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Showing posts from June, 2014

Engaging Learners Online

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I had a lot of fun during my presentation yesterday for the Teachers Teaching Online (TTO) MOOC , with my session 'Engaging Online Learners' , splitting the participants into teams and using a quiz format for the presentation. I wondered beforehand whether it would work and how best to split the participants up into teams. The quiz was designed to get away from a linear presentation format. The idea was to ask the audience to select a category and a question (each had a different number of points) and then jump to that question. In the end, this didn't work in the webinar and I had to do the quiz in a different way (linear), but it seemed to work out well. I asked the participants to choose a colour (blue or red) and to change their text chat and then I asked the questions and the first member of team red or team blue to answer correctly won 10 points.  If the comments on the session page are anything to go by, participants enjoyed it: Miroslava Takeva Amazing

Gamification: Magic Bullet or Broken Sword?

 A pesentation I did for the following conference: IATEFL LTSIG & TESOL CALL IS 2nd Web Conference - June 14th 2014 Can gamification be used effectively in language teaching? Or is it just another passing fad? Although at first glance, the 'adding of game elements to non-game contexts' using points, badges, and leader-boards, etc. seems to be an attractive proposition for teachers, there is more to gamification than first meets the eye. In this session we'll look at the meaning of fun and games, examine play and players and explore how different game elements might be used in the classroom and for what purpose. Gamification in ELT: Magic Bullet or Broken Sword? from Graham Stanley