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Not only is it necessary these days to bring technology into classrooms, to suit teaching to the actual needs and the skills learners bring from the 'real world', but it is of paramount importance to equip their teachers with the tools to mediate successfully in the process of acquiring knowledge and developing competences in a changing educational environment. Drawing on the experience gathered while designing and running a teacher training course for teachers of modern foreign languages in their preparation to run the Tower of Babel Alternate Reality Game (ARG) (a specially developed game to suit the contemporary needs of motivating students to learn and use more than one foreign language) the authors shall concentrate on the why's and how's of helping teachers cross the boundary between the classrooms they are familiar and comfortable with and an e-learning environment. They will reflect on the different stages that teachers undergo in this process using their observations as well the gathered quantitative data paying particular attention to teachers' reactions and recommendations. They will also focus on drawing some conclusions about the possibilities and requirements that on-line teaching and learning pose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are several purposes that Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) can be used for and facilitating plurilingualism is definitely one of them. In the age of ICT-based communication, Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), interactive narratives, often involving multiple media and game elements used to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions (Connolly et al, 2008), are known in non-educational settings but can serve as a teaching and learning tool that can contribute to activating the use of modern foreign languages in authentic situations, something that classroom teaching lacks. This paper aims to examine various educational and social aspects of games-based learning with a special focus on multi-channel communication between speakers and learners of different European languages. In this paper, we explore further the use of web-based foreign language learning and the questions that it poses. What has to be done so that ARGs can achieve their educational objectives? How can we best use their potential as a powerful motivator for acquiring more than one foreign language? With the context of the Tower of Babel ARG developed as part of the EU Comenius project, ARGuing for multilingual motivation in Web 2.0, this paper presents an analysis of the opportunities that an ARG provides, but it also discusses the issues that educators and game developers should be aware of and cater for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To use the contemporary catch-phrase, in post-method times it is either an anachronism or arrogance to propose any one language-teaching method. Unlike their theoretical colleagues, teachers have long been eclectic in their approach and sceptical of blanket methods. Conversely, although theorists may of late be busy be deconstructing pedagogic philosophies, teachers have always retained a healthy respect for anything that works, particularly that which is empirically proven. For that reason, in this paper we will consider the benefits of ARGs, (Alternate Reality Games) to teaching method, or, indeed, ARGs as a teaching method in themselves. Among other ARGs cited, we make particular reference to the Tower of Babel, a game developed by the ARGuing project, innovative in that it has been developed to incorporate Web 2.0 technologies to learning tasks, and designed not just by experts in games but also by educators for educational ends. As we discuss, results from the final pilot demonstrate not just that ARGs work, but that they work tremendously well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there are some teachers who are dubious about the benefits of gaming in education, language teachers make great use of simulation/gaming methodologies and there are many supporting textbooks. While many of the simulations/games used are non-computer based, during recent years the computer game has become an important development in popular culture. During the same period there has been an appreciation that computer games can play a significant role in education. In this paper, we explore the use of one particular type of computer game called an Alternate Reality Game (ARG), a form of interactive narrative, often involving multiple media and game elements. We have developed an ARG to motivate secondary school students to learn a modern foreign language and have piloted this game across Europe in 2009. This paper presents a framework for evaluating games-based learning and provides both a quantitative and qualitative analysis of student performance in the pilot using this framework. The paper reflects on this analysis and provides directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have seen a significant change in education in recent years with the emergence of online provision, or eLearning, with its flexibility through both time and location independence. We are starting to see further significant change in education with the emergence of new, participatory technologies of information access, knowledge exchange, and content production, associated with the Internet and new media technologies, frequently described as social software or Web 2.0. One particular technology that has been explored in a noneducational content is the Alternate Reality Game (ARG), a form of interactive narrative, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions. As ARGs are inherently collaborative in nature they have the potential to be a useful vehicle for collaborative activities in an educational context. In this paper, we discuss the development of an Alternate Reality Game for supporting the teaching of modern foreign languages from a technical perspective and how we adapted the open-source Learning Management System, moodle, into a multilingual, collaborative gaming environment. We present the findings of a pilot of the ARG that was carried out in April 2009 and provide suggestions for how this platform could be developed further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]