Blog & Teach

Time for an online videogame. Destination Death takes students into a scary story where they are supposed to fight some strange aliens who have taken up the city airport.

It is a game where objects must be used on other objects and the main character must ask the appropriate questions to the rest of the characters in order to save her sister from the fiendish aliens. It was created by the BBC for English speakers who learnt Spanish, French and German (Check these versions here).

A good resource for ESO 3-4 and Batxillerat students… try to have them work in groups and take decissions together… and talk about these decissions with the whole class… oral skills can be thus reinforced with a catchy tool!

If you think videogames can be helpful in our ELT lessons, this is a site for you!

Channel 4 brings us this interesting adventure based on the real Bow Street Runners created to fight crime and control the streets of London during the 18th century. Pick objects, talk to people and investigate in order to solve the crimes in the story. Being a free online game as it is, the quality is extremely rich. Advanced students will have a good time as they roam through the muddy streets trying to solve the mystery.

A new network community has been created:

Games in Schools

This social NING platform is devoted to the dissemination of ideas related to the use of videogames in education. teachers can talk about their experiences and comment on others’

A good number of ELT teachers use videogames in their classrooms. You only need to register for free and sign in.

This might be the place for you!

People from Amanita Design have produced a beautiful online videogame for the BBC educational website: Questionaut

Travel with a friendly voyager in pursuit of his friend’s windswept hat, and answer multiple questions from different fields in a dream-like world, flying with your balloon and winning oxygen by answering correctly. There’s fun and learning, and it’s in English! Worth a visit!

Wow! If you like spies and mystery, here’s a good game to have your students glued to their chairs. Young Bond, an online game ot of the Young Bond books. Lots of clues, information and thrilling things to do inside!

Just register, read and enjoy it! Children need their parents’ consent.

The European Schoolnet has launched a survey on the use of videogames in the classroom. They are doing it in coordination with the European Federation of Interactive Software. The idea is to see how teachers see the use of commercial videogames in the classroom: its positive and negative aspects, case studies, government policies, the view of experts…

You can see an outline of this initiative at http://games.eun.org/

They are asking teachers to complete a questionnaire on the use of these tools. It is valid for those who use them and also for those who don’t. It is important to know the reasons why they are regarded as something good or bad in the process of knowledge acquisition.

You can fill the questionnaire in English at:

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/survey-intro.zgi?p=WEB227P9S5DYST

Also in Spanish at:

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/survey-intro.zgi?p=WEB2285LHT63PT

Teachers filling the questionnaire may win an XBOX360 .

Why don’t you spend 10 minutes there and let European Schoolnet learn on what we think about the use of these products?

This is a nice way to introduce internet guided chat in the classroom.

Thanks to amycapdet, author of the ELT blog Cloudy Seaside Mood, who has showed us this interesting website.

Poptropica is a website where young people can create a very simple character which can be customized with a few details.

This character is taken to Poptropica, a world with different continents where he/she will be able to carry out different activities: Chatting with friends in a very guided way (the content of what is said comes out of a list offered to the player, so everything is under control as players can choose out of a limited list of possible sentences).

As players travel to the different parts of Poptropica, they can play different games, and what is most important, pay attention to what people in Poptropica say to them, as they must gather information and objects in order to succeed in carrying out different missions across that world. Once all activities are carried out, theer’s nothing to be done. That will avoid having students constantly hooked on the game.

A nice way to introduce Primària students to the world of adventure games and quests, simple, catchy and always under your control (as long as they play in the school, of course)

www.poptropica.com

This a really nice game! It’s not a simple click and go thing, you must think as a responsible manager, a responsible mayor who wants to run a clean city with happy citizens. The main focus is the wise use of energy, but it appears together with other aspects that create an extremely catchy educational game. Take some time to learn the rules, and you’ll be able to get the most of the game with your students next school year!

This is a good website where you can find lots of very different resources for your classroom: grammar, vocabulary, listening activities, videos, games… many drills and exercises that will help you carry out your goals with your students.

A nice website by CISCO.

Learn about Internet viruses and e-mail security with Peter Packet, a friendly cartoon who will help you to carry out missions to help people in the third world.