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.
