It has been just over a week now since the 4th incarnation of the Reform Symposium Online Conference (#RSCON4) came to an end and I was proud to be part of such a huge and important educational event. This was my second time as a presenter (having previously done a non-gaming related session at RSCON3) and first of all, I must express my thanks to the organisers, especially the founder Shelly Terrell and the chief volunteer organisers/promoters Chiew Pang and Clive Elsmore, who seemed to be just about everywhere in the days building up to the conference and during the conference itself - how do you do it guys?
I always enjoy presenting webinars and I felt that my session on promoting language learning through gaming went well, Although the crowd was a little small compared to my preivous webinars (about 16-20 compared with 40+ in the past), they seemed interested in the topic, contributed a lot of ideas and asked me some good questions at the end. I know gaming in the classroom (especially using actual games in lesson time) isn't for everyone but I think I at least gave my attendees some ideas for how the topic of gaming can be used as a stimulus for discussiona or other language production activities.
If you were at the session and have any feedback to give, I'd love to hear it. If you weren't able to attend, then please check out the recording, which is now archived and available for viewing here whenever you have the time (choose the 'Blackboard Collaborate' format to see the my presentation together with the audience comments). Feel free to take a look at my sildes as well:
I always enjoy presenting webinars and I felt that my session on promoting language learning through gaming went well, Although the crowd was a little small compared to my preivous webinars (about 16-20 compared with 40+ in the past), they seemed interested in the topic, contributed a lot of ideas and asked me some good questions at the end. I know gaming in the classroom (especially using actual games in lesson time) isn't for everyone but I think I at least gave my attendees some ideas for how the topic of gaming can be used as a stimulus for discussiona or other language production activities.
If you were at the session and have any feedback to give, I'd love to hear it. If you weren't able to attend, then please check out the recording, which is now archived and available for viewing here whenever you have the time (choose the 'Blackboard Collaborate' format to see the my presentation together with the audience comments). Feel free to take a look at my sildes as well:
Elt sandbox from David Dodgson
There were a couple of poitns that came up during the presentation such as the difference between Game-Based Learning (the topic of my presentation) and Gamification and how to go about introducing the concept of using computer games to learn in class, and these are topics I will explore in upcoming blog posts. I also wish I had more examples of my students' game-based work to share but as this is all quite new for me, I was only able to show one example - a video compilation of screenshots a group of students had created for a 'treehouse project'. The creative twist was that instead of making a poster or a model, these boys had made their treehouse in Minecraft:
I won't give too many comments on the event in general for two reasons: first of all, last weekend was the start of a holiday here in Turkey and I was too busy to attend most of the sessions (although I did moderate one) - a good thing there is an archive of all the sessions to be watched at a future date then! Secondly, Tyson Seburn has already written a well-worth-reading-round-up of his Observaitons of #RSCON4, which covers pretty much everything I would have said, including the minor criticism about the scheduling of presentations (I was on at the same time as two well-respected and well-known presenters from ELT circles, James Taylor and Marisa Constantinides, making it tough to draw a crowd, especially as I didn't have any monkeys to spice things up!)
But I will say once again that this was another fantastic event as RSCON always is and I am looking forward to being even more involved next time.
But I will say once again that this was another fantastic event as RSCON always is and I am looking forward to being even more involved next time.