Xbox Live & MFL
18 08 2006Last week I decided to pay the £40 subscription for Xbox Live, which allows me to play multiplayer games across the net against other Xbox 360 owners. It is a very social and highly collaborative activity, definitely what game playing is all about.
This afternoon I played UNO with 2 chaps from Germany and I thought what a great opportunity to listen and talk to people who speak German to develop your own German. What do you reckon Joe or Ewan, something we could do something about?
Update: Tonight, again while playing UNO, I was playing against a couple of French speakers who were telling each other what colours to play as they didn’t think the 2 English speakers would understand them. How cool it would have been to have been able to respond to them, I guess I was lucky I knew the French for red, blue, yellow and green so I was able to change the colour to stop them winning 
Would you class their actions as unsportsmanlike or just using their initiative?
Unsportsmanship to learn a langauge - sounds jolly good to me. What a great night!
Using the internet to allow language learners to collaborate with each other anywhere in the world must be very motivating. I’ve found a number of websites recently which are designed to allow collaboration to take place.
I’m delighted now that I’ve finally been able to register for Writely and have a look at it. It seems excellent. There seems some concern however, that it is another site which has been taken over by Google, but from my perspective as a teacher, I’m just glad that means it should definitely work when I use it in class.
Best wishes
Joe
Integrating ICT into the MFL classroom - www.joedale.typepad.com
What’s the point of learning a foreign language? Obviously, it’s so that people can communicate with one another. You’ve found a way to learn a language that has a very substantive connection to reality. If we were smart we’d develop a system that instead of learning foreign languages in school, in isolation, we’d set up learning communities in which students from foreign nations that speak different languages would have to speak, or write, each others’ languages to communicate with them.
Andrew Pass
http://www.Pass-Ed.com/blogger.html
@Pass: That’s a great idea and it’s the most natural way to learn a language.
Some more thoughts …
http://joedale.typepad.com/integrating_ict_into_the_/2006/08/xbox_brings_lan.html
Best wishes
Joe
Integrating ICT into the MFL classroom - www.joedale.typepad.com