Do videogames have a place inside the classroom? Part 2

Last week I wrote about using simulation videogames inside the classroom as a way of adding interactive and enjoyable activities that make real use of the language.
What is key about simulations is that they try to imitate actual processes of the world such as daily life, evolution or business management, thus providing a world that is familiar to the people playing.

Final Fantasy IX

I would like now to steer the boat in other direction, heading fantasy. Story-based teaching has been around for quite a long time and is said to be a good way of establishing relations between different topics through a single text. Reading a story (or maybe listening to it), doing role-play, making up an alternative ending, among others, are all activities that have the special taste of something that is not only a boring exercise, but an activity with several objectives, one of which is to learn English, but also to entertain, to foster creativity, engage the children in the habit of reading, etc.

Pokémon Emerald

The videogame parallel to stories are RPGs, i.e. Role-Playing Games. These are games that put the player in the shoes of a character, or a group of characters, leading his (or their) way through a whole story. They tend to rely on written dialogue and its comprehension is vital to keep the story going, since players are requested to do missions, carry things from town to town, talk to different people, gather information, and many things more depending on the specific game that is being used.

Eragon

The same as with stories, we have to be very careful as regards what game we choose for our students. We could say that so as to use a RPG inside the classroom, two things are to be considered when choosing: the simplicity to which the game is kept and how much time the use of it will require. Of course that beating the game would probably take up all the lesson time we have during a whole month. The idea is, though, that playing the game is something to be done at home and during lessons we use what learners have experienced as material for learning, we check their progress and solve as a group the difficulties that arise (which I guess in 90% of the times will involve language difficulties, easy to turn into triggers for teaching, because of the nature of these games).

It may sound a little far-fetched but I think that this tool could be, besides useful, really innovative - a property that is always hard to achieve when it comes to teaching the same old topics once again.

Do videogames have a place inside the classroom? Part 1

It is a truth universally acknowledged that we will try to mix the things we like doing. In my case, I am particularly fond of videogames and have been wondering whether they could be used as a tool for EFL teaching.

A key characteristic of videogames is that they, as well as movies or music, are classified into different genres. Some of which, I think, may be easier to implement inside the classroom. Today we will have a look at simulators:

Life and/or business simulation games:

These kind of games try to create a world that resembles reality as much as possible. Since language is another tool that tries to resemble the world as it is, we are facing two representations of the same thing. Nowadays, we have simulators of virtually every kind, among the most relevant we can find: everyday life simulators (The Sims), nature and evolution simulators (Spore) or zoo management simulators (Zoo Tycoon).

This is, in short, what I think could be useful inside these three games:

• The Sims

This game is a simulation of everyone's everyday life. The people get up in the morning, go to work/school, go back home, have lunch, visit friends, listen to music, watch TV, night comes, they order a pizza, eat and go to bed. This is especially good to teach routines, but not only that; as you may see in the picture below, all the objects that are part of a house are present: furniture, electronics, rooms, stairs and even pools and gardens. Great for teaching vocabulary.

And if we are talking about vocabulary, another great tool is the character creator that comes inside the game. We can use it to create people, customising their whole physical appearance (i.e. hair, face, skin colour, clothing, gender, age, etc.). A wonderful way of presenting these topics and letting students develop their own learning.

• Spore

Designed by the same people that had brought us The Sims, Spore is a simulator that created much hype around itself when it first appeared. Its premise is that you are going to be the responsible for the evolution of one species from its stage as a little organism to the conquest of space. An ambitious shot and one that might be helpful inside the classroom since its novelty is already an engaging feature.

In the picture above we can see one creature being designed. The parts shown on the left are just eyes, noses and ears that are available. In the other tabs we will find arms, hands, legs, feet, mouths, horns and many other parts of our choice.

Inside the EFL classroom we can profit from this software when teaching the recurrent topic that is animals and their description. What is good here is that students (same as with The Sims) have the power to design their own wacky animals (putting their imaginations to work) and describe them or show them to the classroom. Spore lets us place as many eyes, or as many legs, or as many any-parts we want to stick to our creations. All in all, a great addition to our EFL-usable games.

PS: Spore used to have a 2D online version at spore2d.com that was worth checking out which needed no installation, unfortunately the website is not working anymore and I have been unable to find it anywhere else.

• Zoo Tycoon

The last of these set of games I selected is Zoo Tycoon. Tycoon games are software that is developed to simulate real businesses and is a type of game that has been approached by different companies around the world with different businesses being addressed (zoos, amusement parks, railroads, airlines, film studios, among others).

In Zoo Tycoon we can start a zoo from scratch or start running a zoo that is already working. Taking care of the animals, curing and housing animals that were rescued and eventually freeing them in their natural habitats; placing food, drink or gift booths so that people spend money there; completing different actions such as taking photos when certain animal is performing a particular action, or planting certain species of tree according to the artificial habitat created in an exhibit are the activities the game provides us.

All these tasks involve using a lot of vocabulary and understanding what we need to do, rounding up an enjoyable constructive experience.

Note: the images shown above are screenshots from The Sims 2, Spore and Zoo Tycoon 2. Consequently, there exist previous versions to the first and the third game.

PowerPoint has aged well

Microsoft PowerPoint has been around for quite some time and has been the reigning presentation software for a quarter of century. The first version (originally called Presenter, later renamed because of copyright issues) was developed in the late 80s for Macintosh computers by the defunct american company Forethought. In 1990, Microsoft purchased the company and released the first Microsoft PowerPoint in 1990 along Windows 3.0.
Many versions have seen the light in these two centuries and the latest is Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 for Windows and 2011 for Mac. The former one is the one I have been working with recently.

We could argue that PowerPoint's fiercest competitor at the moment is Prezi, an online presentation-based-on-poster software, as I call it. It has been developed by Rumanian architect and visual artist Adam Somlai-Fischer and launched for public use in 2009. The main difference with PowerPoint is that its main tool for presentation is the ability to zoom in and out inside a canvas, a big-as-you-need canvas.

From a bird's view it could be said that these too completely different programs can serve the same purpose but I think that each of them is best applied to different aims. Prezi is more of a storyteller, because even though it may not seem so at first, Prezi is almost completely linear. We can create a sense of movement and develop a whole story, a topic, a journal, a chronicle by using text, images, videos (warning sing here!: videos can only be played if the computer is connected to the Internet) and music (warning here too!: Prezi is only able to attach a limited number of audio formats and to the best of my knowledge .mp3 files are not supported yet. On the other hand, PowerPoint has incorporated since the late 90s, VBA programming features with an easy-to-use interface that does not demand the user to know the syntax of the language and is highly automatised. This allows us to jump from one slide to the other creating hyperlinks and navigating the presentation as an interactive set of slides. The latest Windows versions (2007 and 2010) have mainly added visual effects and a new layout that facilitates the creation of eye-catching and visually attractive projects. In my opinion this software, that has been included in every Microsoft Office package, is best used when we need to deliver oral presentations, especially those that need to be backed with images, videos as for example the relatively new presentation methodology PechaKucha.