This week we launched The Club in Mingoville Virtual World where the kids are the stars. They can go in the Studio to record their song and then play it to their friends from the stage.

This is the second blog post in the series about our virtual English learning games. Last blog was about Quiz talk, if you missed it, read it here. This current blog will give parents and teachers an impression on what Super Star is. How do kids learn English playing SuperStar? SuperStar is located at The Club.

SuperStar is a Social Learning Game
In SuperStar, the student gives a live concert using one of his recorded songs from his “My Book” repertoire or by going in the studio to record a song from the song catalogue. All songs are in English and they all relate to the different mission themes in Mingoville e.g. The Body or My family. The songs wrap up the vocabulary of each mission and set it into a context in the lyric of the songs.

Super Star is based on the content the students generate just as The Quiz Talk. Furthermore, it’s developed around social learning principle as it requires an audience to give a concert. The more people come to your concert, the higher possibility of a loud applause which generates many points. All participants in SuperStar earn points based on their level of participation. The idea of developing a social learning game based on the work the students produce results in a high interaction and thus intensive immersion into the English language because the students are having fun while using the language.

The Game
To play SuperStar, a student needs to record at least one of the 10 sing-a-long songs from the Mingoville karaoke album. The recording of a song can take place either as part of a mission or directly from the Studio in The Club. All songs produced will appear in the student’s “My Book” as part of the portfolio.

The game starts when the student enters the stage and the audience has checked in. The student can either invite his buddies to the concert or other students can drop in. The concert is open to everybody. The higher applause from the audience during the concert, the more funky moves the performer can make on stage and the more points he gains. All participants in the game earn points based on their engagement thus the more you cheer as the audience the more points you gain.

Future Releases
The game in itself is designed to motivate the students to practice vocabulary and a good pronunciation in a fun environment using media which is already very familiar to them. Future development could be the possibility of dressing your flamingo in different wardrobes related to stars, the integration of cell phones to record and upload songs and maybe even some video clips.

Log in and try the game yourself. What do you think? Comments and suggestions are as always welcome

Mingoville Virtual World teaches kids English through fun games. Most kids get it right away. When they see a new game in Mingoville, they explore it and figure out how it works along the way. The more games and interaction, the happier they are and the more they learn. For some grownups though, it may be harder to understand what all these social and virtual games are about.

Some time ago, we promised that we would write in more details about what’s going on in the Mingoville new Virtual World. How do the kids learn English in a social learning community? The following blog posts will provide a good overview of the different learning games inside Mingoville. This first post is about our “Quiz Talk” game that is located in the Café area around the coffee tables in Mingoville Virtual World.

The Quiz Talk is a Social Learning Game
As much of the buzz around virtual worlds is related to the socialization within these communities, we also take advantage of the social possibilities within Mingoville community to make it more fun for the kids to learn English.

According to Gigaom, what makes gaming social is the ability to create and build relationships with friends while playing the game. The Quiz Talk is a social learning game that allows students to develop their social skills as well as their ability to understand English spoken by other people around the world. It is social in the way that it requires two players, and the players have to cooperate and interact to win.

How to Play and What to Learn
The Quiz Talk uses the recorded words in the interactive dictionary of each student and creates a “conversation” between the two students playing the game. They have to guess each other’s words by choosing one out of the three pictures.

The kids have to record at least 5 words in their interactive dictionary to play the Quiz Talk. The recorded words from the dictionary appear at the top bar inside the game. The more words they record and play for their buddies, the more points they gain.

The game: You pick a word and play it for your buddy. Your buddy listens to your word and has 3 pictures to choose from. He or she has to pick the picture that relates to your recorded word. If he picks the right picture, you both gain points. If he picks the wrong picture, none of you get points. The faster he guesses your word, the more points you both get. Instead of competing, the game is based on cooperation in the sense that the students have to put an effort into the correct pronunciation of the words to ease the task of the co-player. The quiz also strengthens the kids’ capability of understanding other accents/dialects. While making new friends, the student practices pronunciation, reading, understanding and spelling. This is what we call social learning.

What Do We Plan for the Future?
Listening to the voice of the “buddy” gives the kid a feeling of getting closer to the co-player, getting to know him better. This social aspect of the game turns the usual virtual buddy, whom you generally don’t really know, into a real friend. The future development of the Quiz Talk will focus on making the conversation even more social and personal. E.g. this could be to turn words into sentences about your family maybe even include the possibility of uploading pictures of your family into your dictionary that will be displayed in the Quiz Talk.

The student will find the English learning more relevant and fun when it involves part of his own life. It may even function as an intercultural exchange of different ways of living. The development of an English game will always be based on our knowledge of what kids want, latest technologies and it will always have an English learning aspect.

Sign up or log in to try the game. What do you think? As always we welcome any comments or suggestions.

Our virtual world is finally LIVE in Denmark as the first market. After days and even nights of testing, testing and testing, we have launched our Mingoville World to the Danish kids. Now they can learn English while they play fun games, meet new friends and talk to their classmates.

It was a great moment when we launched, with lots of cheering as we welcomed our first kid in the Mingoville World, but also a moment with some anxiety. Would the kids find our educational games entertaining and would they use our Safe English Chat? Similarly, would they understand how to use the coins and feathers they earn by completing the learning exercises in the Mingoville School? Well, we had nothing to fear. The kids have lots of fun playing the games while also chatting in English.

Picture this; 8 year old Peter is sitting very concentrated in front of the computer singing the same song over and over again, practicing his English pronunciation which has to be perfect. He is recording the song for the concert he is giving in the Mingoville World tonight. A concert, he has invited all his online friends to go to. On the other side of the world, 9 year old Alexandra is logging in to the Mingoville World. She is looking forward to going to the concert with her Danish friend Peter.

Actually, the more you practice your English and the more English exercises you complete in the Mingoville School, the more feathers and coins you get in the Mingoville World to play with. To give a concert requires that you record an English song which in return gives lots of feathers and coins to dress up your flamingo or buy a drink in the Café.

Register your kid in the Mingoville World (Only Danes for the time being)

We have tested the Safe English Chat feature. NO offensive words can be used, trust us.

Mingoville World is in beta as we continue to develop it by adding new exciting games and features thus assuring that the kids never get bored when learning English. We welcome you to explore the new virtual world together with your kids when it comes out in June.

Please feel free to comment or share your ideas and experiences with Mingoville. We are always open to your suggestions.

Sign up now for free and be notified when the Mingoville World is available in your country

June Rosendahl
Mingoville Team

Hello all,

As you may already know from our previous posts, Mingoville is going to launch a virtual world
where kids will have an opportunity to learn English in a much more engaging way. Building avatars, earning coins / feathers, safe chat in English, meeting new friends, collaborating, playing and practicing in a much more dynamic and personalized ways is what the new Mingoville virtual world is all about.

How do we learn languages? We do it by immersing ourselves in the right environment. Mingoville is all about fun learning. We understand that traditional learning at schools, homework and other similar activities can sometimes be boring. Therefore, our goal is to create a fun environment on the Internet, where kids can learn new things without actually realizing that they learn.

Here are some images in action:

Kids will be able to select and dress own avatar using their coins and feathers they have earned by completing learning exercises.

Kids Learn English with actionable fun games

Kids will be able to communicate inside the virtual world using the Mingoville safe chat.

And so much more.

Mingoville MMO is going to be BETA launched first in Scandinavia (DK) in May, 2009.

Kids, parents and teachers from other countries will get an access in June, 2009.

Honestly, we can’t wait to open the new Mingoville to you and also get your feedback about the program very soon.

Stay tuned and we will inform you of the launch.

Stephan Stephensen, CEO

Greetings from Mingoville,

It is time to write an update on the progress of the Mingoville MMOEG (Massively Multiplayer Online Educational Game) that we recently announced about on our blog. We are going the full speed with building an exhilarating educational experience for kids who want to learn English as a second language (ESL) and have fun by playing exciting games.

Recently, we’ve been doing a lot of testing, the results of which we will share next time. Until then we wanted to show you some of the MMOG maps (drawings) to be found in the Mingoville Virtual World.

Cafe Map – this is where you are going to meet your buddies, start the conversation game, the racing game,  the fish game and much more.

Airport Map – Here you can take tours, get ice-cream and water tour as well as stand at a table in groups and chat (launched by hitting the tables).

Station Map – There is a good public transportation system in Mingoville.

(more…)

Hello World,

Recently, we have received so many great comments about our Mingoville program. Thank you. You have no idea how exciting it is to hear your positive feedback. We are so happy you love using Mingoville to learn English.

We wanted to take this opportunity and share with you the exciting news we’ve kept a secret for the last couple of months. In the form of a virtual world, Mingoville is introducing a new English learning product for our young English learners – Mingoville Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG). Internally, we call it MMOngoville.

MMOngoville (Universe)

There are three goals we want to achieve with MMongoville. Those are:

1. It has to be based on English Learning (as ESL) – Even though Mingoville is fun and entertaining, we still want to focus a great deal on education. Inside the Universe, there will be captivating games the main purpose of which is to educate through entertainment i.e. edutainment.
2. It has to be built around Community – We will be highly rewarding collaboration and successful communication.
3. We want to make MMongoville Addictive – As opposed to pure entertainment games out there our goal is to make the Universe where kids do not realize that they actually learn a new language by playing addictive, yet educational, games. We believe that it will be even more encouraging to parents and teachers.

The Mingoville Universe offers, but not limited to, the following maps:

Shop, Disco, School (Scool), Beach, Sport, Hospital, Pier, Deserted Island, Lady Butter, Nature, Station, Café, Airport and Goose Will.

Here are a couple of earlier drawings of Mingoville avatar. Of course they look much livelier now

Mingoville Avatars

We are going to post new drawings and other exciting things as the MMO gets ready for the launch in May.

We are so excited about it!

Stephan Stephensen

Mingoville team