Healthy Habits is part of the research project entitled Plurilingual, audiovisual and digital competences as means to construct knowledge in multilingual and multicultural communities of practice - PADS for short (EDU2010-17859), which is financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. PADS research project has several 'layers' (different sub-projects). This particular study took place in the second year of the PADS research project.

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Textual Summary

The use of pedagogically-designed ‘learning’ games such as video games, online games and social networks is gaining advocates among many as an innovative means of engaging learners in communicative events. However, children and youth are used to online, video and hand-held games with very different aims than what most primary education teachers would consider appropriate content for their classes, thus, while the ‘outside the classroom’ use of these environments foments the opportunity for c ommunicative events, most primary education teachers would feel uncomfortable replicating these types of communicative events in their classroom. Based on the premise of Project-Based Language Learning (PBLL), the second year project (entitled Healthy Habits) aimed to go beyond an 'add-on' approach to using different modes of technology to support target language use (English with 2^nd graders). In this PBLL, the use of technology was an integral part of the ove rall learning of the ten-week project designed to a) cover curricula in EFL (topics such as body parts, food, sports, leisure; personal habits); b) cover curricula in science (understanding how scientists gather evidence, making hypothesis, relating cause and effect, gathering and comparing data); c) Spanish and Catalan curricula (topics such as food, self-descriptions); d) social science (issues related to health); e) ICT (the use of computers for case observations and for video-conferencing); f) interpersonal competences (collaborative learning through small group work and information-exchange for shared knowledge-building; learning to make recommendations); and g) intercultural competences (learning about and interacting with international partners).

The PBLL sequence was designed by the two international EFL teachers, in tandem with a teacher educator from the GREIP research group at the Universitat Autònoma and a teacher educator at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Other teachers in the schools and GREIP researchers collaborated in varying degrees. The project involved virtual exchanges between the students and physical mobility between the two teachers. Through the use of ‘machinima’ (short video-clips made in Virtual Worlds), students were asked to ‘help’ two scientists (inthe form of avatars) observe three ‘cases’ of ‘subject avatars’ and to classify the subjects’ habits (did they promote good health or not?).  Purpose for authentic communication was created through the employment of video-conferences between the two classes in order to exchange information about the ‘case studies’.