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!

Digital Play

This book was written by both Graham and myself and we are particularly proud of it.  This teacher development book starts with a look at the state of play in gaming with an eye cast specifically on education and language learning.  It’s also packed full of ready to use digital play activities covering a range of classroom scenarios from no available technology, through one computer and a projector to multiple computers.  If you are a fan of this site then this book is (in our biased opinion) a must.

Closing date for the competition is the 8th of December.

Good Luck!

Send your competition entry to: kylemawer@yahoo.com

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.

LESSON PLAN

The following lesson plan shows how the game can be played in a connected classroom (i.e. a classroom with a computer connected to the Internet), which is perhaps, where the main benefit can be had from using this game with learners.

1) Start by showing the first screen of the game (below) and ask the learners questions  about what they can see: What is this? (it’s a game) What do you have to do? (explore), then ask the learners to tell you what they want you to do.

As they give you suggestions, tell them that you won’t answer if they use the word ‘click’ and that they should choose a better verb related to what exactly they want you to do with the objects. I suggest following up each action with another question (“What happens when I…”)

Here are some example language they should be able to produce from your prompts, and which you can later look at together once the game has been played (the actual language they use will depend on the level of the learners).

What do you want me to do? (What happens when I…?)

• touch the clock (a door opens)
• touch the ‘rock with holes in it’ (flowers grow)
• move the 6 ghostly objects (the spin and make a sound like bells)
• move the blue rectangle (it reveals some shadows)
• move the three light blue lights (it bounces like a ball)
• move the light blue cube (it also bounces/it sounds like it’s made of wood)
• touch the eye (it blinks / it rattles)
• touch the light bulb (the light turns on) - NB: try to ensure this one is done last

2) The image above now shows the first screen of the game with the light turned on. You can then explore the objects more and ask them to describe what happens when you touch them…

• What happens when I touch the sea? (it moves and you can hear the sound of the waves), etc.

The learners will now soon discover the point of the game, which is to move the wooden toy train from one room to the next. Again, ask the learners to tell you what they want you to do until they discover the solution:

3) Continue with the subsequent three levels. Insist on good language from the learners (write the model sentences on a board to look at later) – don’t perform the tasks they want you to do until they say them well.

Here are the instructions for what they need to get you to do. Of course, they will come up with more language trying to figure out how to solve the puzzles. If they do happen to guess quickly, then you can always linger a while before solving the puzzle to explore the other features of each room (in fact this is half the pleasure of the game).

Room 2

Room 3

1. Avatarise yourself

It’s quickly turning into the cinematic sensation of the new decade and if you do get the chance to see James Cameron’s Avatar in 3D, don’t worry about the simplistic plot or melodrama and you’re sure to be amazed.

Why not kick off a discussion of the film with your learners by showing them a blue-skinned version of yourself.

If you have an interactive whiteboard or data projector, you can do this and show them a video here.

Please note, this is the German language version of the tool – unfortunately, the English language version seems to have been closed down.

Hopefully, it’ll reappear again soon.

2. Mr. Picassohead

Want something more artistic?

Then ask your learners to create a picture of themselves using the Picassohead generator.

If they do this for homework and email it to you (you can do this automatically from the site), then they can decide how much the images looks like themselves in class.

Great for comparatives and descriptions – your eyes are bigger, etc.

3. Wii Mii

Nintendo’s Wii lets you create a Mii , a cute cartoon character, to represent yourself when you are playing the games on their console.

You don’t have to own one of these to be able to do this, however – http://www.weeworld.com/ lets you and your learners make their own.

Ask them to do this before the next class and send you the images.

Pin them to the wall and see how many of them can guess who’s who.

It’s a good way to start a discussion about the Wii and what console games they like.

You can follow this up with them writing a description of one of their classmate’s miis.

4. Lego-ize yourself

Ask the students if they ever played with lego or any similar kind of toy.

What did they make?

How long did they spend doing it?

Tell them they can build the Lego version of themselves here:

http://reasonablyclever.com/mini/flash/minifig.swf

5. Make a Manga version of yourself

Faceyourmanga allows you to create a Japanese Manga-style version of someone.

Because the menu selection is in English, it’s even worth doing as a computer room activity with lower level learners as they see quite a lot of vocabulary.

Back in the classroom, they can describe each other’s images and/or write a description of a classmate’s.

Alicia Rey, an English teacher who is no stranger to exploiting Web 2.0 tools with learners has created a tutorial for students for this.

6. Simpson-ize yourself

and… 7. South Park-ize yourself

Ask students to compare two similar TV series (such as The Simpsons and South Park) and introduce the topic by Simpsonsizing yourself and creating your South Park version .

South Park Studio is just as easy to use – you could ask learners to create a version of themselves using both and then write a comparison.

8. Ultimate Flash Face

If it’s accuracy you want, then http://flashface.ctapt.de/ gives you a far greater range of features. It’s similar to a police photofit, which means it could be used as a possible warmer for a game of Alibi or when looking at crime vocabulary.

Make a few faces based on some of your students and get them to say who they think the images look like

9. Build your Wild Self

For anyone with young learners, Build your Wild Self is ideal. It lets you create an avatar that looks like you , but also allows you to add animal parts to change the appearance completely – lots of fun, and because everything is labelled in English, a good computer room activity for revising parts of the body with a class.

10. Be Funky Photo Effects

Be Funky lets you take any photograph and transform it into something completely different.

Use it to create altered images of yourself, your learners and/or the other teachers in your school (can they guess who’s who?)

With this site, the only limit is your imagination.

Please note, if you decide to use this with learners, they’ll need to register for an account first (with an email address)

Want more?

If you like using images with your learners, be sure to check out the new blog by Ben Goldstein, author of the book Working with Images.

There’s also a TESOL EVO session on at the moment which is all about ideas for using images with learners. You can find this here: http://evosessions.pbworks.com/Images4Education

Have fun!

Digital Play is a new blog aimed at language teachers who are interested in using computer games and other digital toys with learners. The main focus will be on English Language Teaching (ELT) as we (the authors of the blog) are both EFL teachers, but we think the ideas and suggestions should be useful and adaptable to all modern foreign language (MFL) teachers too.

For several years now, we have been adapting free online games to use with learners. We both work with young learners and teenagers and hope to share with you the experience we have had in the classroom and computer room when using games with students to practise English. How can  the use of online games help learners of a language? Here are just a few brief ideas:

• Motivation. An essential feature of learning a language and probably the hardest part to foreign language learning – every teacher knows that if the learners are motivated, then they will learn more and it will stick.
• Relevance.  Teaching a language needs to be relevant to the learners’ interests and lives.   Digital gaming has fast become one of the most popular free time activities  for many of our learners. And don’t just think games are only played by the young either. The average gamer is now 35 years old – every year this age tends to rise as more and more people continue to play games as part of their entertainment.
• Integrated skills work. Many online games, when  adapted for use with language learners, can provide an engaging mix of reading, writing, speaking and listening skills work. We’ll be showing you how to do this on this blog.

We continue to believe that using computer games with language learners is a valid use of classroom time and look forward to sharing our ideas, information, lesson plans and worksheets with you here.

If you’d like to keep up with this blog, then subscribe to the Digital Play mailing list, add us as a friend on Twitter or become a fan of our Facebook page and we’ll keep you informed of what’s going on.