and retweeting others. This allows for a growth in your community of fellow teachers or even classmates. Fourthly, one needs to "share unique content". If you were to use Twitter in the classroom, it can't just be mindless Tweeting. The content being used needs to be focused and worthwhile material. Fifthly, you need to "tweet what you see when and where you see it." Tweeting is the fastest way of spreading information and news. There are always people who are live Tweeting events. Lastly, you need to "be as concise as possible in your wording and length". I think this is something that can be extremely useful when you are in the classroom. When tweeting, you are only given 140 characters. What you tweet needs to make sense with the limited amount of space you are given. 

Another article I read was The Teacher's Guide To Twitter, by Edudemic. It again emphasized that it Twitter is a great way to connect with other, while not only gaining information, but creating information as well. They went on to explain just how much Twitter has to offer. They again emphasize the importance of maintaining your account and keeping in contact with others. They also provided a list of 100 ways in which you can useTwitter, grouping them in categories. These categorizes consisted of: Getting Connected, Search, Organization, Authority Building, and Getting Value. They then went on to talk about the benefits of using Twitter in the classroom. They provided tips which included; don't require that students follow your account, commit to posting at regular intervals, vary the time of day of the posts, post links to content that is user friendly, know your audience's interest, don't just retweet, generate original links, suggest people, organization or magazines to follow, be personal, but also to avoid being overly personal in comments. There is a great deal that microblogging through Twitter can do in the classroom. Teachers just need to be consistently participating in its use, both for gathering information and sharing it. 

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Teachers Twitterchatting

I attended the English Language Teachers Twitterchat on Wednesday. I proposed a question, however no one responded to my post. I am going to try again for some of the different chats. It would have been interesting to hear back from the group, but instead I read through some of the material that they were discussing. I never realized how many people actually used Twitter in a more productive way. I've only ever known Twitter as a way of posting people's random thoughts and what they are doing of every second of the day. Again, my eyes have been opened to the ways that social networking can be a learning experience. I want to be more involved in the ESL community of teachers, and communicating through Twitterchat is one way in which I can do that.

I also enjoyed looking through the different people of Twitter. There are many educators posting different materials and resources to look through. I am looking forward to continue my search through the different educators that are one twitter and see what they have to offer. I never realized how many teachers actually posted educational information on Twitter. I think they will provide a lot of information and I can't wait to be able to look through my feed and see everything they have posted.

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