In episode 96, Meghan McGinley interviews Jonathon Reinhardt about the relationship between learning and games, specifically the practical and theoretical connection between language learning and digital games.
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BONUS RESOURCES: Find the transcript for this episode here. Please print off this Episode Guide 96 to use as a resource as you listen!
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Show Notes
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Meghan K. McGinley is a doctoral student in the Department of French and Italian at Vanderbilt University. Meghan’s dissertation project examines how notions of game and play manifest themselves spatially and politically in literature and film during in France and Italy after WWII. She teaches French to beginning undergraduate students ranging from Freshmen to Seniors. You can reach Meghan on Twitter @MeghanKMcGinley, by email, or on her website.
Dr. Jonathon Reinhardt is Associate Professor of English Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition and Teaching / The University of Arizona. Jon teaches courses for English undergraduate, MATESL graduate, and SLAT PhD graduate students, primarily focused on teaching languages with technology, sociolinguistics, and teaching English as a foreign language. His research interests lie in the relationship between technological change and the theory and practice of technology-enhanced second and foreign language pedagogy, especially with emergent technologies like social media and digital gaming. He sits on the editorial boards of CALICO Journal and Language Learning and Technology, for which he serves also as Book Review Editor. He is serving as Vice-President of the Computer Assisted Language Instructional Consortium (CALICO) in 2018-2019 and will be President the following academic year. You can reach out to Jon on his website.
Resources related to this episode…
… Roger Caillois – Man, Play and Games (1961) / Les jeux et les hommes (1958)
… Guy Cook – Language Play, Language Learning (2000)
… Richard Bartle – MMOs from the Inside Out: The History, Design, Fun, and Art of Massively-multiplayer Online Role-playing Games (2015)
… Yuko Goto Butler – UPenn – Motivational elements of digital instructional games: A study of young L2 learners’ game designs. Language Teaching Research, 1-16. Available from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1362168816683560
– Ernest Cline – Ready Player One (2011)
Previous podcast episodes related to this episode…
… You might have heard Jon mention that he played World of Warcraft with Julie Sykes, who was our guest for episode 79!
…If you are interested in other applications of digital technology and discussion of virtual reality, check out episode Episode 30: Fear of Failure, Twitter, and Virtual Reality with Patrick Murphy
I have seen Meghan do a presentation on game and it is interesting how she connect SLA and digital games in this episode. Worth listening to
Thank you for featuring my interview with Professor Reinhardt! Among some of the remaining questions I have are: what are some best practices for implementing digital games in the L2 classroom? Is it best to start with commercial off-the-shelf games? How do instructors who do not teach English as a foreign language find digital game resources as English is the dominant language in which these games are made?