Bush Whacker 2---- Start your safari!

I played Bush Whacker 2 three times. At each time, my progress was kept so I could continue to play this strategy game. A player can firstcustomize the character and enter the journey. He/she should whack bushes in a mysterious forest to find items like magic potion, agate and puzzle, which can be used to complete quests of other characters and solve puzzles to the next level. As the level increases, the reward and energy enhance accordingly.

The language learning objective are: 1) to enable students to explore and practice new vocabulary by themselves and 2) to improve the students’’ ability to retell a story logically. For the first objective, since a player will find and use more and more objects in his/her journey. Maybe many or some of them are new to him/her. In order to go through, he/she must be motivated to know the new words. For assessment, I could bring pictures, let the students discuss in groups and then check if they know what are the objects (on the screen or in the inventory) on pictures. After that, I might let them tell the function of those objects to make sure they could practice new vocabulary. For the second objective, because this strategy game is corresponded to a whole storyline, there are various tasks and communication to accomplish each day. A good competence of retelling will not only enhance the language skill but also the logical thinking. I could choose one particular field in one day, give students some time to prepare and group them for discussion.

Generally, Bush Whacker 2 is a great choice to be combined with language learning for beginner and/or intermediate-level ESL/EFLs, but it is not so suitable to complete the language learning objectives for advanced students.

Do you want to make some sound?

Gamification is the way of using game design elements in other non-game fields, which can engage players to participate. As Franciosi mentions, computer-mediated activities seem to offer clear advantages over conventional classroom lessons in providing on-task feedback, and maintaining an optimum skill/difficulty balance. Feedback for sustaining flow should give learners an ongoing indication progress and/or performance.

I played sound factory three times in which a player needs to make tire sounds, attract the coworker, unlock more instruments and avoid the boss’ inspection to win the 3-level game. For the first time, I didn’t react quickly enough and was caught by the boss. But I went through smoothly for the second and third time.

I hope after playing this game, the students are able to know and use the vocabulary appears in the game. Firstly, sounds could attract the students’ attention and make them want to explore more. Then, bonus instruments are provided in every new level. In addition, students could compose their own melody with some of the instruments. The teacher works as the information provider and guider of this game because the teacher provides the basic information and steps of the game and also provides help and guide when students come across any problem while playing.

I would use walkthrough to explain the game to beginner-level students. I would guide them to comprehend the steps of this game and maybe I could perform once as I explained to make sure all of them understand it. But for intermediate and higher-level learners, I would let them try without walkthrough because the game is not complex and it also provides the detailed steps.

I think I would use pictures because they are clear and direct especially for lower-level language learners to get an idea about the game. I could use them for assessment on vocabulary by pointing to different and check if the students could recognize. Also, using key vocabulary to make sentences could be used to assess students’ performance.

All in all, sound factory is a simple but interesting casual game which we could use in increasing students' vocabulary in language learning.

Let's tweet

Twitter is a hot tool for teaching nowadays. More and more teachers are using it inside and outside the classroom. For teaching, one advantage Twitter has is the instant interaction by posting and answering questions. Firstly, we can regard Twitter as our tool case. Since we could find tons of resources, such as videos and articles, related to our field there. We may also link tweets with other sources. For instance, we could put the link to our blog or diigo library to make the information available for our students. This is a way to enrich our teaching content and raise the students’ interest. Secondly, we may use it as a platform for our students to share their weekly or monthly reflection in two or three short sentences. They may write about their opinion or question towards the course, the atmosphere and the teacher. And they are required to answer one or two students’ tweets. Since the limitation of one tweet is 140 characters, they won’t be so burdened. Everyone’s participation is needed, so there will be a community of learners formed like the article Student engagement in large lectures in A Must Have Guide on Using Twitter in your Classroom mentions.

What 10 Twitter Mistakes You Should Avoid refers should be brought to attention of all Twitter users. Although I seldom used Twitter before, I used Sina microblog every day. I’ve made some of the mistakes and experienced a lot from other bloggers, especially the first one Over Tweeting. I once followed some celebrities who posted several times for only one day with trivia and compliment. I believe that too much is as bad as too little. None of our followers, no matter our colleagues or students, can bear such huge amount of information. Opening up only one account, focuses on teaching, will never make Twitter a place glutted with tangle some information.

Twitterchat

I attended the chat called #edtechchat on Wednesday evening. Participants were so many professional educators, teachers, technology directors and also technology learners like me. Excellent bloggers tweeted their own understanding or useful materials like pictures, articles and websites. Coincidently, I found a tweet from the IT director Susan M. Bearden about a question I had mentioned on my blog several days ago. The tweet was about 5 Tips for Classroom Management with Mobile Devices.

Twitterchat is beneficial for the professional development. Firstly, We can ask questions and get answers from the group and answer questions. It’s a really simple and convenient way of obtaining information for users from the network of people with same interest or focus. Secondly, through the interaction with the people we follow and our followers, we can build up our knowledge network and social circle. We may help each other to open up our eyes and see the world.