Ravi Purushotma (’06) and Dan Roy (’07) flew out to San Jose recently for the Game Developers Conference where they presented their work modding the LucasArts adventure game Grim Fandango to teach Spanish. The original game is an undisputed classic in the industry, and its focus on the Mexican Day of the Dead makes it a good choice for teaching Spanish.
They also showed updates of their Sims 2 project, providing students with a modified version The Sims 2 suited for learning a foreign language.
Purushotma and Roy plan to continue conceptualizing the most effective ways of marrying entertaining technology with the best language learning theory to engage students in a new way around language.