What Is AGAMA

A lizard! And also an acronym that describes the project on whose websites you are right now.

What are the ingredients?

A is for English (at least in Czech :-) We want to use modern methods in TEFL, we love storytelling, and we think it is an excellent idea to let students do the heavy lifting when it comes to learning a language.

GAM is for gamification. We love games, and we created complex scenarios with various game features for our/your students.

A is for academic? Ambitious? Absolute? We will leave that up to you! The home of the project is Masaryk University in Brno. We are ambitious indeed; we haven’t said our last word in the world of TEFL. How far are we willing to go with our games in TEFL? Until they are absolutely irresistible for you and your students.

We aim at students with a level of English B1 or higher, and we prepare complex group-based simulation games for them. These scenarios will put their problem-solving and communicative skills to test.

Are you ready to become members of a jury or would you rather manage an international company in crisis? Would you dare to govern a plague-stricken town in northern England or become a member of a crew on a ship sent by Her Majesty Queen Victoria to look for the mythical Northwest Passage? It is up to you! There are new scenarios soon to come.

What does it look like? Let us give you an example…

You create groups of let‘s say five students each. The teams will become juries in a complicated criminal case. First of all, they will need to get familiar with the case. They will find testimonies, pieces of evidence, a detective’s notes or newspaper articles on a webpage dedicated to the game. Students might need to organise their thoughts, prepare questions or even create a timeline of the case. Now they are ready to face other jurors.

The jury gets together; they speculate about the guilt of the defendant; they try to examine the case together and look at it from different perspectives. The jurors need to reach a unanimous decision! It will be necessary for your students to agree or disagree with others, present their point and persuade others. A mini web application will guide the jurors through the game, offer them additional pieces of evidence when they are stuck, keep the time and provide a video ending to the case based on their final verdict.

images

Dear English teachers,

Did we catch your attention and do you want to learn more about the games? We tried to prepare everything for you if you decide to use the scenarios in your teaching.

How to do it?

  • Get your students interested! Who wouldn’t like to become Sherlock Holmes or Steve Jobs for a moment, right?!
  • Briefly explain what the activity is about.
  • Give your students a link to the webpage of the game you have chosen (you will find the list of games below). Your students will find all the information they need for the game on the webpage; there are also rules and specific vocabulary used in the game. You can set it as homework or students can prepare for the game at school on their own at their own pace. Every game has an indicator that shows how much preparation time is needed.
  • Get in touch with us, and we will send you access keys for the games. Your students will enter these keys in the “Play” section on the webpage of the game, and the session can start. We recommend entering the key when you have set groups and students have picked roles for their upcoming session.
  • You need one smart device in every group (a mobile phone, tablet or computer) connected to the Internet. It is possible to conduct the games offline as well – you will find all the materials in this section, and you can download them. But why would you cut and distribute cards and keep time when the app can do it for you?
  • The app (it runs in a browser) starts when you enter the access key into the webpage, and it will guide your students through the game. The timer shows how much time your students spend in the individual stages of the game and its colour helps them decide if it is time to move on or not. The games are designed for 90 min sessions (including reflection), but it is possible to pause the game and continue later by entering the code again. But it is much better to do it all in “one take”.
  • What is the role of the teacher during the session? It is up to you. You can become a ghost and listen to your students so you can prepare some feedback for them and focus on some of the tricky pieces of the language they have encountered. You can become a player yourself, or you can be the elder of the group and help your students conduct the session as a chairperson. The amount of autonomy you leave to your students is up to you.
  • What do you want in return? Nothing. It is all for free. Just try the games with your students. The games are packed with authentic language and realia, and they offer challenging and meaningful opportunity to use authentic language within a team of peers.

Materials for Teachers

You can download a package with all the course materials here. You can print out some of the materials for your students so they can have and use them during the lesson (e.g. role cards or pieces of evidence). You will also find all the materials including the background of the games and their algorithms to decide what happens if… (our cookbook) – You can use them if you are offline. There are also activities and ideas for the reflective part of the lesson that follows when your students have finished their scenario.

Download files images
image of author

Ondřej Krahulec

…is an enthusiastic English teacher from Brno who loves role-playing games and who implements this passion of his in his teaching. He has created simulation games suitable for English courses since he started his university studies in Brno. Speaking in modern terms, he is the “founding father” of the Agama project and its “project manager”. Most of all, he is a dreamer who hopes that foreign languages can be taught with love and that our students can enjoy them and engage in meaningful activities at the same time. His favourite past time activity is getting inspiration for his teaching anywhere and everywhere, so it is only fair to offer these ideas back to the community of English teachers.

These people and their creative, language, IT and artistic skills help the project come alive: Monika Krahulcová, Jan Kudláček, Jan Mottl, Ailsa Randall, Marie Stará, Jaroslav Suchý, Jakub Vaniš, Marie Vaňková a Martin Winkler. Thank you very much!

You can contact us on 435189@mail.muni.cz or via our Facebook page.

Web template Themesine | PED MUNI | Agama on Facebook