Five Video Games for ESL and Language Development

Kathy Sargent, outgoing editor for TechEdge, (who is a great editor and has done a remarkable job over the years as Director of Communications for TCEA) recently accepted my article on “Virtual ESL” for the next issue. This post expands on the article with games suitable for ESL and the ongoing development of English skills. Certain video games are particularly well-suited to language acquisition and development, a point I made here a couple years ago. There is a heavy dollop of personal opinion in the assertions below, and I welcome dissenting views. Some of these suggestions are relatively expensive, some are free, and all but one are available online.

1. Second Life
   Second Life has a long history of educational adaptation, and the idea of using the environment for ESL purposes was adopted early. Like many efforts with no external motivations however, some formal ESL initiatives have fizzled over time. One still going strong is the Second Life English Community. Founder Kip Boahn had a nice article profiling his work in Forbes a while back. Players from almost 100 different countries regularly gather for such online ESL activities as phonetic treasure hunts through SLEC.

   The global reach, open nature, and ease of use offered by SL, (not to mention the fact it’s free), have helped academics around the world key in to the platform for language training. Since avatars can type or talk over a simple computer connection, engaging native speakers in an interesting 3D environment that is not overly taxing to most hardware results in an ideal environment for language learning.
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2. World of Warcraft.
   Of the millions of players frequenting the popular MMORPG, you might be surprised to learn there are some engaged in educational activities amidst all that medieval fantasy action. The most famous group devoted to exploring pedagogy in WoW is the guild Cognitive Dissonance, run by Lucas Gillespie and Peggy Sheehy. Lucas’ blog EduRealms follows his educational efforts in the game.

   It is very easy to start up groups and guilds in WoW, and while Asian gold farmers have annoyed North American players in the past, Dr. Edd Schneider over at SUNY-Potsdam gained considerable attention in 2007 for suggesting WoW was a promising platform for ESL in Asia, provided stateside supervised guidance was included.
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3. My Word Coach
   Although available for the Wii, the DS version of My Word Coach offers players an easier time writing, with its included stylus and touch screen. Plus, the “DS factor” makes it more portable and affordable for classroom or after-school use. It’s not promoted as an ESL product, but the vocabulary training couched in a gaming environment works just as well for non-native speakers.
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4. Webkinz
   The popular children’s game tied to collectible plush dolls offers a restricted communications feature. “Kinz chat” uses basic sentence elements for players to communicate. While Webkinz probably is not suitable to older ESL students, for the younger crowd it offers a fun and relatively painless way to introduce English. It’s also offered in 12 other languages, so gamers can play in their native tongue as well as the Queen’s.
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5. Whyville
   Whyville is the free online world designed for children learning, and it has an impressive pedigree with corporate and government sponsorship stretching back several years. Although its strengths lie in STEM games and activities, one of the key features of Whyville appealing to teachers is the sanitized chat feature where cursing is automatically edited out.

In the process of investigating the many mini-games out there, a couple of nifty titles rose to the top. The advantages to using online mini-games for ESL include the fact that teacher supervision is not as heavily needed as it is for the above examples. On the other hand, mini-games typically focus on a much narrower skill set, and kids may tire of them quickly.

A couple of my favorites in the mini-game category included Word Frog, which is a neat way to drill antonyms and such, ala Number Crunchers. I also enjoyed Grammar Ninja,which drills identifying parts of speech in a playful way.

Rural Broadband, Tech Trends 2008, & TCEA 09

Kathy Sargent, editor of TechEdge, the journal for the Texas Computer Education Association, featured my article “Rural Broadband: High Speed Access Outside the Country School” on the cover of the Fall 08 issue. The cover shot is really interesting, showing a fellow sitting cross legged in the middle of a rural highway, working on a laptop. A nice thing about being published by TCEA, they make my words look good.

I was browsing through the online archives today and found my article from the Spring issue, “Tech Trends 2008.” That’s worth a read for an informal survey of education and industry leaders to capture their thoughts toward trends in education, including some folks heavily involved in educational video games. Click here for the PDF (large file warning).

Now is a good time to remind readers of TCEA 2009, which will happen the first week of Feb. I’ll be involved in two sessions, participating in a round-robin discussion on gaming with Lee Wilson in one and presenting on educational gaming in another.

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Third in ‘Programmed to Learn’ Series Published by CSTA

The third part of my article, “Programmed to Learn,” has been published in the latest issue of the CSTA Voice, the Computer Science Teachers Association’s quarterly publication. I wrote a while back about CSTA picking up the article, which first ran in TCEA’s publication, TechEdge. One nice thing about it appearing in CSTA Voice: every issue is online. The article appears in Vol. 3, issue 4; Vol. 4, issue 1; and Vol. 4 issue 2. All are available here.

Free Math Games & Activities at Education.com (and Some Interesting Articles)

Taissia Belozerova over at Education.com dropped me an e-mail about my article Magnificent Math Sites, that ran in the Summer, 2005 issue of TechEdge. Taissia pointed out that Education.com has a vibrant section devoted to free games and activities for K-12 math.

While the math portion of the site is more concerned with RL activities than videogames, our discussion led to two articles from their magazine. The first is Are Video Games Educational? by Jayel Gibson, which offers a nice introduction to the topic. The second one was by Danielle Wood, reporting on the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) last year, who put out a statement asserting kids need more videogaming (not less). Below is the key excerpt:

Their report, based on advice from nearly one hundred education, science, and game industry experts, calls on the federal government and the Departments of Education and Labor to fund video game research and development. Video games, they argue, hold the potential to help address one of America’s most pressing problems – preparing students for an increasingly competitive global market.

Wood concludes the FAS asserts videogames can teach kids a variety of higher order thinking skills, strategies, and problem solving techniques.

Most interesting were the visceral responses from readers the article generated. Many statements by responders are flat out wrong. For instance, the latest research shows videogames help students diagnosed with ADHD, not causing it (Farrace-Di Zinno and colleagues disproved the videogame-ADHD link in The British Journal of Educational Technology way back in 2001). Gaming (especially online gaming and MMORPGs) has been found to be very social rather than isolating in general. The list goes on. It makes for interesting reading, especially for those of us into educational gaming, who hob-knob together, to see how the non-researching public sometimes views our field.

Thanks to Taissia Belozerova for letting me know of the resources on Education.com. Well worth the visit.

References:
Gibson, J. (2008). Are video games educational? [Online]. Available: http://www.education.com/magazine/article/Video_Games_Educational/

Farrace-Di Zinno, A.M., Douglas, G., Houghton, S. Lawrence, V., West, J. & Whiting, K. (2001, November). Body movements of boys with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) during computer video game play. British Journal of Educational Technology 32(5). 607-618.

Wood, D. (2007). Scientists say kids need more video games. [Online]. Available: http://www.education.com/magazine/article/Ed_Scientists_Say_Need/

CSTA Publishes Educational Game Programming Article

I opened the mail today to find the latest issue of CSTA Voice, a quarterly for members of the Computer Science Teachers Association. Late last year Dr. Chris Stephenson, Executive Director of CSTA, and Pat Phillips, Editor of CSTA Voice, arranged to reprint my article, “Programmed to Learn.” The article focuses on using Logo, Scratch, and Alice for teaching STEM topics. The article first appeared in TechEdge, the journal of the Texas Computer Education Association. The article will be printed in three parts in CSTA Voice.

The Computer Science Teachers Association is funded in part by the National Science Foundation. Below is the introductory paragraph from their website, explaining their raison d’être:

The Computer Science Teachers Association is a membership organization that supports and promotes the teaching of computer science and other computing disciplines. CSTA provides opportunities for K-12 teachers and students to better understand the computing disciplines and to more successfully prepare themselves to teach and learn.

The first part of my article, appearing in the March 2008 issue of CSTA Voice, focuses on the programming language Logo and the Logo Foundation at MIT.

TCEA 2008: Created Realities Group’s Chalk House Offers Virtual World Literacy

Dr. Greg Jones over at University of North Texas is part of a new generation of professors interested in researching gaming and virtual worlds for educational purposes. I had the distinct pleasure of attending classes in a virtual lecture hall hosted through his company, Created Realities Group. In 2006, I profiled CRG and the distance learning experience in an article for TechEdge, the journal for the Texas Computer Education Association. Here is a bit of what I wrote back then:

When UNT students meet together for a session in Dr. Jones’ Created Reality Group (CRG) virtual classroom, they have three primary ways to communicate. First, they can speak through microphones attached to their computers. When one talks, others listen. In this way, students can share with one another and professors can give lectures. If multiple groups of people need to carry on conversations at the same time, they can go into different classrooms in the virtual school building for private conversations.

Second, a text chat window is also available. This is particularly useful for those students without a microphone. It also allows students to type in questions while someone is lecturing. The software keeps track of written activity, allowing the professor the opportunity to review it at a later date. The chat window can be moved and resized on students’ screens.

Finally, presentation slides can be shown during lectures. Each student sees the same slides as the lectures progress. The teacher (or student) giving the presentation is in control of when the slides advance. This results in lectures similar to what we are used to hearing and seeing in real life, the difference lying in the remote location of the participants.

In short, teaching elements found in the typical classroom are replicated in the CRG virtual classroom. The question remains, how do students like it? In his research with UNT students using the software at a distance, Jones and his colleagues discovered new students displayed an almost universal urge to explore the environment their first time logging in (Jones, Morales, & Knezek, 2005). Other elements lent themselves to a need for familiarity with the new environment before settling down and using it as the teaching tool for which it was designed.

After getting used to the software, students have expressed enthusiasm with the idea of three dimensional virtual classrooms. Many students, both in high school and at the university level, are used to traditional distance learning software. Commercial titles include WebCT and Blackboard, which have now merged, and open source products including Moodle and Sakai. All these distributed learning environments offer a two dimensional replication of paper learning. Students read the assignments, submit papers, take online quizzes, and post to discussion forums. On occasion, a real time text chat may take place.

Software like Dr. Jones’ CRG environment offer the next step in online learning: a three dimensional representation of a school building users can meet in and take live courses from the teacher at a distance. As Dr. Jones’ research continues, he posts updates of papers on his site at UNT: http://courseweb.unt.edu/gjones/

In the last couple years, Dr. Jones’ CRG team has kept busy refining and adding to the company’s offerings. I was intrigued to discover a CRG booth at TCEA 2008, and dropped by to visit with my professor and see what his team has been up to. What I discovered was a brilliant concept for teaching students at the middle and high school levels, a new product from CRG called Chalk House. Here is the introduction from the CRG website:

Chalk House, the first in a series of situated learning modules being developed as a collaboration between Created Realities Group and the Design+Research Collective, is an online computer-based 3D environment in which game play and engaging narrative are used to improve student literacy skills, namely reading and writing, are the key focus of learning. Chalk House uses the CRG 3D online learning environment to deliver this learning module.

One thing became clear while I played through Chalk House at CRG’s booth: students used to modern videogames will feel right at home in the environment. Quest givers and fulfillers use common nomenclature and symbolism. The environment uses situated learning, placing students in the role of investigating a spooky house. Several literacy events ensue, involving an engaging narrative and requiring much reading and writing for students. A six step writing process is required of students in which they go through a pre-writing step, create rough drafts, revise their drafts, engage in peer editing and teacher editing, and finally turn in a polished product.

Chalk House offers a product specifically tailored for students resistant to traditional text teaching. By couching extensive reading and writing in a virtual world, the program offers pedagogical opportunities students won’t find in many other places. It’s a well-polished product backed by extensive research. For more info on Chalk House, and a bibliography of the papers backing up its philosophical and functional frameworks, visit http://created-realities.com/chalkhouse.html

References:
Jones, J. G., Morales, C., & Knezek, G. A. (2005). 3d online learning environments: Examining attitudes toward information technology between students in internet-based 3d and face-to-face classroom instruction. Educational Media International, 42(3), 219-236.

Rice, J. (2006, Spring). The (virtual) classroom of tomorrow. TechEdge 25(3). 14-15, 41.

Stay Off the Grass: Bypassing Content Filters for Educational Gaming & Web 2.0

I recall hearing a story (somewhere down the line … probably in a college lecture) about an architect hired to design a cluster of buildings. Once built and ready for sidewalks connecting the entrances, he ordered grass seeded between the buildings and delayed sidewalk construction a while. In a few months the grass grew, and people going in and out of the buildings made their own pathways to the doors. At that point, the architect ordered the sidewalks constructed … following the elegant and efficient pathways created by the people.

I remember that story every time I walk through a college or school campus and see paths through the grass where people follow more efficient routes than the sidewalks. At UNT, despite signs pleading with students to stay off the grass, and rope barriers cutting off students’ favorite route between the two main education buildings, the powers that be finally relented and built a sidewalk for the most popular shortcut.

What a powerful idea it was for the architect to simply wait and let the people … the end users … figure out the best places for the sidewalks to go! Think of the money saved, and the aesthetics involved. What a powerful analogy the story is for educational technology, too. “Sidewalks,” or connections to information and resources, must be built for organizations. But, when the connections are dictated without input from those using the connections, efficiency suffers. And those connecting to resources within an organization (“walking to the doors between buildings”) often find their own ways that are more efficient than is what dictated from above.

This helps explain the ongoing conundrum Web 2.0 tools face in academic environments, including instructional gaming. I was reminded of the sidewalk story while catching up with some blogs recently. In late October, uber-blogger Robert Scoble noted during a discussion with his son’s high school buddies that Facebook and MySpace were blocked at school. This didn’t stop them, of course, and Scoble notes various tips the teens had to get around the filters. Scoble himself simply turns on his Verizon wireless data card and bypasses the filter altogether. Fooey on over-controlling administrators, Scoble says.

What is most interesting to me are the attitudes people have toward school filters. They follow the same patterns some people have in their attitudes toward instructional videogames in schools. Namely, some folks think that using the Web for anything besides serious purposes is a waste of time, and should not be allowed in school. The problem is, they want to dictate where to pave the sidewalks. What is “serious” is what they define as serious; anything else should be banned.

Reading the many comments Scoble received is more interesting than his original post. Some folks just don’t get it. One poster wrote: “I’m sorry, but why should we be encouraging kids to circumvent school policies?” Another suggested time would be better spent with teachers than on Facebook. Scoble pointed out that Ray Ozzie, Walt Mossberg, and Joi Ito are all on Facebook. But, because the school blocks the site, accessing these experts in their respective fields while at school is “inappropriate.” He sums up: “But, no, you keep thinking that Facebook is just for fooling around.” Ouch.

The arguments go downhill from there. They should access these sites on their time, not the teacher’s time. Scoble counters: they’re still blocked during recess, before and after school, and that is his son’s time. Teaching your son to circumvent policies he disagrees with may lead him to disregard policies on drugs and guns, too. Scoble dismisses this argument: “You think Wikipedia even belongs in the same sentence as guns and drugs. Discussion over.” Some sided with Scoble, stating that learning to circumvent filters is a good life skill to pick up in school.

The issue of filters and their impediment to teaching was brought up earlier in November by Miguel Guhlin. The Web 2.0 product at issue was Google Docs. An administrator on the Texas technology directors’ listserv noted that Google Docs was used by both teachers and students in their district, but had recently been blocked. Miguel has been railing against folks preventing the adoption of important technologies in school settings for years, and he used this opportunity to again deride those demanding we all stay on the sidewalk.

Finally, a poster on the Serious Games listserv, which is filled with academics and industry professionals, noted, in a tone of bemused frustration, that a game he had worked on for a school was now blocked at the very same school.

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I have written two articles for TechEdge that address techniques students use for bypassing filters. These were aimed at helping educate teachers and administrators who are responsible for preventing students in their care from accessing inappropriate sites, and giving them the sense that filters are far from perfect. In the second article, I noted that educators are often more frustrated by the filters than their students. One teacher confided he used his own laptop and Internet connection to bypass the filter at school, essentially following the route Scoble suggested.

Here are some things I’ve noted in comments over on Miguel’s blog and in my articles:

1. Filters are in schools because Congress says they should be. The Child Internet Protection Act (CIPA) dictates that schools receiving federal funds must block objectionable content. It will literally take an act of Congress to get rid of filtering, so don’t hold your breath. Besides, it is “for the children,” and consequently few would want to vote against it. Never mind if it really is beneficial for children, or in fact detrimental. It has been labeled as “for the children,” ergo est. Folks peeved at filters should aim their frustration at politicians, not school personnel.
2. Most filters used by schools are run by the big filtering companies. When something is blocked, for better or worse, rightly or wrongly, save your ire for those companies, not the hapless school administrators. It is true IT personnel can “open” a site deemed harmful by the filtering company, but doing so will involve discussion with the appropriate administrator or committee.
3. The big filtering companies don’t block sites out of spite. They have automated spiders scouring the net, and looking at sites visited by subscribers. When a site fits the criteria for blocking, its URL is added to a list that is updated daily. There is (usually) no Grinch-like administrator hunting for good sites to block. The process is typically automatic. This leads to one of the primary criticisms against filters, that they are reactionary. It usually takes a real live person to go back and correct mistakes made by the bots.
4. As long as there are filters in schools, there will be ways around the filters. A Canadian reference book published in PDF by Citizenlab.org went up recently. Kids can set up proxy sites on their home computers and bypass the filters, use web-enabled devices, or use a host of other techniques. Barring access to anything online is akin to shouting at the wind. People will get irritated the sidewalk doesn’t go where they want, and will get their feet muddy anyway.
5. Unfortunately, along with sites advocating sax and violins, gambling and other vices, Web 2.0 sites are lumped in with the R rated stuff. The reason: liability. Schools don’t want students to make unregulated posts in public parts of the Web using school equipment.
6. Also unfortunately, “gaming” is lumped in with filtering companies’ “bad” categories, because gaming is seen as a waste of time on computers. This includes serious gaming, academic and educational gaming, and often even Google searches for gaming sites. And that’s too bad. The bots can no more distinguish an academically valuable game useful for the classroom from a flash arcade game that is pure drivel.

So there it is. Stay on the sidewalks. But, if you see a quicker, more efficient route to your destination … just follow the path.

CSTA Newsletter Picks Up “Programmed to Learn”

I wrote in September of my article in TechEdge, “Programmed to Learn,” about using Logo, Scratch, and Alice for educational purposes. Dr. Chris Stephenson, Executive Director of the Computer Science Teachers Association, indicated CSTA is interested in reprinting the article in the CSTA Voice newsletter, edited by Pat Phillips. This is quite an honor, as CSTA is a tireless advocate of computer science education. Their site is chock full of useful resources, and well worth a visit.