I came across this article from Alternet while reading the news on my PDA (moi, a geek?) and it reaffirms my view that video games have a place to play in education in general and language learning in particular. I'm not saying that we should be telling our students to put down Plato's Republic and get some real learning on Call of Duty 3 but rather that games do have something to offer apart from thrills and spills. Coincidentally, the school mentioned is only a few miles from where I grew up.
Reading, Writing and Video Gaming
1 comment:
I knew that the aricle was serious when I saw that they name check Marc Prensky.As far as practical details are concerned I'm still not sure. In terms of language teaching you could get the students to play, say Counterstrike in teams with Spanish, French etc school students via the internet. Alternatively, they could play amongst themselves.
Think of it as a souped up, more fun version of tandem learning with each side taking it terms to speak only in their own language, with the teachers acting as linguistic refs (any speaking in the "wrong" language gets you 30 seconds in the "sin bin").
I saw something like this in practice when staying at my brother's place. He regularly plays Counterstrike against people from Germany and Holland
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