A serious game----The Third World Farmer

  http://3rdworldfarmer.com/
  I chose the game called 3^rd World Farmer which can guide us to experience the real life of the peasant in the third world. At first, I treated it as a game and I thought the more crops (corn, wheat, cotton, peanut) I planted, the more money I would get. Unfortunately, I met with many hardships, and the whole family were died in the end. The second time I played the game, I paid attention to some other details, and I found that so many hardships that the peasant had to suffer, such as the corrupt officials, the weather disasters, the unstable market, and other unexceptional problems. I played this game for four times and only one time the whole family were alive and two children had access to school. In other three times, they could not go to school and hospital for lack of money. What’s worse, their farm would be occupied by the chemistry factory. I was totally shocked when I finished the game. This game provoke people to think about the tough life of people in the third world and the real topics happened in the game, thus, taking action to help people there. The reason why I chose this game is that I hope more people can realize this situation and more people can join in.

  The game is not precise in all details, but shows us a lot of topics I mentioned above. The students should be at Level 4 speaking skills in the class. Michigan English Language Proficiency Standards describes their ability like this: "S.4.4.a Exchange, support and discuss opinions and individual opinions and individual perspectives with peers on a variety of topics dealing with content area information or issues". The objective of the class is to teach students express opinions on certain topics. When they play the game, ask them pay attention to the topics that affect the income of the farmers. After they finish the game, we can hold the activities to access students by asking them describe their personal opinions of the topics and the consequence of the game (e.g.: what do you think of the Farming License? Is it fair for government to charge extra money?). Moreover, we can discuss the topics and find the solution to this situation (e.g.: which one do you think is more important, education or health insurance? How can we help more people go to school?). In addition , we can give students a certain and ask them to write a composition to express their opinions.

Polleke’s Blue Room

http://www.freakinrooms.com/games/pollekesblueroom/

    Since I like to play escape game when I was a student, so I chose Polleke’s Blue Room. It is a house with four rooms (four images), and you have to escape the house according to the clues you get. Maybe there is something wrong with my mouse, or maybe I am not familiar with this game, it took me nearly an hour to play this game.

 

    Even though the image is simple, the game is complex since not only should you be careful about every detail but also you should think about the relationship among the clues. I think it is a good game that can be used to teach students who are at early intermediate level. According to Michigan English Language Proficiency Standards,students who are at this level can start short conversations on simple topics,can understand basic narrative text and authentic materials,and can write simple notes and write short reports using basic vocabulary,and common language structures.I can make use of this game to teach them some vocabulary, try describe the procedure of a task (learn to use imperatives to give instructions and learn to express order such as first, next, then, finally…), and follow the instructions to complete a task.

     In the class, the teacher can be an instructor and assistor, and the students can be the game player and center of the class. My class can be divided into three stages. First, I will introduce the game to the students and ask them to play the games without the walk through in a limited time (about 40 minutes). Meanwhile, I will ask the students pay attention to the vocabulary on the top left corner. Students can memorize some words when they click on the objects in the game.

 

    It is impossible for all students to finish the game in the limited time. At this time, ask two or three students who perform better in the game to describe how they play the game to other students who fall behind. At this time, students must make use of the images of the game to explain the procedures of the game and use the word that appeared in the game. If students have difficulty in explaining, teacher and other student can give them a hand. 

 

    Finally, show students the walk through and ask them to finish the task according to the walk through. I don’t think all students can finish the game in the class because it requires extreme carefulness and patient. So they can play the game after class and discuss how they play it in the next class. Meanwhile, I can check whether they master the vocabulary, the imperatives by describing part of the procedure of the game.
    I think that assessment can be informal and formal in many different ways.  I can check their words according to their description of how to finish the game as well as giving them a quiz such as fill in the blanks or multiple-choice. When checking whether they can describe the procedure of the task, I can ask the students discuss the game strategies in the class or write short notes when they play the game.

    It is really an interesting game. It can help students learn something new as well as having the sense of achievement. I can still remember the great joy when I put the numbers I collected together.

Learning---- a joy, not a job

    In my opinion, gamification is using games to motivate learners to be involved in solving problems, and during the process of playing game, learners can develop their competence and skills, thus achieving their study goal. Just as 7 things youshould know about games and learning mentions, it has been long understood that games have the potential to be applied to teaching and will contribute to the improvement of students’ study. Meanwhile, games are increasing being employed at colleges and universities such as the Social Media Innovation Quest which can help students retain information and GradeCraft which can be used not only in supplying analytics data but also in political theory and information studies.

     Compared with adult learners, teenagers tend to be more difficult to focus on one thing for long and easy to shift their attention to other thing. Games can appeal to teenagers’ attention for longer time since they are more interesting than just finish the academic task. Should we employ games in teenagers’ class? In Technology—“Just”Playing Games? A Look at the Use of Digital Games for Language Learning, Julie considered that digital game principles offer a way to overcome challenges of the language classroom which are boring and less dynamic sometimes. As a matter of fact, I found my students were easy to be distracted and sleepy when I kept talking for about 20 minutes. Sometimes, I had to play games or use other activities to attract their attention. In addition, digital game design offers a new perspective to our overall understanding of language learning and teaching. I can still remember I taught a word “temple” to my students. One of the students shouted with joy” I know this word because I come across it when I play computer games”. All of us burst into laughter. However, I began to think why not combine games with language study? Maybe it can encourage more students engaged in learning English.

     It is no doubt that the educational game can motivate students develop their competence and skills. However, if not designed well, educational games may be viewed as silly by learners and will be waste a lot of time, which is dangerous. What should we do? In sculpting flow and fiero, Zac Hill considered that games are popular precisely because they address real human needs and evoke real human emotions. Flow and fiero are two of the most straightforward of those. So the educational games should also contain these two features. We can design “play” along something called an engagement curve, that is to say, to present challenges to people according to the teaching goal we want them to achiever. In fact, many language-learning APP can be found now on the internet, however, it is still a long way to design good educational games and apply them to the class successfully.

How will I use twitter in my future teaching

    Having chatted with some educators on twitter chat, I get an idea that twitter is a useful platform for teachers to express their thoughts, search for new theories, and exchange ideas and we teachers can strengthen communication through twitter chat. However, after reading the articles about how to apply twitter to classroom, I find a lot of new benefits of twitter.

    In the article “How Twitter can be used as a powerful educational tool”, what Mrs. Caviness did inspires me a lot. She could make use of twitter as a tool to organize her students together even though she was just a new user. She posted the content that she thought about suddenly and was related to the content in her class to twitter. I think it is really creative. For example, when she saw the baseball game, she posted “Do you remember where the perfect bunt is?” and promised to give a surprise to the student who answer the question first. Her action not only encourages students to recall what they learned in the class and try their best to figure out the answer but also motivates students so that they will be more interested in this class. Mrs. Caviness impressed me and inspired me to be more creative in my future teaching.

    Another article “UsingMicroblogging platforms for educational purpose” introduces some practical strategies that we can use in our future teaching, such as creating communities in classrooms, collaboration, managing your projects, polls and opinions, researching online, participation and word explorations. There is a good advantage is that you can follow people you are interested in. So I can encourage my students to follow some popular personalities to help students get a clear picture of the world around. Moreover, it is a perfect idea to use twitter collect polls and opinions. Even though we can only put in 140 words, it is enough for polls. 

    As a matter of fact, there are many strategies that we can make use of , however, I think I will just use some of them. I hope my students can express themselves freely and it is a challenge for students to express themselves clearly in 140 words.

Chatting on Twitter Chat

    The first impression twitter leaves on me is that it looks like Micro-blog in China. We also follow others on Micro-blog and know about the life or thoughts of people or organization that we are interested in. I also followed some people and organization on twitter to get some information about second language teaching and some strategies in the class. However, the most attraction is twitter chat that I have never known before. 

    Twitter chats are a place where educators meet at a set ‘meeting time’ to engage in conversations by sending out tweets on a topic using a designated hashtag during a specific time on a certain day.  Most twitter chats last for an hour. Today, I followed #langtag to discuss "How do you effectively time, sequence, and transition between activities in a class period?"

    Twitter chats offer a good platform for educators to connect with each other, exchange and discuss ideas, ask for help and provide assistance, find new resources and take action. I got a lot of good suggestions through this chatting. Such as setting a good lesson goal, paying attention to the first and last activities because students can memorize the first and last activities better. Also, I come up with my own questions and reply in the discussion. 

    There is also a concern that the words we put in are limited so that we have to minimize our words every time we post our thoughts. It can cause two bad results, first, we have to divide what we want to express into two or three pieces, which is very inconvenient. Secondly, some short words can not express ourselves appropriately,  which can confuse others. 

    I find that twitter chat is a good tool for educators and people who are interested in education to start a real conversation. Unfortunately,  It is the first time I use twitter chat and it costs me a lot of time to know how to join it, so I can not completely join in the chat from beginning to end. I think I can do better the next time.