KEEPING UPDATED June 3, 2010

The speed in which new technologies emerge is just incredible. A person who is attempting to learn about any software, after a while he would need to learn about a different one. I consider, because of the amount of things to explore, it becomes difficult to be totally updated. Nonetheless, as more updated we can be, the better the results we can get from the students and the better we can use what is available for our teaching practice.

A useful manner of being updated, which I knew about during the development of the subject New Learning Environments, is to belong to communities of practice. By doing this, we could share experiences and learn from other people who can give us ideas on how to use certain tools; this practice will optimize our time and teaching procedures.

Another way to get updated is to visit the favorite webpage about the programs we use. It is a starting point to see if the program has improvements from the previous version or if it’s possible to download an upgrade to add new functions. Also try similar software in order to compare or even, to complement the programs we have in order to add more content or more functions.

Not only for the designing programs, but also for the hardware we use in our laboratories. Upgrading the software for the hardware we use in class will fix some issues given in the lab or even to provide more functions to control the class or to offer proper feedback. Using old software for old hardware can be really harmful if we don’t visit the support webpage in order to get the most recent information about which bugs have been removed or which improvements or functions have been added.

Also try to talk with your partners about the difficulties you have in the laboratory or the program you use. Talk with the people who know how to use the program to get better information about its usage. Otherwise, you have the option to visit the forums to consult other’s problems and to find – the most probable – a solution there. This can be applied from the lab programs we use in our schools and home until the hardware that can be upgraded via software.

DIGITAL GAME-BASED LEARNING June 3, 2010

Digital gaming based learning can be quiet useful for learners who want to go beyond the classroom and want an interactive activity which requires as a minimum parameter a personal challenge against the CPU.

Learning through videogames is a must nowadays. Learners want another experience and also to get fun learning. Videogames provide the following issues that in the classroom is quite difficult to achieve: First, the learner is engaged through gaming rather than learning. Learning through gaming is an excellent alternative to teach, especially for those who get bored easily and want something new and funny to learn. Next it’s the challenge provided by the game in order to achieve a specific goal and to overcome his/her own record on it. Actually several games provide prizes according to the performance in the game and the learner is self-encouraged to overpass his/her personal record to get more content. Not the last but the most important, the learners’ feeling of progress in the game and the feeling that the learner is finally getting new knowledge to apply in the classroom.

To offer an example, I’d like to show you this informative video about Berlitz’s My English Coach for Nintendo DS. It’s an amazing program in which learners can improve vocabulary, idioms, pronunciation, writing and other features. The demo video can be seen here:

Another example of other games is “Personal Trainer: Cooking”, in which the program teaches the learner to cook different recipes: From the utensils the learner needs, the ingredients he/she needs to buy, until educative videos showing how to cook more than 260 recipes. Although this is not related with language learning, also provides an interesting background about the use of DGBL in other subjects. Nonetheless, games oriented with creativity can be exploited as language teaching-learning resources. The demo video can be seen here:

Some important limits with the use of DGBL are, to start, the lack of personalized feedback. The program is limited to certain options about offering answers, but don’t imply a direct feedback from the teacher. There’s a possibility to offer the feedback only if the teacher uses this program and offers direct feedback to the learners who use the same game. Other problem is the false sensation of progress. A game though helps the learner to improve his/her language use doesn’t guarantee the effective use of the language in real communication. Also hardware compatibility is an important fact to consider: Some software is not compatible with hardware. Nintendo DS games are possible to run in Windows with the help of some programs called emulators, but don’t provide the same experience, nevertheless considering the hardware required to run these games.

Digital Games are extremely useful provided that the game in question has been under research about the results it can provide to the learner’s process and how effective it is. Also we need to take into account if all learners in our groups have either a NDS or a PC with the emulator to run the games commented before provided the hardware is enough powerful to run them.

Not exclusively NDS games, but also PC games join here. Gaming must be taken seriously when it is used as a learners’ tool to acquire new content to use in class indeed. Not all videogames fulfill the teachers’ expectations, but as the videos shown before, they can provide a nice aid and an excellent alternative to learn English. A game deserves a serious analysis before use them to benefit learners’ process.