OUP Webinar: Using Games for win-win learning

Attending webinars from the comfort of your own home is a fantastic experience!

 Image courtesy of google images

This morning I attended an excellent OUP Webinar presented by John Hughes, called 'Using Games for win-win learning'.  You can read all about it in this informative OUP blog post here:

https://oupeltglobalblog.com/2018/01/25/using-games-win-win-learning/

You can register to attend the same webinar repeated on Thursday February 15th.  Details from the OUP website are here

I enjoy playing games with my learners and in this webinar I learned more about the rationale behind using games for learning, and most importantly of all, the presenter offered many practical examples of varied types of games.  It was an interactive session with interesting polls, text chat opportunities and games such as charades, being played. Handouts were made available at the close of the session, and these will be invaluable for future lessons.

The important thing about games is that they can be used with every type of learner, and used judiciously, games can make language points and vocabulary more memorable.  They are indeed a hidden type of repetition drill and if the students are engaged and 'in the flow,' they will not notice that behind the fun, there is a serious element to learning going on.  Gamifying teaching in a pedagogical and meaningful way can lead to more learner engagment and motivation.

The book Games for Language Learning, by Andrew Wright et al. was mentioned in the session. I have had this book in my personal collection for a while.  It is a rich resource, full of fantastic and easy to implement ideas for games.  According to the author, games as drills form a 'living communication', and this is an interesting point to note.

During the lively session, attended by over 300 teachers from around the globe, I learned about the 5 'C's that are vital components for a good and enjoyable game:

Some interesting links included one to Gareth's Short Story Blog

In the article,  the focus was on 'Rory's Storytelling Cubes'.  I will need to investigate this resource, which looks fun.

The notion of 'FLOW' during a game is important, and the book called 'FLOW- The Psychology of Optimal Experience' by Mihaly Csikszent  was referred to in the webinar.

The use of QR codes in games such as treasure hunts was also mentioned inthe slide presentation.  This article QR codes: A treasure hunt, by Nicky Hockly, Director of Pedagogy of the renowned Consultants-e Edtech training website, contains an excellent post about how to go about organizing a treasure or scavenger hunt using mobile phones and QR codes.

I was so engaged in following the presentation and doing the activities and adding replies in the text chat box, that the one hour session flew past!

I would like to take this opportunity to say ..........

 ........ to OUP for this exciting series of  practical and worthwhile webinars, and to John Hughes for the inspirational presentation today!!

2014 - The Year of Living Relatively Quietly!!

Looking back on 2014, I can truthfully say it was as quiet as I had wanted it to be, although there were busy bits inbetween!!  What I enjoyed most on a personal level was having a little bit more time to do what I love - gardening, composting and so on.  I did a Project 52 blog inspired by my fellow blogger Sue Annan here.  This kept me occupied on a daily basis, and hence I didn't blog so much on Janet's Abruzzo.  I will try to post more often in 2015!!

The Highs of 2014
My Project 52 blog
Janet's Abruzzo Edublog celebrating its 6th year
EVO Crafting as a moderator for five weeks in January / February
Connecting Online webinar in February
Teaching at the lake school
Online projects with the Consultants-e
Doing an excellent mlearning course with the Consultants-e
Teaching wonderful groups of students
Reading and learning more about the art of composting
Motorbike trip to San Marino
Learning more about the use of QR codes in education

The Lows of 2014
Losing the final chicken, leaving Freddy on his own, no fresh eggs!
Dearest Fluffy going missing, and accepting he is probably gone forever
No olive harvest this year - very disappointing!
The very rainy summer in Abruzzo

My resolutions for 2015?
Continue to be happy, doing what I like doing
Write more often on this blog
Produce more vegetables
Sow seedlings earlier
Continue to grow professionally by reading and attending online courses
Explore more indepth some of the Web 2.0 tools I already use

A 2015 calendar created with Photofunia today. We are deep in snow at the end of the year!

I couldn't resist taking this photo of a cat on the balcony! Hopefully we will start the New Year tomorrow with water, electricity and Internet connection!!

An Animoto message

Welcome to 2015!

The final message of 2014 to all my readers and members of my PLN:

..and a final QR message as well :-)

OBI, RSS and QR Codes!

Image found on wikipedia here

There is a connection between these groups of letters, and one of them is an odd word out! Can you guess what it is? Well, the connection is that they have all been on my mind recently and the odd word out in a way is "OBI" as it is a name of a DIY shop in Pescara. The other two are acronyms linked to the Internet.

NB
At the end of my post I have added a little comic test to review what these three groups of letters mean.

OBI and QR Codes
It all started in OBI, a local garden centre when I picked up one of their magazines and to my surprise, I noted that QR codes were on practically each page. I felt pleased that I recognised these as QR Codes! Only a few short months ago, I would not really have recognised them or indeed known the name or what the function of them was. Below is an example. Do you recognise it? They are now becoming ubiquitous, and I think they are definitely here to stay.If you would like to learn more about QR codes, you can read an excellent and comprehensive article written by Nicky Hockly from The Consultants-E. It's called Mobile learning - 9: A Dummies Guide to QR codes.

Below is a fantastic QR Code cartoon created by The Daring Librarian on Flickr.



You can read this excellent blog post by Gwyneth Anne Bronwynne Jones, aka The Daring Librarian, called Hot QR Codes in the Classroom, written in December 2010.

If you are interested in this area of technology, you can attend a free webinar on QR Codes On Saturday 30th July at the Reform Symposium presented by ShamblesGuru (Chris Smith). It promises to be very useful and extremely interesting!



RSS or Really Simple Feed syndication

RSS? Well I have been discussing Really Simple Syndication with a group of online learners recently. Only a few short years ago, I didn't have a clue to what RSS refered to, but now I do!! I use my RSS feed on my blog sidebar to gather all the latest updates on my favourite blogs and links. It's time-saving and very convenient.

The Circle of Knowledge
So the circle is complete. I was in OBI, I saw the QR codes and I felt chuffed that I recognised them and had an idea of what they were. So like a few years ago when RSS was a new and alien concept for me, I don't have any real experience of how to actually use QR codes actively yet.
QR codes are relatively new for me now, but I would like to know much more about them as they seem to be everywhere. Maybe in the future, they will be commonplace for me like RSS feeds are now, and I will be using them effortlessly? Watch this space!

Comic Testing Items
In preparation for my talk at RSCON3 on using comics and cartoons, I have just created a little test for you using cartoons as a prompt. These questions will check if you have read this post including all the links carefully :-)

writecomics.com

Toondo.com

Super Hero Squad Comics