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Saturday, January 14, 2012

Gamification - Week 1

The week was very fruitful. I am thoroughly enjoying this course.

First of all I loved Larry Ferlazzo's Blog where he has a collection of Interactive Fiction Game links. Having had a look at them I chose two: Move or Die and Ambition (10 episodes) because these games offer negotiation skills practice. I had already known Move and Die and had used it in one of my online courses, but I had never thought of using it in the classroom. I read Joe Pereira's Blog as well where he discusses uses of IF games in the classroom but still was unsure.

I didn't think it would be possible for me to have students play the game during the lesson as both games can take a very long time so I posted the links on our Group's Facebook wall and asked my students to give the games a go and maybe exchange some tips with each other later about what moves to make to complete the games.
I have to say I was amazed to see how involved the students became. They kept on posting tips and complaining about the game being difficult and impossible to complete. Then one of them managed to get to the end and told them all how to negotiate to survive and all of the students became really delighted and asked for more games.

I can say that these games were not only useful in terms of language but also in terms of their negotiation skills as some of them are studying Business English for their jobs.

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