I chose to check out the Spanish game "Super Saber". I have not played online games in years so I was excited to check out new games. I found this game to be exciting. When I first clicked on the game sites page I was impressed with the set up. I found myself rereading some of the Spanish words despite my fluency in the language--which is good when wanting a challenging game. I played a game that had the player distinguish between the usage of "V" and "B". The questions were not all super easy which I thought was good.
Although the game was intriguing, there was only a set of about 5 fill-in-the-blank sentences which I thought should have had more sentences. Overall the gaming experience was interesting and allowed me to look at technology in education differently. My educational experience was very traditional so I am still getting used to the idea of using more technology in classrooms. I hardly ever used technology in high school classrooms unless it was powerpoint or film.
I feel most of our cohort has the same experience. Technology was never used in our days. I feel that the game I played was challenging as well and that is a good thing because Gee mentioned that good games were "challenging". I want to play that Spanish game! I will tell ya, I don't know but a few drops of Spanish but I feel that learning it is so crucial especially in our day and age. I hope I learn a more by playing online Spanish games!
ReplyDeleteI feel like I had a similar experience to you. The game I played was intriguing in some regards, but I left me wanting it to be more as an educational game. There is some merit to online games like this, but after the first run through they often seem tedious. This is not to say that I am knocking technology in the classroom. I just think there are better ways to implement it then short online games.
ReplyDeleteBecky!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post! I feel like foreign languages are a great subject area for online game play. The possibilities seem almost endless. It seems like the game that you played was a pretty straightforward almost test-like setup. I wonder what kinds of other situations could be imagined in order to foster a more interactive gameplay. If you had all of the tools in the world, what would your ideal game look like?
Straw hats and cheese cake,
Elliot
Becky, great post! I think that Spanish games could really help promote basic Spanish language skills. I'm glad you had an informative experience with this particular game. I think that a lot of us came into the teaching profession with the idea of teaching and lecturing to others, but the reality is that games may help supplement our teaching in class. Of course, not all games are equally effective. It will be our job to choose games to use that help students meet their course objectives.
ReplyDeleteBecky,
ReplyDeleteI have had some experiences with Spanish computer games yet I too am still getting used to the idea of technology in the classroom. I am uneasy about gaming for Spanish in particular because the game that I played in high school made me very anxious for we got graded on our scores. This game had us conjugate verbs as quickly as we could; we would have to type the correct conjugation into a box on the screen. I often would misspell the word and not get it right. This happened more so when I got nervous. I do see some positives to this particular game because it did make me think a little quicker which is really important in the realm of language. Thanks for your words and yourself!
-Caitlin