Digital Play

I am very happy to see the publication of my first book, Digital Play: Computer games and language aims (Delta Publishing) (co-written with Kyle Mawer) and thought I’d use this page here to document how it came about.

As I wrote in the introduction to Digital Play, I have played computer games since I was a teenager, and a couple of years after I became a teacher I saw how computer game could motivate learners while playing a PlayStation game at a summer school in the UK.

Since being a teacher then, I have been interested in the potential of using computer games for language learning, but hadn’t really tried doing anything about it until around 2005-6, which is when  I started trying to use a number of games with my students in class to see if it would motivate them to learn.

I soon discovered that a colleague of mine, Kyle Mawer, was also interested in using computer games with students, and we started to share ideas. At this time, I also proposed the British Council should start a project in the virtual world of Second Life, the educational potential of which was just starting to get noticed. This was accepted and we began working what was to become LearnEnglish Second Life for Teens, which involved  us in designing language learning quests (essentially simple text and audio games) for the teen visitors to our island in this virtual world.

Our first presentation on ‘Computer Games and Language Learners: From Space Invaders to Second Life‘ was at the APAC convention in Barcelona, Spain, in February, 2007.

Kyle and I then gave the same presentation  together at the 41st Annual IATEFL conference in 2007 in Aberdeen, and also demonstrated the beginnings of our Second Life project (documented here and here)  on the British Council stand, which attracted significant attention. After seeing this, shortly afterwards, both the Instituto Cervantes and the Goethe Institut decided to open a space in Second Life.

Around this time, I set up a blog (game-efl) and Kyle set up a wiki to collect lesson plans and other information about language learning and computer games, and then in February-March 2007, I co-moderated (with Nick Noakes and Rita Zeinstejer) a 6-week workshop on Digital Gaming and Language Learning as part of TESOL’s Electronic Village Online

In May, 2007, Kyle and I presented our ideas again at the Webheads in Action Online Convergence (18th-21st May) .

Early in 2008, we were invited by Vance Stevens to write an article for the TESL-EJ‘s ‘On the Internet’ section, which resulted in Language Learners and Computer Games: From Space Invaders to Second Life (PDF) being published in March, 2008.

In February 2009, Kyle and I launched the Digital Games, Teaching and Language Learning (DG-TALL) podcast , more for ourselves than anything else. We recorded nine episodes, winding the experiment up in the summer, when the idea of starting the Digital Play blog, and writing the book became a reality.

Digital Play (the blog) was launched in June 2009, although it didn’t really get going until September, and has been going strong ever since.

After talking to a few trusted friends about the idea of writing a book, Lindsay Clandfield suggested presenting a proposal to Delta Publishing (in fact the title of the book was suggested by Lindsay) and after writing a proposal, we gave a presentation about the project in Barcelona on 30th July. We walked them through a number of different activities and talked about why we thought it would make a good book.

Delta were interested and told us to go away and write 100 activities or so. so, we spent much of the summer, and then the Autumn writing these activities.

In 2010

In October, I presented ‘Game to Learn‘ at the International House Barcelona Annual ELT Conference in February, and  ’Digital Play – Escape the Room!‘ at the Virtual Round Table online conference in October.

2011

Dividing up the book into parts, I spent much of  2011 writing Part A of the book, while Kyle concentrated on Part C. The Part B activities were sent to me for editing, duly returned and then came back again for re-editing! All-in-all, I was impressed with the diligence and skill of our editor Mike Burghall, as he helped shape our book into something a lot more special than it otherwise would have been. I know that I have benefitted enormously as a writer from his constant phone calls and careful observations about the text.

Because of all the required changes, it became apparent that the book would not be ready for the intended launch at the IATEFL conference in April 2011, but that did not stop both of us from presenting our Digital-Play related ideas. Kyle’s presentation was and I spoke about gamification and other ideas for using digital games with learners in ‘Language Learning Through Digital Play‘. The launch of the book was announced with a Buzzword Bingo competition and we talked to lots of people about its forthcoming publication.

While finishing off the book, we were asked to be guest bloggers on the Delta Development blog, in preparation for publication. After an introductory article (Why it’s Digital Playtime in ELT), I published ‘Gamification and ELT‘ (April, 2011). We’ll be continuing to write here in the near future too.

Finally, the last edits were made to the text, and the book was sent to the printers. It was difficult to say goodbye to it, but equally a relief that we had come to the end of the writing and editing journey.

Since then, we’ve published our first article about the book, in the shape of a ‘Coffee withKyle and Graham’ interview called ‘All Work and No Play?‘ for iT’s for Teachers magazine.

I’m now waiting for my copy of the book to arrive, and looking forward to seeing how well it is received in the language teaching world.

In September, ‘Digital Play for the Digital Generation’ will be the featured article in the magazine English Teaching Professional , and I’ll be doing a number of workshops about digital gaming in the Autumn, at conferences, including IATEFL Poland, IATEFL Hungary and the London Language Show.

I’m excited to find out what happens next. In particular, I wonder if we’ll see an increase in the number of language teachers turning to digital play with their learners. I certainly hope so.

- Graham Stanley, August, 2011 -