"Game" and "German" both start with G.

I'm pretty excited to talk about video games. As a kid, I played quite a few video/computer games, and I feel like most of them helped me in one way or another. Because I feel like reminiscing, here's a short list of some of the games I played and what I feel like I learned from them.

- Anna Tommy was an action game that taught me about anatomy (get the name?), this was one of the first computer games I played, bought for my brother and I by our veterinarian father.



- Oregon Trail taught me about that part of history and also that you should never start trekking across the country with ammo as your only cargo.



- Mario Kart taught me some fine motor skills and that you have to brake before you turn so you don't crash.



- Sim City taught me what you need to make a city function well and that people don't like living by coal power plants.



- Pharaoh/Caesar were both like Sim City, but also included some information about ancient Egypt and Rome, like that you need to irrigate crops if you live in the desert, and that the Gods don't like it when you don't pay tribute to them.



- The Sims taught me some valuable life lessons like you need money (or cheat codes) if you want fancy things. It also made me an expert furniture arranger.



-Tetris taught me how to plan ahead, like you can't always count on one of those long pieces to come and bail you out.



Anyway, enough reminiscing. While reading the Gee article, 3 of the learning principles stood out to me:

The first one was #4: Risk taking - I think this is a great thing about video games. A lot of schools put a lot of pressure on kids to get the "right answer" all the time, which I think discourages some kids from taking chances because they're afraid to be wrong. The fact that you get a lot of do-overs in games encourages risk taking, and through risk taking, kids can come up with some pretty creative solutions. I'd like to encourage more risk-taking in my classroom. In learning a foreign language, I think kids get held up from participating (especially in speaking) because they're worried about getting the grammar 100% right. I think it's important to let kids know that a language classroom is a low-pressure environment, and that content is more important than grammar. This would hopefully encourage more participation, more risk-taking, and more creativity.

Risk taking, especially in the context of a language class is related to #16: Performance before competence. Again, in creating a low-pressure environment, students should know that it's important that they try to speak/write in the language they're learning, and that they can do so even if they aren't 100% familiar with grammar or vocab. It's important to get kids talking, and build competence (or in this case, fluency) along the way - rather than waiting to get kids talking until they feel 100% competent (which probably isn't likely to happen in a beginning German class). In my opinion, a student actually trying to say something in German is way more important than if they said it correctly.

The last principle that struck me was #10: Situated meanings. I think this is very relevant to foreign language classes, and this is a reason some games could be very useful in language classes. As Gee said, students learn words better when they can associate them with an experience or situation. No one learns to be fluent in German by simply studying a German-English dictionary. Fluency comes with experience and through interaction. This is where I think games that create virtual worlds are great for language learning. You can create experiences and interactions online, and use those to help students learn.

Lastly, I thought the video from Jane McGonigal was fascinating (although I was slightly disappointed her last named isn't spelled McGonagall...sorry - Harry Potter moment). I think gamers are a great human resource, like she said, but I guess my big question is "How do we use this information in the classroom...specifically a foreign language classroom?" However, I'm sure Jeff will enlighten us all tomorrow, and I am looking forward to that.

The end.

Oh, also, my power went out today and it is crazy hot. Boo.