Gamification in language learning

Gamification is new to me. To be honest, I never used it in one class, or across a semester. I mean, we do use class activities to practice or to assess students' learning outcomes, but we never used a "game" in one single class or even for a longitudinal period of time. What is a game? What are the differences of between a game and an activity? 

To find what a game is, I think we should first define what Game Mechanics is. In an article by Miguel Sicart, the author defines Game Mechanics as the "methods invoked by agents, designed for interaction with the game state."( see  Game Mechanics). In another article on digital games, the authors also highlighted five areas where the parallels between digital game deign and second language acquisition principles, which are goals, interaction, feedback, context and motivation. (see  Technology—“Just” Playing Games? A Look at the Use of Digital Games for Language Learning )

To me, the most important nature of games, which is also clarified in both definitions in the above articles, is "interactions". Social interactions are extremely important to the process of learning, according to Sociocultural Theories: we learn things through interacting with others through mediation. I believe the interactive nature of games makes the learning more effective, fun and motivated. On the other hand, class activities are not always interactive. 

Another feature of games I want to mention is "the flow". What is the flow? "The flow experience is one of the most universally euphoric experiences human beings enjoy. The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defines it as "the satisfying, exhilarating feeling of creative accomplishment and heightened functioning." (see Sculpting Flow and Fiero). The three factors proposed by Csikszentmihalyi are clear goals, rigidly defined rules of engagement and the potential for measured improvement in the context of those goals and rules. Therefore, in games, we want our students to be challenged in a context of rules to reach a certain goal, during which process, students learn things and the teacher assesses how much improvement students has accomplished. 

Moreover, since games are interactive, other interaction-relevant key concepts can not be ignored, such as feedback, agency and communication. Students may get feedback from their peers and the teacher in games and learn through the interaction. Each students are not just participating as individuals but as agents of their own backgrounds and cultures, so the teacher must be aware of the individuality of each student and explore how to get each student engaged in the most effective way. 

What comes to my mind about using games in language learning is that the teacher must clarify the goals and rules before the games. Since games are highly motivational as they are easy to make students distracted, to manage games in class context, especially the digital games, the teacher should make sure students understand why they are playing, what they are trying to learn and how to enhance the learning not only for themselves but also for others in class. 

Reconsidering what tweeting means to language learners

I was quite confident in my last post when I said it could be quite demanding and stressful for language learners to tweet in English, since twitter feed only allows 140 characters. But now, I am reconsidering my point. As a matter of fact, I realized that I was too negative about challenges. 

Chinese language is loose, scattered and flowing wherever thoughts go. I told my students to be concise and straightforward for millions of times when I was reviewing their essays. As a learner myself, it took me so many years to give up detouring in sentence writing and intentionally written long sentences (still trying). Maybe a limited space would be a new and better way for students to rethink their syntactic structure and reshape their writing. 

There is a famous metaphor about Chinese and English. Chinese is like grapes and English is like bamboo. Grapes expand to all directions in small units and bamboo goes straight from one section to another logically. Maybe twitter's linear text input space may reshape Chinese speakers' languaging process and improve their cognitive level of thinking in English. 

 

How to use Twitter in ESL teaching?

Although we can’t access to Twitter in China, we have a similar website, Weibo. It is like Chinese version of Twitter. Our reflections on Twitter can also be used on Weibo. I have compared the two websites, and they are practically the same to me. The only thing I have found different between them is the length of the tweet. On Twitter, each feed shall not exceed 140 characters. Although it is the same with Chinese characters on Weibo, if we convert the Chinese characters to English characters, we may find the English characters allowed on Weibo are more than those on Twitter. Please see the same feeds on Weibo and Twitter. I selected one feed from an English Weibo account, copied it and pasted it to my Twitter feed. We can see that the same feed on Twitter would exceed the limit by 95 characters. To English learners, it means something.

weibo

twitter

In one of my article reading, a blogger said: “‘Summing Up’ Ask students to read an article or chapter and then post their brief summary or précis of the key point(s). A limit of 140 characters demands a lot of academic discipline.” Teaching with Twitter

For native English speakers, 140 character limit is actually considered as a good way to train the skill of summarizing, but to English learners, it is highly demanding. Not so skillful with playing with words, English learners wouldn't be able to make the most of limited space with the minimum words. Tweeting in English could be really stressful to students. So Chinese Weibo, with larger feed space, might be good news to Chinese students who are learning English.

As I have stated in my previous blog, the most significant meaning of Twitter to me is to explore different communities online. By using Twitter/Weibo, we can establish a community for English learners with similar interests. Some educators extend the online activity to classroom activity, for example, Christine Morris explains how she experimented with the technology with her higher educated students, tapping into Tweetdeck to get the most out Twitter. Christine Morris

It was really inspiring that we as teachers could design a specially session for students to use the technology in class. We can lead students to use Twitter/Weibo outside the classroom in their spare times, we can also design a concentrate session. 

Personally, I may not use such sessions in language classrooms in China, since we have larger class sizes and it would be uncontrollable to manage such a class and unpractical to require all students bring their computers to class. However, I would have a workshop, open to all students who are interested in technology in language learning. At the workshop, I can inspire students how to use media and technologies in enhancing their language education by sharing different tools, practicing these tools in class with access to the Internet and having them share their own understandings of the E-learning. It would be interesting! 

Twitter chats

I had heard about Twitter years ago back in China, but since it is blocked in my home country, I never had an account. Shortly after I arrived in the United States, I created an account on Twitter. I posted two very simple tweets about homesick or something and then I stopped tweeting. The problem was that I didn't know whom to follow! Twitter is a highly contextualized environment with a high sense of identity and community. People tend to find their comfort zones, especially in a strange environment. As the speech on TED about Global Voice we have watched the other day shows, different ethnicity forms different community even on an open forum online, like Twitter. Since Twitter is blocked in China, I have very few friends who would use Twitter. Therefore, I couldn't find my own “community” on Twitter, so I stopped using it after a few days. Why wouldn't I follow whoever on Twitter to fit into the new community? I believe it would be a great idea to make new friends from other communities, but, as we all know, stepping out of the comfort zone is the hardest thing.

This week, our task for LAI 590 is to explore Twitter and how it can be used in language education. I revisited my Twitter account. This time, I had a clear goal: follow some educators on Twitter, learn from them about how to use Twitter and see what I can do with it. I participated in the Twitter chats #langchat. I typed in the #langchat in the search bubble and saw a stream of all tweeters’ feeds who had included #langchat in their feeds. I found some interesting tweets, such as foreign languages learning, teaching techniques and classroom sharing. I picked up some tweeters I liked and followed them. Now I am following almost 60 tweeters. Suddenly, my twitter account was alive! By following these people who share similar interests and pursuits with me, I have my new community. I posted a comment and a question with #langchat. Although no one has responded to me yet, I have three followers from the educators I have followed. I like it here. 

ePals

I love this website because it is a real learning community to me, involving teachers, students, schools and parents! Students are the center of the community. Activity Theory in sociocultural theories suggests the integral role of community in the learning process. Students learn through social interactions and develop themselves in the process. Community is what a student live in and conduct social interactions in, so when the community is recreated online, it is really helpful for students to learn. ePals has different classrooms that students may choose and it also has a special blogging space for students to interact with teachers and with each other, which I was excited to find out！
I am extremely excited to learn about the global community project of ePal! Students in different parts of world may get together in one classroom and learn from each other! This was a huge step forward for the real global voice and the concept of jumping from one flock another. I couldn't wait to introduce the website to my students. I wish one day I could establish a classroom there where my students may communicate with native English speakers who are interested in Chinese culture.

Google+ & Class 2.0

I tried two “community” websites, Google+ Communities and Classroom 2.0.

Google+ Communities is kind of handy, since I am already a Google+ user. I was recommended with many users I had contacted with, which was cool to see some familiar faces. I joined three communities, TED, ELLs and FLT. Members of communities may share texts, pictures, videos… everything with other members, and they can comment on others’ posts. Interactions are realized in comments. I also tried to establish a community myself and posed the first entry. The whole layout was clear and neat. The community can be public or private, which means you may get to decide who can be in your circles. I believe that it would be a wonderful place for interaction journal keeping between students and the teacher. Students may publish whatever they want to share, and the teacher would interact with them in comments. Dialogue journals are often used inn SCT, which I have always wanted to try. The biggest problem here is that Google is blocked for Chinese users, so my students wouldn't be able to use the tool. What a pity! 

Class 2.0 is a comprehensive forum community for participants. One may find everything there, forum, books, audio resources, projects, conferences... I believe it is a wonderful source for us teachers to exchange ideas with peers and learn from them. It is not a student-teacher interactive community, though. Unlike the interactions realized in comments on Google+, interactions on Class 2.0 are realized in traditional forum. Users follow each entry and interact with each other under one entry, one after another. Users may check on the poster's all discussions and follow her and add her to the contact. It is a traditional way of forum community, helpful for group discussions. I may find interesting sparkles in the discussions, but I will not use it as an interactive forum with my students. 

classroom 2.0

Watch out! Scary octopus is here!

photo from: http://pumml.deviantart.com/art/Giant-Octopus-Was-Very-Scary-175910124

Learners are like octopus monsters with long, soft and flexible tentacles. Although the octopuses in my analogy might be quite different from the real natural creatures. I imagine that the tentacles are hollow inside, open-ended for two-way communication, unlimited in quantity and can be any length so that they may reach anything in any distance. Every time a learner is exposed in an environment, he/she reaches to everything possible around and learns things from any source through their tentacles as well as influence other octopuses interacting with him/her.

Technology, or other cultural artifacts may facilitate the process by lengthening the tentacles to reach things far in the distance or space or improving the quality of tentacles’ two-way communication and influences. In the online lecture, the concept of connectivism identifies the learning process on three levels, biological, cognitive and social, all of which can be realized by the enhanced tentacles. As the knowledge information is increasing exponentially in today’s world, strengthened tentacles are the new way of learning.

The article is quite inspirational to me, since the fact that we are learning about learning shows the meta-function of learning. By reflecting on how we learn things, we may dig deeper into how we as teachers may provide what students need to learn. The author said that the traditional methods of studying the process of learning focus only on what happens inside learners; they “fail to address learning that occurs outside people.” Like tentacles, right? We need to examine more on how tentacles contact with tentacles from other learners and how they form a network from which all octopus can suck or share knowledge. The network is what the author refers to as the “small world”.

As I continue to think on my analogy, I would like to emphasize that the tentacles are not artifacts themselves (such as technologies) but integral parts of the body. Where are the technologies? I believe they are the power that enable the tentacles to get long, short, and straightforward or take a detour to another destination. They enhance the connection and make it as varied and full of possibilities. For example, if there were no internet, I would never have learned about the United States, and I would never have the opportunity of being here and writing this article. The technology magically lengthens my tentacles and create more sources for me to learn.

Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age by George Siemens

online lecture about connectivism