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I wanted to share a blog entry about using the Nintendo DS in school as a learning tool. I chose this because I have already had experience with this gaming device in an educational setting. At the Lushootseed language camp I was at this summer, the tribe had purchased about a dozen nintendo ds and created and installed a few different programs for learning and practicing Lushootseed. I see the value of the tool for language learning, yet in my experience it was not so successful. The kids of course did not want to do the language learning programs and very quickly figured out how to play other games and play with sounds and things. They were so distracted by the device that rarely did they complete and language learning tasks. Part of this was the rather informal non-classroom context (it might work well in a classroom setting) and it was almost impossible to force each child to use the programs. There was some success when the children were engaged in a collaborative game where the teacher would say a word in Lushootseed and the kids would have to write it on the ds. The first person to write it correctly got a point. They enjoyed this and it worked somewhat ok because everyone was engaged and they were competing, unlike all the other "games" which were individual and the kids had no motivation to do them. What do you think about using an individual gaming device such as this for language learning?

Uaaaa very interesting to see that you can use a game can be transformed and used for another purpose than just entertaining the children. I´ve been always against the dependence of the children or young people toward these kind of games. It´s good to see how someone can integrate the game with education´s aim. Now days, it´s important to find different ways and tools to adapt the education with the new changes happening around us.

Some of you might have already discovered this link, concerning a school which bases it's whole curriculum on videogames, on our multi-LEARN unveil group or through Martin aka. James Kirks' profile - if not: http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/09/15/magazine/1248069030957/games-theory.html?scp=1&sq=Video+game+school+design&st=cse In contrast to this article, they use the videogames as a holistic and transdisciplinary approach to teach or rather convey all the branches through integrating them in the development - as they play games like Little Big Planet, in which they have to create worlds through basic designing/programming… and in order to achieve the assigned goals, they have to develop specific skills/competences, while making strategic use of their knowledge… learning mathematics, physics, chemistry, languages etc literally, whilst playing! So even though I think it's nice to use a DS during class, like in this rticle - if it's only to train your brain with computation problems or preparing for SAT scores, I think that's sth that would rather be appropriate for the home use, as training or fun homeworks… but in order to take it to the next level, they should rather follow the example of this school in the US and not just use technology just for the sake of using it?!

LLT is an international journal (published exclusiveley on the web) with an editorial board of international scholars in the fields of second language acquisition and computer-assisted language learning. LLT publishes articles that report on original research or present an original framework that links second language acquisition theory, previous research, and language learning, teaching, and testing practices that utilize technology. It aims at reaching a broad audience in a timely manner, providing a multimedia format which can more fully illustrate the technologies under discussion, as well as providing hypermedia links to related background information. It is published three times per year and it was ranked in the top 20 Education Journals. Important: Besides the very interesting articles, it also contains a section of general guidelines for both quantitative and qualitative research!

This article shows how the language learning process is integrated with the technology. Different social media tools create different interactive possibilities to improve the language skills of the students. This article emphasises the use of voicethread as a tool of Web 2.0 that combine different methods in itself that allows students to use their creativity and skills. I have already use voice thread the last year during the class of Telecolloboration. It´s very interesting for the ones that didn´t take this class and also for others that want to integrate different social media tools into education.

Current methods for controlling one's avatar in a virtual environment interacting with intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) are unnatural, typically requiring a complex set of keyboard commands for controlling your avatar, and dialog menus for interacting with IVAs. Recent advances in markerless body and motion tracking, speech and gesture recognition technologies, coupled with intelligent agent/behavior modeling and speech synthesis technologies, now make it possible to naturally control one's avatar through the movement of one's body and to interact with IVAs through speech and gesture. These capabilities are now just beginning to emerge in the arena of computer gaming, and offer great promise for military training. In this paper we describe our recent work integrating motion capture, gesture recognition, speech recognition, natural language understanding, and intelligent agent/behavior modeling technologies to produce more natural mechanisms for avatar control as well as IVAs that are able to understand relatively unconstrained speech and recognize human movement and gesture. We illustrate these capabilities within the domain of roadside security checkpoint training, where trainees are able to gesture (e.g., wave forward, stop, point to a location) and speak to IVAs (drivers and passengers) in the scene.

This shall be one of our main inspiration within the framework of our experiment for LEARNING WITH MEDIA, during which we performed a session of "Start the Party" for "Playstation Move" on the Playstation 3, in comparison to our previous experiment with "Wii Sports"…

Singing Bob Marley or The Ramones... It does not matter! Karaoke can help students developing their capacities. :) This article brings up a very interesting issue: using karaoke as a learning tool for Special Education Students and English Language Learners. A short quotation to increase your curiosity about the article: "SSHH! YOU CAN'T SING IN THE LIBRARY I first had the idea of introducing karaoke into my middle school library program after going to a local club on karaoke Night. People got up and seemed to become someone else-more confident-regardless of their ability to sing. I got up my courage to try it and the same thing happened to me. I chose Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive," and not only did I survive, I felt on top of the world!" It is very interesting, however not new to us (us, the ones who couldn't participate in the symposium in Munich...) because Gudrun had a similar idea for our session... :)