A Serious Game: The Garbage Game

The Garbage Game is another garbage game that arranged in narrative and certain situation that can help students practice many language abilities in an interesting way.

I played the game twice and it was quite easy to play and direct in choice. At first time, I chose what I do regularly and the results are not that good. At second time, I chose the greener way to do with the garbage and it comes better. This game is not as  interesting as the Third World Farmer but it involves more reading and more accessible for those who don't like games. 

In terms of language learning objectives. This game can make students read more and read repeatedly. Also it can let students compare several choices and make their own choice for better result.

Assessment of the objectives may lie on the understanding of passages and making proper decisions upon given information. For example, reading a paragraph and then do multiple choices can be used to test the understanding ability of students in this case. 

Gamification: Finding a Way out...

Gamification is the application of game elements in non-gaming situations, often to motive or influence behavior. Game here is including 'a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation' according to the game designer Jane McGonigal. It can be used in classrooms to motivate students and get students more involved. 

According to the passage A Comparison of Computer Game and Language-Learning Task Design Using Flow Theory, gamification can create an interesting task-based task for students. It can make the activity either too rigid or too easy. 

I've played Phantasy Quest twice and it's really hard for me. I don't play games because I think the games are waste of time. After trying again and again, I felt frustrated. This game is not easy and players need to find tiny distinctions and make multiple connections with those objects  and how them works. I failed many times and I had to refer to the walkthrough. Finally, with the help of the walk through I finally got the girl back. 

For language skills that this game may achieve, I think first is the reading ability. For example, when I tried to get on the boat, I almost clicked every part of the picture and I found some words that I didn't know like 'mask' and I checked the dictionary to find out it's meaning. Thus, this game can enhance the ability of understanding rules and directions. Secondly, this game can also enhance writing and speaking ability. Teacher can let students write or talk about how they play the game. Also, teacher can teach ways of describing activities first and let students write or talk about their own walkthroughs. 

Regarding activities, students can be assigned in groups to solve this problem. These groups can including different roles and students can collaborates with each other on either play the game or write the walkthrough. Also, students can communicate with each other on the activities they made in the game. 

The teacher may provide some scaffolding like how to describe the directions, how to use proper verbs to describe activities and also some unfamiliar words. Also, the teacher can assign different roles within groups and make teamwork runs smoothly.

I would use both ways. By using walk through, higher proficiency level students may benefit a lot but when play with some lower proficiency level students I would first provide the text and then the images.

In terms of assessing the objectives, I would assign another similar game and let the students write or speak the procedures that they use to complete the game. 

Twitter for Professional Development and Future Teaching

Before this module, I never thought twitter can be a good tool for teaching and learning. Twitter for me is just for teenagers to follow stars like Justin Bieber. It's really a surprise for me that I can find so many resources and have conversations with so many my fellow teachers and sometimes some big shots in this field. 

As for professional development, twitter provides a platform for teachers to share their ideas, webpages, videos, articles, and almost everything we can see online. Also, teachers can gather together with some like-minded colleagues all around the world in a certain time and post topics and articles and other resources they like. This we could also find in google groups. 

As for future teaching, a teacher can use twitter as a virtual dashboard and keep all the students involved. Also, students can learn from each other and communicate with each other. Like in the article The Teacher's Guide to Twitter, ' Using Twitter is a two part process. The first part is as a consumer, where you follow people, read their tweets, and learn from them. A lot of people stop there, which is easy to understand since that is the easy part. But the real magic happens when you share, too.' Twitter is like other technology tools that can enhance communication, both input and output.  

However, in China, we don't have proper access to twitter.com, I need to find an alternative for this wonderful website and also hope the situation may change someday. 

In a word, the technologies are changing the education forms, we need to keep up with the trend and enhance the communicative nature of language education by using these technology tools.

Myths of Technologies

From the video by the linguist David Crystal, I think of a quote from the Bible. Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law of Moses or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. (Matthew 5:17)

In the language education sense, the Law of Moses in is the ability of communication. Communication has two aspect, the language input and output, the understanding and effective expression. 

With the development modern technologies, the bad side of them are very highlighted. Especially for me, I come from China and in Chinese high-schools the use of phones, tablets and other electronic devices are quite forbiddened. These are considered only as entertainment tools. But it is not as bad as they are considered in China. Now we should consider it not the hinder of education but facilitator and helper of education. As David Crystal mentioned in the video, the popularity of text messages are not eliminating the language ability. Also, students are reading more than before by using modern technologies. So it's crucial for teachers today to find new ways by adapting computer and other modern technologies that can help with our students.

Maybe we can rephrase the scripture in to our language education version, 'Technologies not come to abolish the communication nature of language education, but to fulfill it.'

#twitterchat

I joined a twitterchat called '#edchat' tonight. I find this very informative. It provides me lots of different webpages concerned with education. I saved some pages and joined some chat with a few people on twitter. 

For example, I find some interesting tips for scaffolding in classrooms.  These tips are helpful. For me, I'm taking the Practicum class this semester, I teach a lot in class and will teach in real classrooms. So I find these tips very helpful. It's really important to use multiple ways to scaffolding in classrooms. 

Also, I tried to rise some questions in twitterchat, but it seems no one reply my question. But the reason of this may be because I didn't narrow down the chatting topic (I should choose #eltchat or other esl chat sessions). 

Twitterchat is very informative and interactive, it is helpful for teachers to share their opinions and share the knowledge they know. It's helpful for professional growth. Twitterchat also make me like twitter and deepen the belief that technologies are at our dispose and their are many advantages if we use it properly and creatively. 

Classroom 2.0

I joined Classroom 2.0 and I find it very useful in communicate with my colleagues in the EFL field.

There're many groups of different topics of language teaching not only in English but also many other languages in Spanish and other languages. I can join in those groups and get some interesting information about the topic that the group focus on.

Also, I find many interesting surveys posted by teachers. So this is a community and support group for teachers. I can get help from others and others can help me. As a future language teacher, I will definitely use this website to get professional support and peer help from the teachers.

All in all, Classroom 2.0 is a very useful website which I will use frequently.

A Learner is Like a Bumble Bee

'Buzz, buzz...' A bumblebee may make this sound when swooshing by your ear. These cute bees make me think some resemblance with learners today.

Bumblebees are connected with each other and collaborative. According to Connectivism:

A Learning Theory for the Digital Age by George Siemens, 'The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe.' The bumblebees are creatures that are highly connected with each other and so do learners in digital age. The learners today are helping each other and help each other find interesting fragrance knowledge. Although the connection of bumblebees seems chaotic, but there is an underlying order within the bee society. Like the author says, there is 'a cryptic form of order'. So are the learners have in today's digital era. 

In the video The Conflict of Learning Theories with Human Nature, Mr. Siemens mentions that Behaviorism and other learning theories are somewhat at odds with what we hope learning process would be. 'Our need to externalize is so great that we can't have meaningful private dialogue... we need to externalize our thought for us to connect with other individuals.' We hope that learning should be externalize but these theories, like Behaviorism, considers our mind as a black box and unpenetrable. Like bumblebees, the learning process is both an individual process and a collaborative process. These two aspects are connected with each other and nowadays in digital era also works. 

In conclusion, learners today are like bumblebees, seems separated but organized in a crytic yet understandable manner.