Game of the week #1

Software Evaluation 

Title:
 World’s Worst Pet

Publisher: 
i-Ready

Subject Area:
 English vocabulary.

Summary: The app is a part of a larger, learning program series by the publisher. The learner practices the targeted vocabulary (difficulty levels connected to reading levels) through games where they e.g. put correct words into sentences and link synonyms or antonyms to the given words.

Ease of Use: I guess a child could play these games with minimal help but I do question it, seeing as some of the words are pretty hard and even if you get the definitions, they are pretty long as well (there is an audio button but that only gives you the word itself.).

There are instructions before each game and you can always get the directions again when you’re playing but you have to go through the whole tutorial before you can play again (it’s not long, but it was getting me a bit frustrated). If you need to have a word explained again, you can. There is an exit button, but it’s in the form of a ‘pause’ button so not easily understood.

The mission of each game is to stack or place a word on or next to another one. It sometimes seemed you had to be quite accurate in stacking, for the word not to bounce off, like it was incorrect.

Skill Set: For you to use this app you have to have a pretty good foundation in the English language. I’m not sure that my 14-year-old students back home would be able to work through this without help as second-language students. The levels are by readings levels, not grades, but I do find the words and sentences in the lower levels difficult and I have a hard time placing them with a grade. Maybe the vocabulary is explained better in the other learning programs that come with this application?

The teenagers in the intro also confuse me, as I would think this was aimed at younger kids than teens.

Program Design Features: Simple “yes or no” answers”

Control of Pace
- Yes

Reviews/Help
- Yes

Ability to Backtrack
- No

Levels of Difficulty
- Yes (not easily understandable for an outsider though)

Physical Interface
- ?

Speech Features
- Yes, if you mean audio

Childproof (child reality ready???) - ?

Individual Use
- Yes

Use with Pairs/Small Groups
- Yes

Printer Use
- No

Test/Recordkeeping/Game Save feature - Yes

Add-on Option-Can incorporate user content - No

Scaffolding – Yes

Program Comments: The objective of the software is to teach the ‘uncommon words’, that are though very important when it comes to reading comprehension, e.g. in social science, literature and biology. You choose between 20 games on your level and it doesn't matter in what order you play them. 

As mentioned before this application is a part of a bigger picture so it’s hard to say exactly if it reaches its goals. If it’s using the methods (see a very simplified version in the diagram below) that I believe it does, there should be a text that the student read/listen to, before starting to work with the given vocabulary. That way you're breaking down the text into sentences and words. After finishing three sets of games on your level you're given a ‘Written assignment’ where you're suppose to choose at least 4 words from the vocabulary you've been working on and put it into your text of the given topic. That way you're reconstructing your knowledge, using the words in the context you choose to write about.

There are a few things that distracted me with this game. I would have liked to be able to make the words and the sentence you were working with bigger on the screen. There was a lot of music, which I found too loud. You could turn it off during the games itself, but not in the intro (where it was almost so load you couldn’t hear the narrative)

Problem Solving Skills: This game incorporates:

• ·      Multiple solutions (where there are many words that can be the correct answer)
• ·      Identifying relationships (between words)
• ·      Record keeping (if there are new words, you can read definitions)
• ·      Using Trial and Error (you have a few tries if you get it wrong)
• ·      Stimulate imaginative thinking (the written assignment in the end of each set of games, but you can skip that)

Fun Factor: Here we come back to the audience and age group. I found the pet to be a little boring and the games were always the same ones, just with different backgrounds. If it’s for teenagers I see them getting bored as well but it might work better for younger kids (at least for a while). They could have made a better narrative and played with that a little bit in the games in stead of having the animal just escaping what ever situation it came across, without there being a reason why it was there in the first place. Part from the vocabulary getting more difficult the higher you reach, I couldn’t see the game changing at all in terms of the player having gone through multiple levels. They kind of take a Skill and Drill and put it into a nice, colorful package….but it’s still a skill and drill.

Supplementary Materials: Like stated before I would like to use a text with the vocabulary in it before using this application (and maybe that’s part of the big picture I’m not seeing).

Follow-up activities: With younger kids you could do a lot with the ‘pet’. They could make their own etc., write their own narrative about its adventures, and make up new words that this alien pet uses. There are a lot of activities you can do with this kind of vocabulary, away from the computer.