Now Danish Mingoville players can enjoy the national World Cup outfit for their Mingoville avatar. Hopefully more to come

It’s so beautiful on the country side and it’s so healthy for the kids to get a lot of fresh air. It’s time to get out of the city and into the Nature. This week, we release two new activities in Mingoville Virtual World. The first activity is a new Nature map where the kids learn English while playing with Esmeralda and exploring the Nature. The other English activity is a new educational game that takes the kids fishing for English words. It’s all about fun English learning.

Explore Nature and Learn the English Words
On Mingoville’s new map Nature, the kids can now enjoy the fresh air out in the nature together with Esmeralda. Esmeralda is Bob and Candy’s aunt in Mingoville. Esmeralda will take the kids on a tour around Nature. The activity is developed to let the kids practice the vocabulary learned in Mission 4 in Mingoville School; Nature and Season.

Esmeralda will ask the students to go and find different words that relate to Nature and Seasons – that could be fire camp, flowers, clouds, skies, trees, etc. If the students are good, they will get a reward for their effort. It’s kind of a treasure hunt as they have to find their reward in the end by guessing the hint from Esmeralda.

The English exercise is based on both listening to the word as well as recognizing the words in order to be able to find them. We recommend that the students work with the English exercises of Mission 4 in Mingoville School prior to exploring Nature in Mingoville Virtual World.

Go Fishing and Do Some Spelling

In Nature, the kids can also learn English going on a fishing trip. When fishing on the Mingo Lake, the students have to catch the fish in the water with their fishing rod. For every fish they catch, they earn points. However, some fish have a letter in the stomach. If the kids can spell the word illustrated in the upper left corner by catching the fish with the right letter, they get bonus points. If they catch other things like boots, they lose points.

The game is on time and the student has to reach the target – it means, they have to reach the goal set within the time frame which is typically between 60-120 seconds.

The Fishing game has several levels. In the first level, the kid can get around with “just” catching fish to reach the target. However in level two or level three, they cannot reach the target without catching in the bonus – they need to spell the word to go to the next level. The higher the level, the tougher it gets.

All words to be spelled are from Mission 4 in Mingoville School; Nature and Seasons. If the kids cannot spell the words, we recommend they complete activity 1-8 in Mission 4.

We hope you have a lot of fun – if there is something you don’t understand or have suggestion on things we need to do, feel free to comment

This is really exiting for Us. We are always looking for new platforms to reach our audience. With more and more smartphones coming out, our focus has for a long time been on the Android OS.

As we are participating in the Adobe Air for Android pre-release program, we have been able to access the AIR SDK and the Android Emulator.

We now have the first Mingoville game running on the HTC Hero with Android 2.1. The game has been developed in Flash.

To see the live demonstration please see this YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/user/MingovilleUniverse

As always we encourage you to create a Mingoville account for your kids so the can start to learn English for free now.

We are very busy at the moment. Besides working on a new map and a new educational game for Mingoville Virtual World – which will be launched mid April – we have developed this exciting English game for the Smartboard – your students will love it!

It’s an English Word Battle where 2-4 students battle directly on the interactive whiteboard.

Access the game here

The Game
It goes like this: The students choose a color and the battle can begin. In the box an English word appears and the students have to touch the picture it belongs to.

When the kids answer correctly, the rocket will move.  If one of the players give a wrong answer five times, the rocket crashes into the water and he or she is out of the game. The one to reach the line of the air balloon first is the winner.

All words in the games are the words taught in Mingoville.  This Word Battle is meant to be used as a supplement to Mingoville. It’s a fun and engaging English exercise to do in class on the smart board. It’s fun for those playing and fun for those watching and cheering. The students will train their English vocabulary and reading skills.

The game is developed for students with a basic knowledge of English as it’s based on word recognition. It’s not suitable for beginners as they have to know the words.

Access the game here – it’s free

In my last blog post, I wrote about our focus on developing educational games to mobile phones. I wrote about the huge potential we see in the mobile phone as a learning device in school and at home. Now we have developed the first two iPhone applications that teaches kids English by playing English Sudoku and Word Search on the iPhone.

Kids’ Sudoku is the same as we have in Mingoville Virtual World – the kids have to find the right word by listening to the words and pick the one missing in the grid. The English words are repeated throughout the game and in the end of the game, it summons which English words the kid has learned. The repetition of words improves the kids English vocabulary. The English Sudoko for kids combines text, sounds and images for more fun English learning. There are different levels and many different games in the same game. Read the blog about the English Sudoku game in Mingoville and how it works here. Read more and download Kids’ Sudoku for the iPhone here.

Kids’ Word Search is also inspired by the Word Search we have in Mingoville Virtual World. In this game, the kids have to find the word pictured to the right in the grid horisontally, vertically or diagonally. The game is an exercise in spelling and recognizing words. This game also combines text, sounds and images which enhances the kids’ ability to remember the English words. It is played on time. The game has many levels each level with it’s own set of words to be learned. There are 68 English words which are chosen randomly for each game.

To download the two games, go to the Education category in the App Store and search for Mingoville Education.

We are very aware that most kids do not have an iPhone or an iPod Touch, however as it is right now iTunes is by far the easiest way to download mobile applications and it has the largest application store which is why we decided to start there. In the future, we will develop English games for other mobile phones as well so everybody gets a chance to learn English on the mobile phone. For now, parent, here is your opportunity – go download the Mingoville Kids Sudoku and the Mingoville Kids Word Search and let your kid learn English on the mobile phone. It only costs $1.

On Monday, Stephan gave an interview to Edukwest about our mobile focus and the trends he saw while attending the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona a couple of weeks ago. You can see and listen to the interview below.

Have fun with the new games for the mobile phone – they are excellent for entertaining the kids on the go as well as in class.

Lots of interesting projects are under development at Mingoville at the moment. I think it is about time to give you a small update. One of the projects we will be spending a lot of time on the next 6 months is educational mobile games. We are certain that mobile learning will be a large part of our future. Mobile phones are spreading faster than laptops among our young English learners around the world. Mobile phone penetration in Tanzania and Kenya to mention a few countries is estimated to hit 100% by the end of 2013.

We have set a goal to integrate mobile educational games into all our web-based learning universes. Both media have their strengths and weaknesses for educational purposes. The main challenges for our web programs are the lack of adequate IT infrastructure both at schools and in many less developed countries. By developing mobile games, we extend the availability of free English for kids and we give the teachers and the kids an opportunity to learn fun English even though they do not have a laptop, if the WIFI is down or if broadband is not available.

However, most of the English mobile games that we have on the drawing board will be 100% integrated with the Virtual World to give the kids a complete experience of mobility and connectivity – the score on the mobile phone can be submitted to the Virtual World and any Mingoville item gained by learning on the mobile phone will be available in the Virtual World as well. It will always be possible to use the English mobile games independently of Mingoville Virtual World.

For now, our focus is on developing our math universes for the mobile phones. Our math programs follow the Danish math curriculum for all school kids – both in primary and secondary school – which makes the programs very suitable for a national project this size. The Mobile Math Library will contain more than 100 educational math games for the mobile phone. It will be distributed nationally to all Danish kids free of charge. The goal is to have all Danish schools to use the free mobile math library in class as a supplement to the traditional math tuition. It’s going to be free to download all the games to the mobile phone either through the mobile web or by texting – the data traffic is sponsored by the large Danish teleoperators. Denmark is our test market – when everything runs smoothly here, we will take the project abroad.

The knowledge we gain from the project will also be used to develop more English mobile games that allow the kids to immerse themselves into the language through their mobile phone. We are even looking into how a mobile barcode can be integrated into classroom activities. We have some great ideas that we will share with you later.

A while ago we launched the Mingoville English Sudoku in Mingoville Virtual World. We have developed the Sudoku English game for the mobile phone as well. Please notice that it is a beta version and it only runs on newer mobile phones. Go to www.mingoville.com – if you are on your computer you can either download the game by using bluetooth or cable (save the link, right click on the file and send it by bluetooth to your mobile phone). If you have web access on your mobile phone you can download the English game directly from www.mob.mingoville.com. Tip: You can share the game with your students by using the bluetooth in your mobile phone. It’s a great way of practicing English vocabulary and listening skills. To read more about how you play the game and the learning principles behind click here

We expect more English mobile games will be available in second half of 2010. All good ideas on how to integrate the mobile phone into the classroom are welcome – we are always open for suggestions.