Weird, right? This isn't something that students might expect their teachers to say. In fact, I myself was given an assignment to play a computer game, and thought, how will this work?
In an article that I read called What is Gamification, it gives us a definition of gamification. "Gamification is the concept of applying game-design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging." So, this could be used in the classroom or to practice a new language. Ogigames offers a wide variety of games for students to play, including educational games.
I played Empire two times and noticed that it could definitely be used for students learning the command forms in Spanish. In the game, your "ruler" is commanding you to do things to help build the empire. In fact, all words are commands. How perfect for Spanish commands!? I think that I would have my students play the game, and write down ten command forms that they saw in the game. In class we could discuss all of the commands that they found and put them back in their original verb forms. I would grade their participation in class, or collect their ten commands as a homework grade and as I returned them I could give them to different students and they could put them in their original verb forms. If they could recognize the verb forms, and could report them the next day, all of them would be held accountable for their homework. They would all be actively involved in the game.
I would not be using a walk-through (definition) for this type of activity, but I could see myself using one in future activities if the game was more difficult. In this game, they are commanded to do everything so it is easy to follow along with.
After the students compared the commands that they were given, we could come up with our own images based on the game. They could draw the images based on images that they saw in the game. The images could be put up around the room and we could refer to them when talking about "Open, Close, Construct, Use" etc.
Instead of this being just a fifteen minute game that students play, we could turn this into a two-three day lesson.
Think about it...
Hasta luego,
Alissa
