Tech Learning is a good website that explores how to integrate technology into learning processes. It includes a lot of valuable resources, articles and news for teachers, tech coordinators and administors. When I searched for “gaming and ESL”, I found some good articles. One example is “Free Online Games Develop ESL Students' Language Skills”.
The author, Larry Ferlazzo, is an ESL high school teacher. He teaches English and Social Studies to ESL learners. And he is the Grand Prize winner of the 2007 International Reading Association Presidential Award for Reading and Technology.
In this article, he recommended a lot of online games, which “that are primarily designed for entertainment purposes towards an end of English-language development”. He divided these online games into several categories - escape the room, adventure, choose your own adventure, and hidden object. I'd like to explore these games later. The part I like in this article is that Larry has his criteria to choose online games for ESL educational purposes: 1) no sexual and violence content; 2) “must have a fair amount of English text shown and, ideally, spoken in the course of the game”; and 3) free and online, and not require any downloading, “as this can be problematic for school computers”.
Moreover, he designed many classroom activities, in order to use online games for language development purposes. For example, he asks his students to write down their own walkthroughs for the game they played; to discuss their playing experiences with each other.
AND he proposed a new idea to ask students to create their own online games on Sploder, a free website that students could quickly and easily design their own games. And then students could write the instructions on how to play the game they designed, play other games that have been created by their classmates, and give some comments.
Larry’s classroom is absolutely a good example of optimizing the use of video games for language development. I would like to explore more on Larry’s work later.
The author, Larry Ferlazzo, is an ESL high school teacher. He teaches English and Social Studies to ESL learners. And he is the Grand Prize winner of the 2007 International Reading Association Presidential Award for Reading and Technology.
In this article, he recommended a lot of online games, which “that are primarily designed for entertainment purposes towards an end of English-language development”. He divided these online games into several categories - escape the room, adventure, choose your own adventure, and hidden object. I'd like to explore these games later. The part I like in this article is that Larry has his criteria to choose online games for ESL educational purposes: 1) no sexual and violence content; 2) “must have a fair amount of English text shown and, ideally, spoken in the course of the game”; and 3) free and online, and not require any downloading, “as this can be problematic for school computers”.
Moreover, he designed many classroom activities, in order to use online games for language development purposes. For example, he asks his students to write down their own walkthroughs for the game they played; to discuss their playing experiences with each other.
AND he proposed a new idea to ask students to create their own online games on Sploder, a free website that students could quickly and easily design their own games. And then students could write the instructions on how to play the game they designed, play other games that have been created by their classmates, and give some comments.
Larry’s classroom is absolutely a good example of optimizing the use of video games for language development. I would like to explore more on Larry’s work later.
Reference:
Ferlazzo, L. (2008). Free online games develop ESL students' language skills. Tech Learning. Retrieved on March 24, 2008. Available from http://www.techlearning.com/story/showArticle.php?articleID=196604915.
3 comments:
Hey Jiao,
Good job! I really like the article written by the teacher. He provides a lot of useful resources, especially his another article of his favorite games. His criteria for online games used in his classroom are very practical.The most inspiring is he encourages his students to design their own games on Sploder and play their peers' products! It's very creative. I love this idea! I believe that students can be more actively involved in creating their own games than play pre-designed ones. I'm excited to find there are many ways to use games for real language use like writing walkthrough. Ferlazzo's innovative teaching ideas should be known by more teachers and researchers. Sometimes, it seems that research on the topic kind of has lagged behind the practice.
What a neat find! I really like Ferlazzo's criteria for selecting the games because it is culturally sensitive. That is a great thing especially for the ESL games.
I did not know until our work this past week with MOTAS that there were different genres of games and one of those is called "escape the room." I am learning so much about the very interesting topic of gaming.
Thanks for sharing this great resource.
:) Garnette
Hey Zhuo,
I like your idea "it seems that research on the topic kind of has lagged behind the practice".
:) Jiao
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