Mobile Learning and Digital Games in School

Samorost 1 Level A2

This time I had a group of 12 students between 17 and 22, 11 males and one female. Level A2.  The target was to review writing (simple past) We played Samorost 1 amanita-design.net

I introduced the verb wheel 4foot30.com and the online dictionary leo.org first. I then showed the  beginning of the game on the big screen until the gnome flies to the other planet, later students had to turn their computers on and finish the game.

 I went round giving handouts and helping with questions. The handouts consisted of screenshots of the game with seven pictures and three questions to each picture in simple past and simple present.

I had planned for the group to play in teams of two, but they preferred to work alone, I had to help at the beginning because they didn’t seem to know what to do next, but after three minutes they started competing against each other and walking around the room to see how others were doing. They were concentrated on their work. Like all other groups they played twice, the second time in order to write their answers, I saw them running every now and then to consult two computers, one was used as an online dictionary and the other was showing the verb wheel. There was little for me to do, I doubt they would have noticed if I had left the room.

Only one male of 25 didn’t understand the story, didn’t finish the game, at the beginning someone else had to key in the address of the game for him, later he made up the contents for the second task reinventing the whole story.

When the group finished, we checked their answers together. The whole process took 90 minutes in the computer room. During the next 60 minutes we were in a normal classroom, the second task was to write a newspaper article about how the gnome saved his planet in simple past. The group started the task, but only one person gave me the article at the end of the lesson, the rest told me that they would do a better job if I let them do the task as homework because they could play again. leo.org               4foot30.com

Almost all students told me it had been an easy and fun game when they left. amanita-design.net