Third World Farmer: a game that improve students' ability and personality

       Third World Game is a serious game and it has a clearly story line about a family survive through many hardship. According to  A Comparison of Computer Game and Language-Learning Task Design Using Flow Theory, computer-mediated activities seem to offer clear advantages over conventional classroom lessons in providing on-task feedback. This is also one big advantage of this game: whenever you finish a turn, you will get a feedback immediately. I played 36 turns and I finally won.

        The success is really not that easy: they may encounter natural disaster, civil war and economic crisis and so on. Therefore, the family’s income is very unstable. Plus, I need to cure the family member’s health problem and life problem. It is just so hard to let the family live avoid suffering and live a happy life. However, it is not boring anyway. It not only has plantings like corn, wheat and nuts and so on. It also can make money through raising chicken, pigs or cattle. You can also use the farm appliance to explore the new farm. In a word, you never get bored of doing the same stuff. Through this procedure, students can learn large numbers of vocabulary, especially farm words like corn, wheat, pigs, cattle, chicken and peanuts… also the words like civil war, economic crisis or pig disease and so on. The students totally will enjoy the game outside the classroom without teachers’ guidance. Besides the acquiring the large vocabulary, the students can also learn about how hard to support a family in third world and how lucky they are and how wars can be harmful to a normal family. In a word, this game will enhance students’ description ability in an ESL classroom as well as broaden their vocabulary.I will assess the students by letting them write a reflection about their experience while using the vocabulary they acquired during the game.
       This game would be very useful in ESL classroom and  I would like to implement this game in my future teaching career.

Phantasy Quest: the Desire to Keep You Going on

Gamification is a brand new definition to me. As in what is gamification, It refers to the concept of applying game-design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging. Adding game components to a course can result in several real benefits. Simulations can help students sharpen ability or work out a novel solution. But perhaps the most commonly cited benefit of gamification is that it fosters student engagement. Where it functions well, gamification facilitates the formation of learning communities, giving new opportunities online or during course discussions to socialize or work as teams. In this sense, gamification has the potential to help build connections among members of the academic community, drawing in shy students, supporting collaboration, and engendering interest in course content that students might not have otherwise explored.( 7 Things You Should Know About Gamification)

In this mod, I played the Phantasy Quest which is really engaging. I played the escape games several times before since I like the way it appealing people to keep going on. It activates the people’s curiosity and I enjoyed this game. Actually, I tried seven times and failed. I solved this by the walkthrough at last anyway. I think I can set the keywords (the objects) as the necessary vocabulary in this game. In this way, the students will pay attention to the vocabulary they need to learn. What’s more, students can learn how to describe a story or give the direction to others. Let’s take vocabulary object for example; the subject in this game needs to pick the coconut, rope, and lantern and so on. Then these necessary words will become the words the learners need to acquire. When the learners need these objects to complete the game, naturally they will pay attention to these words. The teachers should give the clues at the beginning since this is really a time-consuming game. The vocabulary need to be told ahead of the game. I will use the images in this game because it will surely impress the students’ memorization. After then finish the game, I would ask them to retell how they get through this game. In this way, I can tell if the students master the objective vocabulary. 

How many benefits can you imagine educators can gain from micro-blogging?

       Social media offers some great opportunities for learning in the classroom, bringing together the ability to collaborate, access worldwide resources, and find new and interesting ways to communicate in one easily accessible place. Teachers and educators around the world have found innovative ways to use Twitter as a teaching tool, and I would like to share many of these great ideas here with you.

      The first thing came up to my mind is we can involve every student into the discussion. Since Buffalo's winter can be really tough sometimes, I really think acquiring knowledge at home is  inevitable for most of us. One example from 60 Inspiring Examples of Twitter in the Classroom also mentioned this aspects: Keep students in the loop- Using hashtags on Twitter, students who were not able to make it to class can follow along and stay on top of the conversation. I also will benefit from the functions of Parent communication in my future career in which parents can sign up for twitters and communicate with teachers anywhere conveniently since not every parent will have certain time to drop by school to attend a meeting. 

       Another interesting application of Twitter I found in the article 35 interesting ways to use Twitter in the classroom is that we can even use it to play academic games,such as the word game showed in this article. what is the most amazing part is we can download the App into our portable device and acquire the game everywhere, such as on the bus, subway and during one class break. 

       All in all , technology will inevitably grow into our daily learning. I believe it will show more valuable features as we explore more about it.  

Edtechchat and me

Edtechchat and me

        Twitter-chat is a brand new technology for me. I wish I could use earlier since I found it was convenient, comprehensive and effective. What a great communication device to benefit our professional development. First, everyone interested in this topic can attend to this chat group. People from different background offered their own valuable perspectives. It truly broaden my horizon and friend circle. Secondly, everyone can ask a question and you can get an immediate answer to the question. Although the answers may not authentic, you can get a hint from others' inspiration. Also, I like the the simple, quick exchange of the information.  As a second language learner, I really not good at reading a long article to grab one simple subject. Long articles really cost me so much time while twitter-chat is way too much better than that. We can acquire huge amount of information in a  brief and relax way.  However, though I admit we can acquire different opinions from all over the world, I found the interface sometimes is too chaotic. I know maybe I am not familiar to this new educational tool. Still, I think some change need to be done to improve the clarity of a chat "room".

Classroom 2.0

Classroom 2.0is very beneficial for we TESOL students. It offers social network for those interested in Web 2.0, Social Media, and Participative Technologies in the classroom. we can participate in the great discussions here, to receive event notifications, and to find and connect with colleagues. It include over 77,000 members from 188 countries! Classroom 2.0 is a free, community-supported network. We "beginners" will find this a supportive comfortable place to start being part of the digital dialog. I cannot wait for the next exploration in this group!

What does a Learner like in Nowadays?

       A leaner is like a board of a boat. Boards join together to across the river and arrive the destination. Small number of boards may also can get us across the river but you never know what part of boat is leaking and may lead to danger in future. While with more boards and larger boat, you may arrive the destination loaded with much more treasures. If just one board, it will be lost in the river--no direction and can carry nothing to anywhere. That is what I realized from the Connectivism: A Learning Theory for a Digital Age. In this article,Siemens posits that Our small world networks are generally populated with people whose interests and knowledge are similar to ours. Finding a new job, as an example, often occurs through weak ties. This principle has great merit in the notion of serendipity, innovation, and creativity. That is to say, more boards can create more treasures.

       I also agree with one point in his video The Network is the Learning. It says that the network is learning, the way we connect to either individuals is largely responsible for our ability to continue to stay current in the future. What I know nowadays is not as much as important as my ability to stay current since knowledge change rapidly. It is true that if i am not continue learning, i will become obsolete in my particular field or within a particular knowledge space. Network enable us to get in touch with individuals in similar field around the world, no matter in Canada, US or China.  Since the time span from when knowledge is gained to when it becomes obsolete is shorter and shorter now, the ability of know how to gain knowledge surely act a foundation part of our learning.