While on Erasmus I learned about “gamification” as a concept and how businesses are using it, especially in advertising, to get consumers attention. It’s all about making a process as fun and interactive as possible for a consumer in order to grab their attention.
This concept came up again recently during my linguistic class and it got me wondering how games could be used in mainstream education. Just a few weeks ago, I used kahoot, an interactive quiz, as part of my Gothic presentation.
Kahoot allowed me to create a number of questions based on my presentation which students could then answer on their smartphones. Points are awarded for correct answers as well as speed and the computer displays a leader board throughout.
This creates competition as well as interest in the topic and really got the usually quiet twenty-minute content discussion going.
Next week I’m to present on English language teaching and I have chosen “gamification” as my topic as I have seen firsthand how games make learning an altogether richer experience for all those involved.
While games are widely used in early teaching, higher level education has largely been lacking any innovation in this field. This is something which I hope I can highlight to a room of future English teachers, that hopefully could encourage a whole new wave of teachers to a new way of teaching.
Turfy's Tales 