GAMING FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING & USING LIVEBINDERSCALL 4/22

Slideshare.net/jwsmart

HOUSEKEEPING

Materials Development due w/ Final Portfolio Wednesday: cover online social communities.

GAMING FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING Games and virtual environments can be used to foster

language learning, especially spontaneous communication and task-based activities.

CAVEAT

Idea not “you should teach using virtual environments/video games” but rather “these opportunities exist – should we exploit them, and if so, how?

Rationale: ubiquitous utilities, motivational, many students already use them.

VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS FOR LL

Environments like Second Life have no specific goals or plots, but are simply open virtual environments.

Possibly more engaging for CMC than other modes (combine things to do with SCMC).

Second Life has been used for virtual classrooms, LL quests, and for finding L2 conversants (you can visit language-specific regions, good for FL contexts).

Similar to other forms of CMC, may lead to more involvement by students who are quieter in FTF activities.

Wide open environment.

GAME ENVIRONMENTS

Video games can foster collaboration and communication among participants.

Massively Multiplayer Online games like World of Warcraft and EverQuest 2 have been the focus of much LL research (See ReCALL 2012 Special Issue).

Other online games with multiplayer options have also been used/studied for LL.

Some free, some paid.

MOBILE GAMES

A broad range of tutorial-type games available for mobile devices (especially for vocabulary).

Mobile mobile games (see ARIS and Mentira, as discussed in Holden & Sykes, 2009).

Interpersonal games that foster communication/ cooperation (e.g., SpaceTeam, Timeline)

LIVEBINDERS

Privacy controls, collaborative features. Can embed pretty much anything. User tools are somewhat friendly. Not the best layout options (with more work you can

achieve better results (e.g., Wordpress, Google Sites, Weebly).

LIVEBINDERS

http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=866416