ESL etc.

I was recently asked for suggestions for materials that could be used with younger learners. Here are a few of my favorites. Facing the Future has a collection of activity-based, global issues lesson plans for students of all ages. In addition to the great stuff they offer for sale, they have a ton of materials [...]

[Read more →]

Virtual Forest Challenge is a video game from Scholastic that takes students through a variety of daily life situations and asks them to make environmentally responsible choices. It doesn’t take that long to play through, and it’s got a good variety of daily behaviors for students to think about. There are also some teaching materials, [...]

[Read more →]

Larry Ferlazzo recently posted a brief summary of a variety of cause-related online games. I’ve posted about free rice and free poverty before, but a bunch of the other ones are new to me. I’m not sure how reliable the claims of charitable donations from the various sites are, but they are worth checking out.

[Read more →]

I just came across a Flash-based game that simulates what it’s like to be a Peace Corps volunteer. I haven’t played it a great deal, but it seems like a decent game for language learners. You start out in a village, trying to solve a problem with their water supply. The bulk of the game [...]

[Read more →]

Low Impact Living just profiled several environmentally-themed video games, some of which look like they would be good to use with language learners. In Climate Challenge, the player is president of the European Union, and the goal is to balance green policy with keeping the populace happy. Ayiti: The Cost of Life gives students the [...]

[Read more →]

I first mentioned FreeRice last year. In brief, it was a website that raised money via advertising to make donations of rice while visitors to the site went through a vocabulary quiz. Now, they have added quizzes on a variety of other subjects, including grammar, art, geography and chemistry. They have also doubled their donation [...]

[Read more →]

FreePoverty is a new site similar to FreeRice. Students go through a geography quiz, with correct answers raising money for water donations to developing countries. Currently, I haven’t seen any third party validation of the site, so I’m not sure if it is legit or not. The quiz is pretty fun, though. They give you [...]

[Read more →]

My interest in videogames as tools for teaching global issues has been waning a bit, but I just saw Sim Sweatshop, a game that attempts to let players experience life in a sneaker sweatshop. Throughout the game, the player is presented with options and situations via pop-up windows. These require reading, and refer to a [...]

[Read more →]

A while back, I posted a bit about Japanese whale “research” that results in the slaughter and consumption of large numbers of whales. Harpooned is a new videogame simulating this. You play the part of a whaler and try to kill as many whales as possible, while avoiding the legal fees associated with injuring protesters. [...]

[Read more →]

Disaster Watch is a another video game (like Stop Disasters) that deals with natural disaster preparedness. There is a decent amount of reading in the game, particularly in the first level, where the player tries to collect clues about a coming disaster. Level two and three are basically just arcade games, at least in the [...]

[Read more →]