Day 16: Games R us

If you could have one superpower to use in the classroom, what would it be and how would it help?


     Seriously? Who comes up with these questions? Just teaching three 120 minute blocks in a row and doing cafeteria duty right after requires superpowers. But alright, I committed to writing this reflection blog, so I am going to have to come up with something.
     I would like the superpower to design a game that would make language learning exciting and fun for everyone. Fun is what is expected by a lot of students nowadays. They come to school to be entertained and socialize. Hard work is at best a side-effect they have to live with. I do my best to create opportunities for all of them to enjoy learning, but unfortunately a lot of language acquisition will not happen by itself. It requires a tedious amount of repetition. Students like repetition, just look at most console games, only not when they have to do it for school. So I wish I could develop a game like Minecraft that is so much fun they wouldn't stop playing, only instead of building structures they would build language structures.
     The power of games is amazing and the influence they have over teenagers cannot be ignored. This idea has held me in its grip for a while now. World of language craft, League of French, Grand Theft Espanol or Germancraft, why not? I wish I had the abilities that would make it possible for me to develop this idea further, that I could code and understand the way in which these things work.
     There's just one caveat. Wouldn't the game loose all its attraction from the moment it was part of school work? We may find out in the future, since I am sure I am certainly not the only one who has ideas like this one and maybe some day a team of game developers will take on the challenge. And who knows? Learning may be all fun and games one day.

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