Last week, I had the pleasure of talking to a group of teachers that Shelly Terrell was training in Brazil. I answered questions about using computer games in the classroom and introduced them to the Digital Play blog and book.

Hope you enjoy the video!

The workshop, facilitated by Paul Braddock and Graham Stanley is one of a number of similar workshops that have been organised for the annual TESOL Electronic Village Online (EVO).

Over the next 5 weeks, participants will be working together and sharing ideas about using games in language teaching. The workshop, run on Moodle, and which will be archived on the TLLG wiki, also features a series of live sessions with special guest speakers talking about different aspects of games and gamification in language teaching and learning:

• Joe Pereira
• Ozge Karaoglü
• Kyle Mawer
• Rob Lewis

In addition, participants will:-

• be given two special booklets with ideas, tips and lesson plans on how to use online games in class
• have the opportunity to take part in a special Teacher Development online game

This is the second free online games workshop that Digital Play has been involved in. The first, run in December 2011 for SEETA (South East Europe Teachers Association) is still available for visits and tasks (see below).

Here, as the last Digital Play blog post of the year, is Nada’s idea for the December Escape Game. Well done Nada! A copy of Digital Play (the book) is on the way to you.

December Escape Game Lesson Plan

Level: Beginners
Language: body parts, furniture, prepositions of place
Function: asking questions (to be)
Skills: speaking
Location: the connected classroom
Game: December Escape Game

Pre-play
Revise vocabulary by labelling body parts and furniture (December Escape Game YLE Worksheet).

Play
Tell your students that Santa has to deliver the presents but has been locked in the room. On top of that, he is missing his clothes. They are to help him find his clothes, find the key and escape the room. There are some things hidden in the room and students’ task is to guide the teacher where to click by asking:  ‘’Is there something behind/under/in… ‘’ .  Find all the missing pieces and help Santa out.

Post Play
Write a letter to Santa.

Thanks for this great idea, Nada, and thanks to all of our readers! Wishing you Seasons Greetings and looking forward to sharing more digital play with you all in 2012!

The course is an introduction to using online games in the ELT classroom and is free for anyone who wants to attend. The idea is for us to explore the use of digital games in the classroom from 5th-15th December. There will be games to try out, questions to ask your students, discusssions about the value and classroom practice using digital games, and there will be an opportunity to create your own ‘Pick-a-Path’ game using the photo management software, Flickr, at the end of the course.

There will be six topics during the course, which are:

• Introduction to online games
• Games to encourage speaking
• Games to practise listening
• Games for reading & writing
• Games and grammar & vocabulary
• Games projects with classes

Hope to see you there!

Location: Computer room, class set of laptops (or game play for homework)

Skills Focus: Reading, Speaking

Game: http://www.enercities.eu

Enercities is a computer simulation game which lets you build your own city. It is suitable for  intermediate and above students and worth playing for the vocabulary of cities and discussion possibilities. Topics that are relevant include: Cities, Politics, Money, Renewable energy, Global warming, etc.

The aim of the game is to build a sustainable city with a population of 200. It’s probably best played in a computer room or with a class set of laptops. Alternatively, you can introduce the game to the students and ask them to play at home.

There is quite a lot of reading in the game, so I recommend looking at the instructions how to play with the students, letting them play and then doing a post-game follow-up discussion about their results and the best strategies for playing the game.

Here’s a class handout (PDF): Digital_Play_Enercities

Class Dojo (http://www.classdojo.com) is a realtime behaviour management system for teachers who have an internet-enabled computer and a projector (connected classroom)or IWB.

You start by creating an account and setting up a class by typing in the names of your students. Avatars for each student are automatically generated during this process.

In class, you select a student and award a positive point for behaviour such as creativity, hard work, presentation, etc.

You can also award negative points for bad behaviour, when a student doesn’t bring homework or if he/she arrives late, etc.

Think of it like a digital star chart with added extras. The points can be awarded individually or, by selecting all students, you can give everyone a point. On the board, you can show only the positive or only the negative points the students get.

You can also undo if you make a mistake or change your mind, and it’s possible to reset all points to zero too. So far so good, but what makes Class Dojo really interesting is that once the class has ended, the programme displays a pie chart with the results of all student behaviour.

If you use Class Dojo every class, then you can select periods of time (days of the week, terms, etc) to display records of. You can also choose individual students and display their progress.

These are report cards that you can print off (on paper or PDF) for your own records or to give to the students or parents. You can also add and change the behaviour categories when you select ‘edit class’. This way you can tailor make the programme to suit the behaviour you want to reward or stop in your own class.

All in all, Class Dojo looks like it is a great way of gamifying the behaviour of your class and could work well for many teachers. A great find! Please let us know here if you find it useful.

Similar in concept to a Tamagotchi, but on the Web, it can be used in the young learner language classroom successfully, but the teacher has to be careful because not everything in the game lends itself to language learning or practice. When I started using the site I also found that Moshi Monsters quickly became the only thing my 9-10 year-olds would ask for, so I decided to limit our use to ten minutes and during a specific section of the class (just after the break).

Moshi Monsters works well in the Primary language class, especially if you have a connected classroom (i.e. a computer with Internet and a projector) and is best used if it forms a regular part of the class routine.

You can set up the account with the class, choose from one of four monsters and give the creature a name – all of this works very well when done with the class as it helps create a sense of ownership and it’s a great way to promote a spoken discussion.

Just like the Tamagotchi, your Moshi monster needs regular attention or the mood will turn sour (as in the picture above – now the class is over, nobody is looking after poor Panchito!) and so be warned. When I first started using the site, I only logged in during classtime and this meant our mosnter was always sad or grumpy, which affected the mood of the class, and meant that it was difficult to increase his level. I fixed this by giving the password to the learners, so they were able to look after the monster during the week. This went well for a while until most of the learners ended up creating their own Moshi monster.

The Moshi monsters world (left) is full of interesting places to visit, with shops where you can buy food, furniture and clothes. Most of the places you can visit with your learners, but there are a few areas that are only open to premium (i.e. paid) members. However, these can easily be avoided.

Apart from talking about the monster, making sure he/she is happy, buying food, eating, shopping, and visiting places, there are a number of activities that are worth doing and which include language practice.

The first of these involves making new friends. You can ask anyone you meet for friendship, visit their house and leave notes on their pinboard. This means you can involve the learners in writing as in the example (left).

If the learners in the class end up getting their own monsters, then you can make friends with them, visit their homes and send notes to them, which is what I ended up doing in my class.

It is worth mentioning that You may have to talk to the parents of the students to explain why you are doing this.

Moshi Monsters offers an interesting combination of games and education.  The best of the games is found at the Hall of Puzzles (below), where you can choose from a variety of puzzle games to play. Winning puzzles earns virtual rewards called Rox, which you can use in the shops. It’s also a way of increasing the good mood of the virtual monster.

Most of the puzzles of the day require knowledge of language to complete (such as the one on the left), and apart from the puzzle of the day, you can choose other ones to play too, which allow for more practice about colours, numbers, the alphabet, shapes, etc.

In summary, Moshi Monsters makes for a fun addition to any Primary classroom and offers a safe environment for your young learners to interact with each other (if you encourage them to open their own accounts), allowing for a fun and interesting extension of the classroom.

The look and feel of this community is cute and will appeal to young learners from about 4 or 5 years old up to 10 or 11. Pre-teens will probably find the look and feel too childish.

Level:  Beginner->Intermediate

Location:  Connected classroom (i.e. one computer with an Internet connection)

Language: Directions and driving language (turn left/turn right/go forward/go back / stop – more complicated directions can be used if the level is higher: take the first right / go straight ahead / slow down / speed up / etc.)

Skills focus:  Listening/Speaking

Game: Driver Seat

Preparation

Make sure the game works in your classroom and play the game to get a feel for it.

Pre-gaming

Tell the learners you are going to give them a test, and then after the groans, say that it’s going to be a driving test! Elicit or tell them the basic vocabulary and write this on the board.

Gaming

1. Show the learners the game and the first task (see image below), which is to drive through town and make a few errands. Check understanding and then you’re ready to start.

2. When you can see the car, start driving and pause, asking the learners to tell you what to do (turn left / go straight on / etc) until you get to the first task – Parking (see screenshot below).

3. Ask a volunteer to continue to tell you what you should do to be able to park correctly. If you crash, then you need to start again, and ask for another volunteer. If a learner manages to do it, you can ask another to try to park in less time, giving practice to a number of the students.

4. The next task is to drive to meet a friend for lunch (see screenshot below). Proceed in the same way as you did with the parking section. This time, you have to be careful not to knock anyone down.

5. You can always let the learners have a go at driving too (try some of the other mini games for variation), but tell the person in the driving seat to follow the instructions given by the others rather than drive where they want to go.

Post Gaming

Review the language with the learners and (if appropriate), talk about driving (what makes a good driver? Do people drive well where you live? etc. )

Published by Delta Publishing, Digital Play – Computer games and language aims is part of the wonderful DeltaTeacher Development series, which includes other original resource books such as Teaching Unplugged by Luke Meddings and Scott Thornbury, and Teaching Online by Nicky Hockly and Lindsay Clandfield.

The book is so much more than a simple collection of the best ideas from our blog. It includes insight into how learners engage with gaming outside the classroom and advice and guidance for teachers who are interested in joining the digital revolution to their classroom. There are also lots of original step-by-step activities to help teachers bring the world of gaming into the classroom.

Like the other books in the series, Digital Play has been divided into three Parts.

Part A is an extended essay examining how computer games fit into 21st century society, how they are currently being used in education, and what potential they have to be used in language education. In particular, we wanted to dismiss the stereotypes and suggest ways that teachers can implement games in practice.

Part B is the most practical section of the book, consisting of a bank of activities that can be used by teachers. It is divided into activities designed to be used by teachers who have access to one computer in the classroom (i.e. a connected classroom), others that utilise multiple computers (a computer room or class set of laptops/netbooks/tablets) and those that require no computers at all.

Part C takes it further, looking at the bigger picture, with suggestions on how to integrate digital play activities into the syllabus, and tips on how teachers can develop and get to know more about using computer games.

We have been busy promoting the book this week, with a number of events. Through Delta publishing, Kyle and I organised a ‘Digital Playtime in ELT’ webinar (you can watch the recording here – press the play button in the bottom right corner when the file has loaded) to a limited audience, where we held a competition to win a copy of our book. Stephen Greene, a teacher in Brasil answered the question correctly.

Stephen is actually the second teacher to have won a copy of Digital Play. The first copy was won by Vicky Saumell from Argentina during the IATEFL conference in Brighton, UK earlier this year .

I held another webinar on ‘Educational Gaming’ yesterday. During the week, the British Council organised a number of live and online events (full programme here) to coincide with Social Media week in Moscow. My presentation was the last one, coinciding with the focus of the day (computer games). The recording of this webinar is also available, and my slides are online and can be downloaded if you are interested.

Spent is a very different type of text adventure. It’s not interactive fiction – firstly, because it deals with a very serious subject : poverty. It is also primarily composed of written text, unlike Inanimate Alice.

Here’s a handout for Advanced students to support the game in class (If you prefer, you can download a printable version here)

http://playspent.org/ is an online game that hopes to raise awareness about what it’s like to be extremely poor in the USA.

Before playing the game, let’s look at the premise of the game.

A) Before playing

1) What do you think will be the most difficult problems of your month of poverty? How will you solve them?

2) Find expressions in the text above that mean the same as these:

• the condition of being extremely poor
• a building protecting you from danger or bad weather
• less than the minimum level of income necessary for an adequate standard of living
• not having enough money or food
• own very little or have little money

B) While playing

Now let’s play the game. While playing, tick any of the following words and phrases that are used during the game. If you don’t last a month, try playing again and changing your choices.

C) After playing

1) How do you feel about your answer to question A 1) – were your predictions right?

2) Which of the words and phrases did you come across while playing? Do you remember how they were used and what they mean? Try to explain the meaning to your partner using other words

Answers

A) Before playing

2) Expressions