View Content #21809

From http://www.pblinthetl.com

Teacher Laura K. Sexton has written another excellent, thought-provoking blog post - this time discussing components of what motivates her to play a game like Pokémon Go! and how those components apply to language learning.

Read her blog post here: http://www.pblinthetl.com/2016/09/gaming-language-novice-pbl-unit.html
You can also access her Pokémon Go! unit here: http://www.pblinthetl.com/2016/07/pokemon-vamos-pokemon-go-for-spanish.html

The components Ms. Sexton identifies are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Here at CASLS, we’ve all read Language at Play: Digital Games in Second and Foreign Language Teaching and Learning by our directory Julie Sykes and Jonathon Reinhardt (available here: https://www.pearsonhighered.com/program/Sykes-Language-at-Play-Digital-Games-in-Second-and-Foreign-Language-Teaching-and-Learning/PGM280956.html). This book explores in-depth possible connections between good game design and language teaching and learning; findings from the book along with more resources are available on CASLS’ Games2Teach website at https://games2teach.uoregon.edu/. Comparing and contrasting Ms. Sexton’s components with those in Sykes and Reinhardt’s book is fascinating, and examining her Spanish unit along with last week’s and this week’s Activities of the Week (http://caslsintercom.uoregon.edu/content/21734 and http://caslsintercom.uoregon.edu/content/21735) is inspiring us to find more ways to use digital games as part of language learning.