Educational Technologies- Games, Simulations, and Virtual Environments

Teaching English as a foreign language to young adults, I observe that almost all of my students are very much into playing video games either during break times or even in class time.  I strongly believe that “identifying students’ passions and using them as a vehicle for relating academic content,” (Squire, 2011, p. 46) plays an important role in learning.  Therefore, games, simulations, and virtual environments can be employed to motivate and promote students’ learning English as a foreign language.

One game that my EFL students enjoy and learn from would be SimCity. “In SimCity, you are the mayor of your very own city. You’re the one who draws roads and zones and manages everything from health and safety, to education, industry and beyond” (www.simcity.com).  After presenting the simulation software to students in the multimedia lab and students learn how to play SimCity, one of the ways that I would use SimCity would be asking students to build their own simulation city in collaboration within their assigned groups in which they play the mayor role of the city and design their city the way they like.  This is when the simulated city will become students’ learning environment while they are having fun playing the game.  After that, students will be working on their assigned topic in which they will present their simulated city to class in groups in the multimedia lab so that the rest of the class will be able to monitor the presentation on the computer screens in front of them. Doing so will lead to interaction between listeners and presenters with the help of question and answer time.  Another way I would use this game would be an in-class writing assignment. Based on a problem scenario that I would  create, I would ask students to use certain target language structures and write a response letter in order to solve the problems in the city as a mayor.  With the creative problem solving objective in mind, I would incorporate the SimCity game in my writing class.  Besides, knowing students’ interest in playing video games they “will willingly write and read texts that are far more complicated than texts about topics that they are not passionate about” (Squire, 2011, p.46), I would be giving them purpose to do the assignment.

Olsen (2009) tells us that “The difference in many of today’s educational games is that they are online and social, allowing children to interact and collaborate to achieve common goals”. With this in my, I would introduce Games Mechanic to the students in order to “learn to design video games” (http://gamesmechanic.com). To promote learning through playing, I would assign students to make their own vocabulary game by creating a crossword puzzle on Games Mechanic for revision purposes and than share the game with their classmates for the purpose of interaction while asking and answering each others’ questions in order to complete the puzzle. By playing this game, I want students realize that vocabulary is something that needs to be reviewed instead of memorizing right before the exam.  Therefore, Games Mechanic can allow students “develop deep relations with the knowledge that’s there” (Laureate, 2012)  while having fun.

References

Gamestar Mechanic. (n.d.). Gamestar mechanic. Retrieved from

http://gamestarmechanic.com/faq/page/1

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2012b). Learning through games. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Olsen, S. (2009). Educational video games mix cool with purpose. Retrieved from

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/technology/02games.html?_r=0

SimCity (n.d.)http://www.simcity.com/en_US/faq

Squire, K. (2011). Video games and learning: Teaching and participatory culture in the digital age. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.