The game I chose is Farmgame on facebook. It is pretty close to Third World Farmer. But I really do not like the name which includes third world. When I was in China, I have played Happy Farm in RENREN (A Chinese style facebook) for a long time. I cannot count how many times I played the game. I grew flowers in my virtual farm and sent them to my friends.
The first one it my facebook farm. And the second one is my RENREN farm.
The language learning objective of the game is still vocabulary learning. I learned a large number of vegetation words through the game. And because pictures designed by facebook and RENREN are pretty close to real vegetation products. So students growing up in cities have a chance to familiar with plants, flowers and vegetables. The game also has a requirement of mathematics. Players have to run their farms well and sell their products in right seasons to earn money to buy expensive products' seeds and cultivate new farmland.
It is a out-classroom game. So for me to assess students conveniently, and that is another reason I choose farmgame on facebook or RENREN, I will add my students as my facebook or RENREN friends. Then I can visit their farmlands all the time. After playing the game for a while, I can also hold a vegetation words competition in my class to assess students' learning outcome. Of course, I won't tell them when I am going to conduct the competition.
Choosing a game that can be played on a smart phone makes a lot of sense for informal learning. However, you might want the students to create Facebook accounts that are strictly for class use, since I doubt of many students would want you to be monitoring their private activities on Facebook.
ReplyDeleteI will try my best.
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