Parents’ Attitude toward Video Games

Rice (2007) states that one of the barriers of using video games in schools is the time constraint of class periods. This barrier made me wonder if students can play video games for learning purposes at home with the help of parents.

Many studies report that students spend the great amount of time on TV and video games, but just for relaxing, even resulting in the decline in school performance. If parents could intervene in playing video games with their children, selecting the appropriate video game and guiding their children to learn (content subjects or language learning) by playing together, on the one hand, children’s leisure time might turn good learning outcomes out; on the other hand, games could bring family closer together. In terms of language learning, studies (e.g., Lao, 2004) show parents’ language attitude and behavior is major factor of children’s language acquisition.

However, the problem is whether or not parents could accept the form of video games to learn language. One stereotype perspective was in my mind: parents are always strongly against video games, which are considered as a waste of time and bad cultural and behavior influences on children. In order to test if it is true, I searched online and found a survey result from ESA (Entertainment Software Association).

To my surprise, results show that “(s)ixty-one percent of parents with children under the age of 18 say that computer and video games are a positive addition to their children's lives”. Moreover, “(n)inety-one percent of parents surveyed who have children under the age of 18 said they monitor the content of the computer and video games their children play”. This is a good thing. Parents are willing to select appropriate video games for their children. If they want their children learn foreign languages through the game play, they could choose some video game that researchers recommended for language learning, such as the Sims.

In terms of parent involvement, “(f)orty-nine percent of parents say they play computer and video games with their children at least once a month”. The report said the Top four reasonsparents play video games with their children
Because they are asked to (79%).
It's fun for the entire family (75%).
It's a good opportunity to socialize with the child (71%).
It's a good opportunity to monitor game content (62%).

Since children like playing video games with parents together, parents could have the chance to utilize the video game as a learning tool for foreign/second language acquisition or other subject matters. When they see the positive learning outcomes of video games, the extent of the acceptance of video games will be increased, and those who refused video games might change their attitudes. Additionally, school could get the support from parents in terms of using video games in the classroom. Parent involvement solves the problem of short class periods in schools as well. More importantly, I believe more strong parent-school association/communication would be established.

As discussed above, we can see many positive education potentials of involving parents in playing the game with children together at home. However, those are just my assumptions and my dreams. There must be some challenges in practice. I would like to shift my attention a little bit to “parents and games” in the future study.

References:
Lao, C. (2004). Parents’ attitudes toward Chinese-English bilingual education and Chinese-English use. Bilingual Research Journal, 28(1), 99-121.

ESA (2006). Parents and games. Facts and Research. Retrieved April 18, 2008, from http://www.theesa.com/facts/parents_games.php.

Rice, J. W. (2007). New media resistance: Barriers to implementation of computer video games in the classroom. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 16(3), 249-261.

Connecting American and Chinese kids in MMOGs

Nowadays, researches are paying more and more attention to the educational potentials of mainstream video games, including in the aspect of language learning. As a Chinese citizen, I am very interested in looking at this issue from China’s perspective. I spent several days doing the searching work on the internet, but I was disappointed for finding few researches that study on the issue of video games and China’s education.

In my personal experience as an EFL teacher in a middle school in China for three years, I have never used any video games in the English teaching in my classroom. Instead, I concentrated on classroom activities/games to assist my students’ English learning. Although classroom games are the effective approaches to support the second language acquisition, many current researches (e.g., deHaan, 2003) show that mainstream computer games have more potentials to scaffold language learning in terms of motivation, interaction, situated learning, etc.

Fortunately, I found a piece of industry news which presents a project of connecting American and Chinese players in MMOGs (Multiple Players Online Games). Professor Edd Schneider and Zeng a student of Information Communication Technology ran a study in 2005, showing that “online gaming can be used to teach English to Asian teens”. Based on this theory, therefore, they decided to start the project to connect American kids and Chinese kids together in MMOGs.

The purposes of this project are two: (1) Sell MMOGs to China market: many Chinese parents disagree with game play. They consider it as a waste of time. However, if parents see their kids learning English with American kids by playing games, the China market of video games might be open. (2) Help Chinese kids to learn English.

The project has run well so far. They made an ESL-friendly server. American students were getting up at 3 am, putting on their headsets and chatting with Chinese students in a high school in Shanghai. The project showed some positive language outcomes of Chinese children, i.e., (1) Chinese students learned a lot of conversational English that they wouldn’t get in normal classes; (2) they gained confidence in English speaking; and (3) they began to understand American culture during the interaction with American kids.

Professor Edd Schneider said they plan to put together a summer camp as the next step of the project. They are looking to connect high school students in America and China. And I think the best thing is that they plan to help kids to develop long-term relationships, starting in 9th grade until they graduate. As discussed in my last post, language learners get benefits not only from the game per se, but also from game communities, especially out-of-game communities. I believe there will be amazing results from this follow-up long term project. And I hope Professor Edd Schneider could analyze the project outcomes from the perspectives of both playing game itself and in-game communities & out-of-game communities.

Although this is industry news, I believe the project reported in the news would play a role in changing Chinese parents’ and educators’ attitudes toward computer games. I hope it would not only open the door of China market, but also open the door of China education to accept video games, but in a careful manner.

I look forward to seeing the updates of this project, and I will go to look for the study Professor Edd Schneider and Zeng did in 2005. I hope there will be more researches on the implementation of video games in Chinese school settings in the near future.

References:
deHaan, J. (2003). Learning Language through Video Games: A Theoretical Framework, an Evaluation of Game Genres and Questions for Future Research. Retrieved April 16, 2008 from http://jobfunctions.bnet.com/whitepaper.aspx?docid=127390

Gamasutra (2007) Q&A: Using World Of Warcraft to Teach English? Industry News. Retrieved April 16, 2008 from http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13341

Game communities and Second Language Learning

Ang, C.S., Zaphiris, P., Wilson, S. (2005). Social Interaction in Game Communities and Second Language Learning. The 19th British HCI Group Annual Conference. Edinburgh, UK

Many current researches (e.g., Cruz, 2007) mainly focus on the educational benefits from what is going on in the game. The emergence of the language-heavy digital games provides educators opportunities to benefit language teaching and learning by playing the game itself.

However, Ang et al (2005) argue that “the educational opportunity in computer games stretches beyond the learning activities in the game per se”. Most players do much more than just playing games, rather, they download guidelines from the internet and participate into online forums to talk about games. “Game communities” are formed as an inevitable part of the game play, especially in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs).

Ang et al (2005) note that there are two types of game communities: in-game community (e.g. in-game chatting and joint task) and out-of-game community (e.g. the creation of written game related narratives and fan sites).

The special aspect of this article is that it talks about game communities, especially out-of-game communities, from the perspectives of language learning. There are some studies (e.g., Yee, 2002b) on the social interactions in the gaming environment, but their main focus is on how social interaction plays a role from the perspectives of engagement and motivation, in an in-game community. Hence, this article attracts me as an ESL/EFL educator.

I have reviewed an article of Thorne et al (2007) in my blog somewhere, which describes a multi-lingual intercultural dialogue between two gamers, Meme (a novice player) and Zomn (Ukranian, an experienced player). The case study in this article is a good evidence to support Ang et al’s (2005) “game communities” from the language-learning perspective. Two players established a good relationship in the in-game community first. Meme asked for help from his Ukranian friend about how to say something appropriate in Russian, and two players both use some language pragmatic competences (such as requestiong for help) to promote communication between them. More importantly, an enduring friendship has been established to continue out-of-game social networks. Meme showed a strong interest in starting Russian language courses to better communicate with Zomn.

On the other hand, Ang et al (2005) classified computer game communities into three categories: (1) Single Game-Play Community - refers to a community formed around a single player game; (2) Social Game-Play Community - refers to multiplayer games which are played together in the same physical location; and (3) Distributed Game-Play community - refers to the online multiplayer game in which multiple sessions of game are established in different geographical locations. The Figure 1 clearly illustrates these three types of game communities (Sorry for the obscure picture, please go to the article to see the clear one if you want :) .

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Rankin et al. (2006) point out that social interaction is “a prerequisite to students’ language proficiency”. This article briefly introduces the “game communities”, as a form of social interaction in the game. The details of how language learning is promoted in the game communities have not been discussed in the article. Therefore, this article could serve as a call on more future researches on this issue, from the perspective of language learning. I would like to search more on studies of the role of game communities in language learning.

References:

Ang, C.S., Zaphiris, P., Wilson, S. (2005). Social Interaction in Game Communities and Second Language Learning. The 19th British HCI Group Annual Conference. Edinburgh, UK

Cruz, J. Q. (2007). Video games and the ESL classroom. The Internet TESL Journal, XIII (3).

Rankin, Y. A., Gold, R., & Gooch, B. (2006). Playing for keeps: Gaming as a language learning tool. Retrieved April 7th, 2008, from http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1180000/1179340/a44-rankin.pdf?key1=1179340&key2

Thorne, S. L. & Black, R. W. (2007). New media literacies, online gaming, and language education. Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research, 8.

Yee, N., (2002b) Ariadne – Understanding MMORPG addiction. Retrieved April 14, 2008 from: http://www.nickyee.com/hub/addiction/home.html.

Have students talk about video games

Current researches, in the area of using electronic gaming in the classroom, focus on selecting and implementing pedagogical strategies to support its integration in the classroom (Dipietro et al. 2007). I found a Video Games Lesson on the site of English as 2nd Language, which is a good example of implementing classroom activities to reinforce learning outside the game. It is designed for intermediated/advanced ESL learners.

The special aspect of this lesson is that it doesn’t teach students how to play some video games; rather, it aims to help students learn English by talking about their favorite video games. In other words, the teacher provides some meaningful classroom activities to support students’ language development outside of the game.

The outline of the lesson is as follows:
1. Have students read the short video game advertisement.
2. Discuss new words and other related vocabulary.
3. Ask students to get into small groups of three or four and fill in the vocabulary tree for video games.
4. Ask each student (or group of students) to write a description of one of their favorite video games using the vocabulary in the vocabulary tree. Ask students to NOT use the name of the game. Make sure to point out that directions should be given in the imperative voice (i.e., Open the door, go to the chest, get the gold, etc. NOT You must open the door, you must then go to the chest, you must get the gold from the chest, etc.)
5. Have students read their game descriptions to the class. Ask the other students to guess which game is being described.

All kids like playing video games. Learning language around a topic that students are interested in must result in an unexpected positive language outcome.

Another possible positive outcome of this lesson, which I think is the most important thing, could be students’ critical interpretation, analysis and evaluation of video games they discussed. Reeves & Nass’s (1996) media equation tells us some bad influences of computer games on people’s real life, as discussed in my previous post. Especially kids, they are more likely to confuse between the content in the game and their everyday lives. Throughout this video games lesson, the teacher has the opportunity to guide and scaffold kids to critically access, analyze, and evaluate the video games. Therefore, students will build on a critical understanding between the media and real life, preventing from the possible bad impacts of video games.

If I were the teacher of this video games lesson, what I would do to improve the lesson are:
1. Selecting appropriate video games for students to discuss. I hope the game have a great amount of English text shown and spoken in the course of the game, in order to enhance students’ language development during playing games.
2. Asking students what language skills they’ve learnt from playing the game (such as new vocabularies, new sentence structure, etc)? Do they have any language barriers to flow in the game? If so, what are they?
3. Asking some questions to help support kids’ critical understanding of the video game itself, such as “What is the purpose of the game?” “Who is the target audience?” “What do you think the violence aspect of the game?” etc.

My concern is whether or not this kind of lesson would reduce students’ motivation of playing video games. I guess students might become aware that they are being coerced into “learning” in the lesson. However, Prensky (2001) suggest that learning can only be enjoyable when it is unconscious. Therefore, I am afraid that once I ask students to play video games, they will think of “learning”. Gradually, they will lose interests in playing the video game, or gaining higher and higher affective filters when playing the game. That’s a bad thing.

Therefore, I would like to explore the studies on discussing some bad sides of follow-up activities outside of the game.

References:

Dipietro, M., Ferdig, R. E., Boyer, J., & Black, E. W. (2007). Towards a framework for understanding electronic educational gaming. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 16(3), 225-248.

Prensky, M (2001). Digital Game-Based Learning. McGraw-Hill Education

Video Games Lesson. About.com: English as 2nd Language. Retrieved on April 9, 2008, from http://esl.about.com/library/lessons/bl_videogames.htm.

Media = Real life (What does it mean for video games?)

Reeves & Nass (1996) draw the conclusion from the series of experiments, i.e., people treat and respond to media in the same way as they treat and respond to other people in everyday social interaction. In other words, people treat media as “social actors”.

Media Equation is a relatively new study on Human Computer Interaction. Prior to reading this article, I have not realized that people unconsciously act as if the media are people, although there do exist many examples in our real lives to show the evidence of the media equation, such as stories illustrated in Chapter 1.

According to the theory of media equation, it is very reasonable why simulation games and Second Life are so popular in language learning and other educational fields. Reeves & Nass (1996, p8) indicate that “(b)ecause people have a strong positive bias toward social relationships and predictable environments, the more a media technology is consistent with social and physical rules, the more enjoyable the technology will be to use”.

It implies that the designer of video games should supply some characteristics/personalities, that are favorable in everyday social interactions (such as the politeness and the praise), into the game. On the other hand, the media equation suggests that one important criterion to evaluate simulation games is to see how and to what extent they reliably recreate real world contexts.

However, the media equation has brought up some worries in the field of video games and virtual world, since the boundary of “media” and “real life” has been blurred.

1. Players might not be able to escape from the computer gaming environment to the real life. You will be shocked after looking at the following news – Online Gamer Killed for Selling Virtual Weapon: an online gamer stabbed competitor Zhu repeatedly in the chest after he was told Zhu had sold his "dragon sabre", used in the popular online game Legend of Mir 3. Another example is that Shawn, a game addict, killed himself in front of the computer game- Everquest, which I reported in one of my previous posts. This kind of stories is so terrible, just because players thought of avatars in the game as real themselves, unconsciously and fundamentally.

2. People are so automatic to treat media as equal to real life, especially in the environment of simulations. However, it’s impossible to simulate every nuance of a real-world situation, especially in critical industries. If people can not distinguish the real life and media, there might be dangers. Let’s image, a worker has no experience of a real nuclear reactor, but only some simulated experience. In front of a real crisis involving a real nuclear reactor, he/she says “Let me do it, I have experiences to deal with it”. Do you dare to have him/her to try?

3. The theory of media equation leads to the debate on “violence” of the computer games. By observing the aggression in the video games, players begin to learn how to aggress in the real life.

As discussed above, video games does have some bad influences on people’s everyday lives, if they simply treat media and real life as equal. Therefore, the question is how to protect people from the negative influences of computer games. Reeves & Nass (1996, p7-8) suggest that the media equation doesn’t apply when “people are quite capable of thinking their way around it”. Consequently, the bottom line is help players treat games as learning tools and/or relaxing tools “that only represent the real world but are not real themselves”.

The implications for educators are

1. Students need to be trained as “critical thinker” and “active learner” in the process of playing video games. New London Group (1996) proposes the pedagogy of Multiliteracies. They report that learners should be able to critically analyze and evaluate the media from historical, social, cultural, political and ideological perspectives. Students should not only enjoy playing computer games, but also carefully think about and critique games in the sociocultural contexts. Such critical thinking is absent in many schooling practices as well. Therefore, the teacher should play an important role in guiding and scaffolding students to critically analyze and evaluate the relationship between video games and real life, by utilizing some pedagogical strategies in the classroom.

2. Real-life training can not totally be replaced by simulations. For example, the ESL teacher should provide rich natural and real-life communications in the classroom, rather than just putting students in front of computers with language learning video games or other online communication tools.

In conclusion, considering the media equation is beneficial to video games in many ways: improving the design of video games; providing criterion to evaluate video games; understanding the drawbacks of video games, and giving implications for remedying the drawbacks of video games through teachers’ implementation of pedagogical strategies in the classroom.

The media equation has impacted the work of video games and simulations a lot. I look forward to seeing my peers' reflection on this issue.

Reference:

New London Group (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60-92.

Reeves, B., & Nass, C. (1996). Ch 1, The Media Equation, pp. 3-18 in The Media Equation. Cambridge University Press.

Mainstream Digital Games (MDGs) vs. Learning-Oriented Games (LOGs)

When I googled “language learning online games”, I found many websites that contain various free online learning games. For example: Learning Vocabulary Fun has “WordSearch”, “CrossWords”, “HangMouse” and many other vocabulary online games.

These online games are different from The Sims and WoW. The former are “learning-oriented games (LOGs)”, which are particularly designed for language learning purposes; the later are “mainstream digital games (MDGs)”, which are primarily designed for entertainment purposes towards an end of language development. An interesting thing is that current researches paid more attention to the implementation of MDGs in the classroom, although they are not primarily designed for language development. Why?

My assumption is that MDGs have more educational potentials than LOGs in the classroom. Is that true? By exploring the word games on the site of “Leaning Vocabulary Fun” and looking at the studies on The Sims or WoW, I try to compare/contrast the differences between these two types of games.

1. LOGs are more simplistic than MDGs. In other words, players in MDG confront more challenges to complete the task. Dipietro, Ferdig, Boyer & Black (2007, p 232) report the element of challenge of electronic games promotes dynamic cognitive activity, resulting in the development of higher order processes such as metacognition and justification.

2. LOGs are mostly designed for sole-user, offline play; on the contrary, MDGs are designed for multiple players, online play. In this sense, MDGs are more effective than LOGs in the terms of language learning, because they provide the sense of collaboration in the game. Vygotsky’s ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) theory describes the gap between what children can accomplish independently and what they can achieve in collaboration with another, more competent person (Vygotsky, 1978).

3. Compared to LOGs, MDGs are typically more sophisticated in aspects of semiotic domains, such as images, graphics, animations, etc. Hence, it’s reasonable why MDGs are more likely to attract users.

4. In LOGs, the tasks are repetitive. For example, the player has to continually spell words in the “HangMouse”, so that the player might feel boring very quickly. It’s more like “work”, rather than “play”. On the contrary, in MDGs, the player could experience various activities toward the end of the task, learning language in a natural and unconscious way.

5. In LOGs, the activity usually concentrate on one language skill, such as the decoding skill in “HangMouse”; or concentrate on accumulation of homogenous content, such as spelling, phenome recognition, and vocabulary in “Word Scramble”. On the contrary, in MDGs, heterogeneous language skills/content could be achieved simultaneously within one activity during the game, such as “learning colors, body parts, professions, and relationships” in one activity of the Sim 2, as mentioned in my post last week - “The Sims Teach German”.

6. Last but not the least, users of LOGs are more likely to be aware that they are still learning. Prensky (2001) suggest that learning can only be enjoyable when it is unconscious. In this sense, MDGs have the potential to make learning fun.

From what discussed above, MDG does have more educational potentials than LOG. However, there are still some significant tensions to introduce MDG into the school setting.
1. There are a lot of irrelevant content in the MDG, which would waste valuable lesson time.
2. Does the language content/skills developed in the MDG match the criteria assessed in high stakes national tests, such as NCLB (No Child Left Behind)?

From these two perspectives, LOGs are more accurate and relevant to formal curriculum than MDGs.

The implication for future educational game designers is to find a good balance between MDGs and LOGs, thus reaching the highest potential of video games for language development in the classroom. My next step is to search more about how to reach at this balance.

References:
Dipietro, M., Ferdig, R. E., Boyer, J., & Black, E. W. (2007). Towards a framework for understanding electronic educational gaming. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 16(3), 225-248.
Prensky, M (2001). Digital Game-Based Learning. McGraw-Hill Education

The Sims Teach German

Figure 1
Figure 2

Snapshots from video clip "The Sims Teach German" , Available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1LmeBD-r08

From the Youtube, I found a very good video clip "The Sims Teach German" that analyzes the advantages of The Sims in the aspect of teaching a foreign language – German. I haven’t play The Sims yet, however, this video clip provided me a chance to visually experience this game, so that I can understand the benefits of this game for language development more vividly and more deeply.

This video clip compares and contrasts the ways to teach German by using The Sim2 and using traditional classroom textbooks. I listed some points that are most interesting to me:

Semiotic system
· The Sim 2: Animations enhance language acquisition and retention
· Traditional classroom textbooks: Text & Still images ( can not illustrate some abstract words or concepts)

Language
· The Sim 2: Multiple languages in the setting, and can be easily changed or even added
· Traditional classroom textbooks: Monolingual or bilingual at most

Activity
· The Sim 2: A variety of integrated learning objectives could be achieved simultaneously within one activity during the game, such as “learning colors, body parts, professions, and relationships”.
· Traditional classroom textbooks: Generally, one activity has one main learning purpose (refer to the example shown in Figure 1 above)

Learner engagement
· The Sim 2: Learners acquire language by creating their own virtual worlds. For example, they learn “where the furniture should go” by dragging the furniture here and there in their own world.
· Traditional classroom textbooks: One example is shown in Figure 2 above, they learn “where the furniture should go” by filling words in the blanks.

Simulation
· The Sim 2: Simulation environment allows learners to virtually experience real-world without the risk of injury, the cost of failure, time, etc. Moreover, learners could immerse in some environment that they will never have the chance to go in their real life, such as “colonial Williamsburg of 1775”.
· Traditional classroom textbooks: Only some still images, so …

This video clip is a good visual resource to understand the popular video game, The Sims. Although this game is primarily designed for entertainment, just as many other video games, it is really a good tool to enhance language learning in an authentic and fun way. Therefore, I think The Sim is very valuable in providing educational game designers with directions and good suggestions to develop some particular language-learning video games, promoting innovations in ESL/EFL or other foreign language learning field. I am very interested in exploring more on the analysis of The Sim.