Using Computer Games to Improve Students' English

I’ve had a long interest in the use of computer games for English language teaching and have looked at lots of games over the years that have huge potential for language learning, from platforms like Second Life and Minecraft to more structured educational games like PowerUp and Tyto, so when I spotted Real English for Gamers, a site that sets out to help students use a variety of multi-player games to improve their English, I was really fascinated.

What it’s about
Real English for Gamers isn’t a game but it is at the most basic level, a YouTube channel full of videos of game in game interaction between players that have been turned into learning resources.

The creators of the channel have taken clips of world famous gamers playing the games, transcribed them, analysed the vocabulary and interaction between the players and turned them into instructional videos that help students to learn English with the aim of enabling them to play their favourite games in English.

This is a great idea in many ways as so many students find playing video games so engaging and to combine this enthusiasm for the games with the chance to interact with other speakers of English can really be a boost for their motivation.

How to use it
The Real English for Gamers YouTube channel has around 130 videos at time of writing and these are mostly clips from multiplayer games. Their website helps to structure this collection of videos and make it more accessible. Some of the best places to start are:

• Examples: This section has links to YouTube playlists with sections on grammar for gamers, vocabulary for gamers, general help for learning English through games.

• The Basics: This section has a collection of useful language for gamers that they can use whilst playing the games.  This includes a section on questions they can ask their gaming partner during the game, common game related vocabulary and tips for how to avoid misunderstandings during the game.
• Practice Listening: This section helps students to deal with fast authentic speech by using short video clips with video script annotation.

• The Gamers: This section has information about each of the celebrity gamers featured in the video clips.

• The Games: This section has information about each of the games featured in the clips.

The site is being regularly updated and apart form watching and listening to the videos, students can also leave comments and chat with other users using the comments feature in the YouTube channel.

Real English for Gamers is an interesting concept and a great resource to recommend to students who are interested in games or as a source of learning material for homework or the classroom. It is of course a good idea to select videos that you feel are age and culturally appropriate for your students. Due to the nature of the content, some games will have language related to violence in them and others may have some bad language, so you’ll need to decide whether your students are mature enough to deal with these elements.

For students who are already keen on games this could be a tool to help them to make the shift to playing them in English and for students who are interested in games the content could form the basis of some motivating lessons that exploit authentic materials.

I hope you enjoy Real English for Gamers and that your students find it useful.
You can find links to many more tools like this and activities for the digital classroom in my ebooks at: https://payhip.com/peacheypublications

To sign up for my free newsletter and get a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers go to: http://eepurl.com/dtgL79

Check Out My Books:

• 10 Business English Lessons
• Hacking Creativity
• 10 Short Image Lessons
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media 

Best
Nik Peachey

10 Free Apps to Enhance your Students' Learning

In this post I'd like to take a quick look back at ten of the most popular posts I wrote from last month. These posts cover a host of free apps, games and resources sites that you can use to create engaging digital learning for your students.

Create Vocabulary Activities from Authentic Text in Minutes

WordBooster is a real time saver for anyone creating courses using authentic materials.

 The site generates word lists and vocabulary quizzes from authentic texts and includes definitions of the words and a range of activities to help students understand and remember the word.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/create-vocabulary-activities-from.html

Get Teens Writing with Gamified Writing Activities

Story Wars is a great gamified way to make writing creative and competitive.

Students read short chapters of the beginnings of stories and then have to submit the next chapter for the story.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/get-teens-writing-with-gamified-writing.html

Give Young Learners Structured Writing Practice with WritingSparks

WritingSparks is a great site for giving structure and adding an element of fun to writing activities, especially if you have a data projector so that students can see the prompts on the screen.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/give-young-learners-structured-writing.html

Create Texting Fiction to Keep Your Teens Engaged

Texting fiction is a new emergent genre of fiction writing that is becoming very popular among teens and I have to say when I started reading a few of these creations I can see why.

Basically the narrative is structured as a phone based text conversation and can include images and videos as well as text and audio message

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/create-texting-fiction-to-keep-your.html

6 Useful Resources for Exploiting the News in the English Language Classroom

In this article I'm sharing a collection of resources that you can use with your students to help them understand news stories in English.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/6-useful-resources-for-exploiting-news.html

Create Animated Speaking Activities with Toontastic

Toontastic provides the kind of activity that could be used to get younger students speaking and it gives them the opportunity to play out different roles and to listen and reflect on their own speaking before they save and share.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/create-animated-speaking-activities.html

Build Your 3D Virtual Reality Classroom Today

This is a great tool for running online group classes or social events for online students.

There is also now the capability to build course materials and launch commercial courses through: . You can also take free courses that can help you use the platform.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/build-your-3d-virtual-reality-classroom.html

Using Computer Games to Raise Awareness of Global Issues

In this post I'd like to introduce a few games that you can use with students as a springboard for discussion on what can be some difficult issues for teachers to address in the classroom.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/using-computer-games-to-raise-global.html

Get Students Creating Video Summaries with Lumen5

This is a great tool for quickly creating video summaries. You can use it to write a short summary or just put in the URL of an online article or blog posting and then pick the parts of the text you want to include in the video.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/get-students-creating-video-summaries.html

 

I hope you enjoy these resources and make good use of them with your students over the coming year.

You can find more tools and activities like these in my ebook 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom.

The book is available on iOS or as PDF for other devices.

Sign up for my twice monthly free newsletter and get a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/ 

My Books:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers 

 Best

Nik Peachey

Developing geography related vocabulary

I saw this website today and thought how great it would be to use it in the classroom for developing words related to places and describing different places. The site  GeoGuessr is actually based on Google maps and it's a simple game.

The game works like this:

• You see an image of an unknown place somewhere in the world and you have to guess where it is and click that place on the map. 
• Because this is based on Google maps street view you can actually explore around the image and look for clues.
• Once you click on the map you will see the real location and how close or far away you were.

• You are awarded points depending on how close you are to the real location.
• You have five turns to score as many points as possible.

How to use the site for EFL /ESL
The game itself doesn't really involve any language input or output, but you can easily add that.

• If you are using it in a single computer classroom you can show students the image and ask them to guess where it is. Ask them to justify their answers by describing what they can see. This way you can also practice modal verbs such as 'it may be', 'it might be' 'it could be', 'it must be' etc.
• If students are working on computers you can put them in pairs and get one student to describe what they can see and the other student to listen and try to guess where the place is.
• You could get students to make some notes and brainstorm words related to each of the places and then write a short description of each of the five places as though they visited them during a round the world journey.
• For lower levels you could just play the game and get the students to call out the names of the places. 

Check out my ebook

 
What I like about the site

• This a is a great way to bring the world into the classroom.
• Students can really explore inside the images and pan around to look for clues.
• It's fun and a little bit addictive.
• It's an engaging and unpredictable way to get students interacting with content.

I hope you and your students enjoy playing with GeoGuessr

Related links:

• Exploiting infographics for ELT
• Personalised flashcards
• A River of Images
• Art Photography as a Basis for Language Activities
• How to Create Bomomo Art
• Visualize sentences with video clips
• My learning technology reading list
• My collection of tools for learners
• My Facebook page

Best

Nik Peachey

How do you play?

How do you play? is a marvellous site with the instructions for a wide variety of educational and entertaining games which can be used  to practice and develop language skills.

The site divides the games into eight different types:

• Active games
• Board games
• Card games
• Classroom games
• Icebreakers
• Party games 
• Sports 
• Team building

Each game has some basic information about how long the game will take and what materials are needed, followed by clearly written instructions for how the game is played. You can also vote up or down the games you try.

There are quite a few games that you can use in the language classroom. Here are some of my favourites.

• Telephone charades
• Mine field
• Icebreaker questions (Good for 2nd conditional)
• Life timelines
• People bingo

How to exploit this site
This is a great resource to exploit with language learners and not just by playing the games with them.

• Get the students to read an entry then teach other students how to play the game.
• Get students to follow the model and create their own written game instructions for a game they know.
• Get students to read and select a game they would like to play.
• Copy the text of some instructions, cut them up and get students to organise them in the correct order to play the game (You can use Paragraphy to do this).
• Create a Wordle image of the game instructions and see if the students can use the words in it to recreate the instructions after they play the game.

Here's an example of telephone charades.

All learning starts with games and play, but a lot of the time that element of play gets lost as our children grow older and education becomes more of a serious process of cramming for exams. How do you play? has lots of materials that can be used to bring playful learning back into the classroom and make it a much happier and more language productive place.

I hope your students enjoy these activities.

Related links:

• Adventure Narratives for EFL ESL
• Educational Games That Really Are Fun
• Exploiting two computer-based RPGs
• Games With a Purpose and a Social Network
• Create your own game
• Online Water Conservation Game

Best

Nik Peachey

Create Spelling Games and Tests

Spelling City looks misleadingly simple but is really a fantastic site for creating or getting students creating their own interactive multimedia word tests, games and practice activities.

Students simply type in the words that they want to revise and then decide which of the three modes they want to use.

The three modes are:

1. Test - In test mode the students get a simple audio test. They can hear either the word in isolation or in a sentence and they have to type it into the field. This is a great test to use with words that sound similar as it can give students the opportunity to test their ability to hear the difference both in isolation or in the context of a sentence.
2. Teach - In the teach mode the students hear the word alone and in a sentence and then the word is spelled out for them.

3. Play - In the game mode the students have the choice of a range of games that they can use to develop their ability to use the word in context or just test the recall of the words and ability to recognise them.


Matching activity

Hang Mouse
How about using this with students?

• You can either get students working alone on Spelling City revising their vocabulary or if you have an interactive whileboard or data projector in class you can create the tests in class in response to the new vocabulary demands of your students during class. just collect any new words that come up during the class and towards the end of class or at the beginning of the next get the words up on the board and click to create some interactive tests live in class. Just add your words then click to test, teach or play a game. If you use a game you can click the small icon in the top right corner to see the game full screen on the board.
• Many of the games will also provide a print friendly version of the activity for you to print and use in class, so you caould also use this tool to creat a range of paper based word game activities too.
  

Spelling City is a great tool that can really help EFL ESL students with their spelling, vocabulary, listening and receptive pronunciation. Would be marvelous if you could download and save the activities that are generated, but I guess you can't have everything.

I'm also not sure how big the database of words and audio sentences is, so I'm not sure what kind of coverage this would have for higher levels, but for lower level learners and for kids, I'm sure it's a winner. Hope you find it useful.

• Here you can find lots more vocabulary activities for EFL ESL students

Related links:

• Create Image Books
• Create a Flickr Montage
• Great Time Line Tool
• Create a YouTube Carousel
• Interactive presentations
• A Picture's worth
• Picture phrases
• Make Your EFL ESL Yearbook
• Personalised flashcards
• Animating vocabulary
• Exploiting Image Sequences

Best

Nik Peachey

Online Games for Kids

In our rush to find and report on what's new we can often overlook a lot of really valuable resources that have been around a while and stood up to the test of time. Often these older sites and resources have survived for only one reason - because they a really good!

Kindersite is one such site. Kindersite was created by Joel Josephson and it focuses on collecting and categorising web based games and resources which are suitable for educational use with children. There is a huge collection there now and every time I look I find something new.

• You can find the categorised directory of games suitable for 5 years and up here
  Games directory 5 years +
  

• You can find the catagorised directory of games suitable for pre-school + here
  Games directory for pre-school +
  

You can also sign up to a newsletter list to keep up on what's happening
Newsletter list

Kindersite is a really great resource with lots of really useful games for kids. I hope you enjoy it and I'm sure you will find something useful.

Here you can find games based activities for language learning

Related links:

• Teaching EFL ESL with Comic Strips
• Dfilm - Dvolver Adds Embed Code
• Text to Speech Movies for EFL ESL
• Great Collection of Short Films
• Great Source of Animated Movies
• Text to Speech for EFL ESL Materials
• Creating audio-visual monologues
• Make you own animated movies
• Developing screencast tutorials

Best

Nik Peachey

Get Kids Animating

Animation tools seem to be getting better and simpler to use every day and this one by Anithings is a great example of that.

It's designed for young learners to enable them to create short animated narrative clips. There's a nice video tutorial here showing how easy it is to create a short animated clip.



You'll need to have Adobe Air installed and then it is just a very quick download and you are then ready to start animating.

There are some useful PDF guidelines on how to use it which you can download from the site too.
There's a catch though, Anithings is still in beta and once it is finished the final version will cost money. Shame they can't think of a more up-to-date business model! Best download it now and get using it, if you can live with the bugs.

You can find some nice examples here of what kids in UK have been doing with the software.

Related links:

• Teaching EFL ESL with Comic Strips
• Dfilm - Dvolver Adds Embed Code
• Text to Speech Movies for EFL ESL
• Great Collection of Short Films
• Great Source of Animated Movies
• Text to Speech for EFL ESL Materials
• Creating audio-visual monologues
• Make you own animated movies
• Developing screencast tutorials

Best

Nik Peachey

Dfilm - Dvolver Adds Embed Code

I've been a long time fan of Dvolver from its early days as Dfilm Maker. It was one of the first site I wrote about (Make you own animated movies)when I started blogging back in 2007. It's a really great site that allows students and teachers to create animated Flash cartoon movies with their own dialogue in just a couple of minutes.


I was in the process of visiting it again this morning to create a joke movie and was delighted to discover that an embed code has been added for the movies you create. This is great news as it makes it much easier to share the movies and include them in digital materials you or your students create.

Here's a quick joke movie I created



Great addition to a great tool. Hope you enjoy Dvolver and get your students making movies.

Here you can find some Cartoon Activities for students

Related links:

• Text to Speech Movies for EFL ESL
• Great Collection of Short Films
  
• Great Source of Animated Movies
• Text to Speech for EFL ESL Materials
• Creating audio-visual monologues
• Make you own animated movies
• Developing screencast tutorials

Best

Nik Peachey

Flickr and Wiktionary Based Image Dictionary

Shahi is a visual dictionary that combines Wiktionary content with Flickr images, and more! This is a really handy tool for students or in the classroom if you have a computer + projector set up.

All you do is type in your vocabulary word and you get images ( from Flickr, Google or Yahoo) and a definitions with part of speech and some example sentences from Wikitionary.

If you want to give your students a better view of the images that the Shahi finds in relation to the word, then just click on the image and it enlarges.


Of course the most common problem with picture dictionaries is that the concepts of many words, especially at higher levels aren't 'visual' as such and are much more abstract concepts. I did a search on 'noise' and here's what I got.


You can use this to your advantage though by getting students to think about the connections and associations between the words you search for and the images. You can turn this into a game and give points to the students with the best explanation for the connection between word and image. The explanation could be literal or more imaginative and narrative based.

One other thing that I like about Shahi, is that the results from each word you type in are 'piled up onto top of each other, so if you use it as a reference throughout a lesson or activity, you still have a record there of all the words that came up.

You could also use this feature in reverse, by creating an image word list before the activity so that students can prepare their vocabulary and refer to it during the activity.

Shahi is a nice versatile free tool and one that your students could easily use on their own. Hope you enjoy it.

Related links:

• Image based activities
• Exploiting Travel Images
• Art Photography as a Basis for Language Activities
• Darwin and Evolution
• Create Image Books
• Create a Flickr Montage
• Great Time Line Tool
• Create a YouTube Carousel
• Interactive presentations
• A Picture's worth
• Picture phrases

Best

Nik Peachey

The Role of Computer Games in Formal and Informal Education

I've just been listening to this interview on Edutopia with James Paul Gee talking about reform in US state schools. He also has a lot of really good points to make about the role of computer and video games in education and the role that they already have in our students informal education.

I think this is a 'must see' video for anyone involved in teaching and education.


He does place very strong emphasis on technology, but I also find what he has to say about the de-professionalisation of teachers very important too. Well worth a listen.

Related links:

• Adventure Narratives for EFL ESL Students
• Educational Games That Really Are Fun
• Online Water Conservation Game
• Wonderland Virtual World and MMORPG
• Google's Lively Competitor with Second Life?
• 3B Village 3D browser
• Eco City Game
• Exploiting two computer-based RPGs
• Games With a Purpose and a Social Network
• Create your own game
• Looking at There.com

Best

Nik Peachey

Coffee With Kyle Mawer

This Sunday 30th November (GMT 18.00 = 10.00 PST) will see the second in our series of 'Coffee With ..' educational chat shows on Edunation III in Second Life, so please do come along, join our audience and meet other people interested in developing education and learning within Second Life.

In this show I'll be interviewing Kyle Mawer from the British Council and finding out about the work he has been doing designing materials in the Second Life Teen Grid and about the forth coming opening of the British Council's island in the main grid.



Kyle describes the work of the British Council as "both an iconic virtual representation of Great Britain, and a rich setting in which learners of English can further their learning of the language and culture of the UK as well as raising awareness of visitors to the work and opportunities provided by the British Council."

Kyle is particularly interested in using the medium of gaming as a learning tool and adapts free online computer games for use with his classes. The games, materials and lesson plans he’s found, developed and successfully used have been posted on the wikispace he runs at http://kylemawer.wikispaces.com

If you would like to come along and watch the show and join in the discussion, then go along to Edunation III and click the sign-up terminals or email Gavin at: dudeney@theconsultants-e.com. The event is free, but we are limited to 100 places. The show starts at GMT = 18.00 (GMT is 8 hours ahead of Second Life time, so that's 10.00 PST and 19.00 CET)

If you don't have a Second Life avatar but would like to know how to set one up then you can download instructions from here. Setting up a Second Life avatar

Related links:

• Coffee with Gavin Dudeney
• Filming in Second Life 1
• Teaching Speaking in Second Life
• More Second Life Tutorials
• Building in Second Life
• Lip Sync for Second Life
• Materials design for Virtual Worlds
• Teaching English in Second Life
• Second Life Teacher Training Videos

Best

Nik Peachey

Multimedia Business Simulation

I've just been playing with JA Titan which is a marvelous multimedia business simulation that is great for higher level business English students or other business students.

It's a kind of variation on the Lemonade Stand game, but with lots more bells and whistles.

You get audio reports from your staff, who you can hire and fire, with tips and advice that you can either take or ignore. You can also listen to news reports and check out report data. Your staff will also help you with some analysis of the data.

You are competing against other companies (These can be controlled by real people or in practice mode against the computer). When you are ready, you submit you business plan for the quarter and then find out how your company did against the market.


You can then go back to your staff and listen to their opinions on what you should change. You can adjust prices of your product as well as things like the amount you spend on marketing and R&D. You can play for up to 15 quarters.

The level of the language is quite high, but the audio is backed up with text bubbles and for a reasonably good intermediate class of business English students it should be vocabulary rich and challenging, but not beyond them.

Students do need to register and will need to submit an email address, but it is free, doesn't require any downloads or software, will run in most browsers and was built for educational purposes, so it should be pretty safe for teenage students too.

Hope you enjoy this.

Related links:

• Playing the Stock Market
• Advertisement Project
• Using 'How to' videos
• Create an Online CV in English

Best

Nik Peachey

Creating a Nation

Back in my classroom days I used to play a simulation game which my students always enjoyed. They were given a budget and country to run and they had to work in groups to decide how they would spend the budget to protect and develop their country.

Cyber Nations seems to have taken that game one step further and created an online simulation which students can play over a period of time. Actually 'one step further' is a bit of an understatement, as once players have created their nation and started to develop it and decide on the budget, taxes and governmental policies etc. they are then launched into competition with other nations that other players have created.

They have the chance to develop alliances, form trade partnerships and even attack or aid other countries.

This is a wonderful way to get students talking, reading, thinking and experimenting. You could either get students to form nations in small groups, alone, or you could have a class nation which you ruled democratically as a class project making new decisions each class.

The site is free, but it does require a password to register and activate your account.

Hope you enjoy this and find the time to get your students playing it.

Related links:

• Educational Games That Really Are Fun
• Online Water Conservation Game
• Wonderland Virtual World and MMORPG
• Google's Lively Competitor with Second Life?
• 3B Village 3D browser
• Eco City Game

Best

Nik Peachey

Listening Dictation Puzzles fo EFL ESL

I've just been playing with yet another beta site Audio Puzzler. The site has a small but growing collection of novel dictation puzzles. The audio files are displayed as small balloons which the user clicks on. They then hear the text and type in the words. Once they have done this they have to drag the text into the correct order.
This is a nice variation on the standard dictation activity , because it demands that students not only recognise the words, but can make sense of the text.

Audio Puzzler is part of a research project at the Georgia Institute of Technology and they are keen to receive feedback from anyone who tries the puzzles.

Let's hope this keeps developing as it looks like a really useful tool to help EFL ESL students develop their listening abilities.

Hope you enjoy this.

Related links:

• Dictation goes Web 2.0
• Subtitling your video clips
• Transcribed Videos for EFL ESL
  
• Soundscapes from SoundTransit
• Text to Speech for EFL ESL Materials

Best

Nik Peachey

A Virtual World for Teens

New 3D virtual worlds seem to be appearing almost everyday at the moment and here's another one. It's called Hangout and is still in private beta at the moment, so if you want to have a look around you'll need to apply for an invitation.

This one claims to be designed for teens and if you watch the video on the homepage, it does look as though it will appeal to that age group.

It looks like each person will be able to have their own room which they will customise. The graphics look nice and there's a good level of customisation of the various rooms. They are boasting both voice and text chat and the ability to create audio playlists and videos in the rooms.

It doesn't say yet if it will be free, but there is mention of credit card payments on the terms of use, though this might not be for membership.

The terms of use also say that user between 13 and 17 need to get their parents approval to register, so hopefully they are taking security seriously.

Anyway, this could be one to watch if you're looking for an alternative to Second Life.

Related links:

• Photo Assignments for EFL ESL Students in Second Life
• Educational Games That Really Are Fun
• Online Water Conservation Game
• Wonderland Virtual World and MMORPG
• Google's Lively Competitor with Second Life?
• 3B Village 3D browser
• Machinima with Moviestorm
• Looking at There.com
• Materials design for Virtual Worlds
• Immersive Image Environments
• Teaching Speaking in Second Life
• Creating multimedia stories

Best

Nik Peachey

Educational Games That Really Are Fun

It's often been a criticism of many attempts to make MMORPG computer games educational, that when that happens the fun goes. I have to say that it is often the case, but I think Power Up is an exception.

Power up is an educational computer game based around the concept of helping students to understand the need for clean energy. It takes the scenario of a planet ( set in the future) which needs rescuing.
The game looks and feels convincing and has some nice collaborative game play thrown in with some blasting of alien beasts. Students can play it alone or in multi-player mode. They are assigned missions that they have to complete and there is even use of some text to speech.

There are ready made lesson plans for teachers as well as a section for parents with advice on child safety.

The game is free, but you will have to download the software (200Mb!) which takes about 40Mins on a good broadband connection (and lots longer on a bad one)

It's great that the quality of these games is improving so much. This would be a really motivating game for students to play to learn more about clean energy and also good for intermediate + EFL ESL students as they would need to work at understanding the instructions to progress through the game. Also great to base a CLIL lesson around.

Definitely a serious game to be taken seriously. Hope you enjoy it.

Related links:

• Online Water Conservation Game
• Wonderland Virtual World and MMORPG
• Google's Lively Competitor with Second Life?
• 3B Village 3D browser
• Machinima with Moviestorm
• Looking at There.com
• Materials design for Virtual Worlds
• Immersive Image Environments
• Teaching Speaking in Second Life
• Creating multimedia stories
• Encyclopedia of Earth
• Eco City Game
• The Encyclopedia of Life

Best

Nik Peachey

Online Water Conservation Game

Educational games seem to be getting much better these days and Catchment Detox is a great example of that. It's an online game which you can play in the browser without any software downloads. It has similar gameplay to something like Zoo Tycoon, with students making budgeting decisions and deciding what areas to develop each year for 50 years.


Students have to manage a catchment area, protect the environment, develop the agricultural resources and balance this against conserving water and water quality.

There's a good video demo here showing how it's done: How to play



I had a go at this game and was fascinated. The language level is quite high, so non native speakers of English would need to be of a good level to cope without a lot of support. It would be a great way of developing their environment related vocabulary though.

It's great to see educational games are really being taken seriously in Australia. This is a great example of game that can really make students think, but still keep them motivated.

Related links:

• Wonderland Virtual World and MMORPG
• Google's Lively Competitor with Second Life?
• 3B Village 3D browser
• Machinima with Moviestorm
• Looking at There.com
• Materials design for Virtual Worlds
• Immersive Image Environments
• Teaching Speaking in Second Life
• Creating multimedia stories

Best

Nik Peachey