Take the quiz at http://www.bl.uk/evolvingenglish/quiz.html This is pretty fun, but not all that easy, even the “easy peasy” setting. Might be a little easier for someone raised in the UK, but not much easier I’d guess.
I especially like the corrective feedback.
——————————— EDIT —————————-
The quiz is no longer there, but you can see the results.
Learning by Playing: Video Games in the Classroom
Gillian Laub for The New York TimesClass Media Nicole Dodson, Dakota Jerome Solbakken and Nadine Clements, students at Quest to Learn, a New York City public school, play a game they designed.
By SARA CORBETT
Published: September 15, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/magazine/19video-t.html?ref=magazine
This seems more like a short book. 9 pages in total. It’s a great read for a general audience. No deep research insights and a little too much observation, but a good read none-the-less.
I don’t see a future in which all school-based learning is video game-based, but I do see a time at which most homework is. At school, I still see a place for manipulation of objects, information retrieval, and design/development of products to gauge learning.
I have to say that this is nothing really new conceptually. This is essentially the interactions that have been taking place is SecondLife for years. The interface is different though. This is likely using something similar to Playstations video or Microsoft Kinect.
The latter is probably the one that will have the most impact on a project like this. Kinect (with the Xbox) will make interfaces like this much easier for developers to integrate into their software.
From the article, I can’t tell what the role of the guy in the picture is. Does this software require a real life dialog partner? That could be cool for practicing more realistic dialogs between language learners, even without the teacher. Otherwise, I’m wondering what the purpose really is. Having smart bots engage and respond would be much better overall.
Interesting view of the future. Common objects and activities from a gaming perspective. You can hate it or love it, but this is a likely future, at least in some respects.
I particularly like his comment near the very end. He wonders whether this is going to just be a marketers utopia or whether (in addition) it will cause people to try to be better people. You often don’t hear the latter, but I think this is equally important and even more so for educators.