Bringing technology into education is not a new topic in China. Chinese educators have realized the benefits of e-gaming in the educational contexts as well. While cruising the web, I found the first educational gaming website that was launched in Shanghai in 2005.
This website was designed by the East China Normal University Press and a Hong Kong communication corporation. The East China Normal University Press has a very good reputation in educational area in China. I guess almost every Chinese student from G1 to G12 must be very familiar with one educational reference book published by that Press, which is called “yikeyilian”(one lesson one practice). And this website is kind of Internet-based “yikeyilian”. If I were a student, I would definitely choose to enter into the intriguing Internet-based one, rather than the boring and dull paper-based one.
The website covers three subject matters (Chinese, Math and English) from grade 1-5. The middle school and high school versions are currently under development. There are almost 60 e-games to give students a platform to play and learn. I will introduce some of them:
"Daily Journey": It brings kids into various virtual worlds to learn content knowledge, like space travel and fairy world. The game is not only interesting, but also strongly linked to the content knowledge.
“Cool Knowledge”: It’s about some interesting daily knowledge, like an encyclopedia. Every week, they have different themes, such as language and biology.
"Journey Tracking System": It’s a student performance tracking system, keeping a track of the student’s “travelling history”. In this way, the student will be motivated to advance to higher level. Moreover, the student will have the sense of competition in this platform.
Every game really looks fun to me. If you want to know more, please visit http://e-legends.yikeyilian.com/index.php.
But, the system language is in Chinese. Sorry for the inconvenience for most of you. I hope someday there will be an English version. On one hand, this educational gaming website will be available to more English-speaking kids; on the other hand, for Chinese kids, they can have opportunities to learn English by Content Based Instruction (CBI), which is proven to be an effective teaching method by many researches (e.g., Davies, 2003).
Reference:
Davies, S. (2003). Content based instruction in EFL contexts. The Internet TESL Journal, IX (2). Available from http://iteslj.org/Articles/Davies-CBI.html.
3 comments:
Hey Jiao,
I commented on my article that other developing countries, and more specifically China are kicking our butts in e-gaming and education as this website proves that point. Great interface design and it weaves educational subject matter with an attention grabbing design to maintain interest over time.
China has been leading on the cutting edge of programs to have their students learn at a faster rate than our students. By exposing younger students to complex cognitive designs at an earlier age, this expands their capacity sooner and allows for greater retention of content. The curriculum of education in the States needs to find an application that combines these elements to be used nationally otherwise countries like China and India will continue to exert their growing edge in education to their students, leaving ours falling further behind.
Hi Jiao,
I found your description of the Yikeyilian site intriguing so I checked it out. I don’t read or speak Chinese so I looked at it from a design aspect only. It looks very fun and engaging. I agree with you that if the choice was paper-based or web-based, I would go with the Internet version. It sounds like a great tool for kids and I imagine they have fun too!
I hope there will be an English version.
Thanks for sharing this site!
:) Garnette
Hey, Jiao,
You did such a good job exploring the gaming in China! That's a very new topic in Chinese education. Most of the parents and teachers still hold very negative attitudes towards gaming (commercial games.) But it's glad to know there are some game elements have been integrated in learning. I believe there's much room for us to do further research. Thanks for the interesting information!
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