In terms of research, I am really interested in the benefits that technology can have in a French Language learning context.

When working on our group project, I was able to dive into more about what the literature says. It also specifically looked at the benefits of digital badging (which is an area of great interest to me).

A few key aspects that made me choose this article included the context of the research. Firstly, while looking at research articles it is tricky enough to find French Language specific articles. This article, however, conducted its research in Victoria at the University of Victoria. It lacked an elementary context, but the contents of it seemed to be easily translated to the context and Perry (2015), even stated “In regards to education, gamification has seen successful implementation in a range of subject matters, and age groups, from K-12 learners to university level courses.” (p.2310).

I believe that with time and trials that this app Explorez could be effective in elementary grades. Although during the case study only 11 students participated and they were from a first year university French class. The participants described it as “fun”, “useful” “motivating” and “relevant”. Therefore reinforcing that gamification is useful to support French language learning. Some even, shared that the game made it more exciting to learn and helped learning become social and beyond just the walls of the classroom. Something I really liked about this app is that is allows users to be immersed in an environment that then becomes French. In a place where French is not the dominant language, this feature is very beneficial to making learning authentic.

As I dove into understanding this app, I found myself researching it more and trying to download it to try it out. I have emailed the author in hopes to receive an answer to some of my questions. One of my major questions at this time is, the app ARIS (Augmented Reality Interactive Storytelling) that was used to create the game Explorez is no longer available in Canada and therefore wondering what other creation tools exist and if I can access Perry’s work somewhere…. It is quite sad that this game is no longer available and that the work of Perry is no longer accessible, as I see many benefits to this tool .

Here is a video that looks at the app Explorez, more in depth :

Based on Bernadette Perry’s research project.

This makes me start to think about opportunities for my final project. I may be interested in creating a game or an app. I have never done anything like that but I am open to the idea especially when there seems to be a lack thereof. I think many teachers would use it as long as I share training with them to help support the process.

All in all based on various articles I have viewed, it seems that there is an emphasis on motivation in terms of the game based learning and digital badging. A large portion of the articles, tend to focus on vocabulary acquisition, however the Explorez app seemed to have more meaningful learning environments through social interactions with the completion of quests, which I valued. On another note, some articles focused more on the idea of inclusive practices and technology which helped support personalized learning. Therefore, between these articles it looks like there is potential to explore this topic more in depth and I am looking forward to this process.

References

Perry, B. (2015). Gamifying French Language Learning: A Case Study Examining a Quest-based, Augmented Reality Mobile Learning-tool. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 174, 2308–2315. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.892