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consells d'aula formació i educació opinió

Improve ESL kids’ Speaking with Game Based Learning Strategies

#APACautumn sessions were dedicated to CLIL, STEAM and Gamification
#APACautumn sessions were dedicated to CLIL, STEAM and Gamification

Professional development events organised by teachers are usually very good. I have been collaborating with the APAC for several years now and the team behind it is supreme. If you somehow teach anything related to English in Catalunya or even Spain, you should follow them and book their events. This last Saturday was a 10 hour long (yes, I thought what you are now), sequence of talks, workshops and moments to chill and chat with other teachers. I was there for the first 5 hours and got a nice list of ideas and “to do” projects. I also gave a workshop about applying Game Based Learning strategies to help kids remeber vocabulary and expressions and improve their learning experience. Audio included.

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formació i educació opinió

Low-Cost Gamification Strategies for Young Learners: a few extra notes

cHristian negre i walczak talking about gamification
Image by Gina Aguirre

Gamification in education is not only about transforming learning into a game but about improving the teacher-student relationship. Learning a language doesn’t usually provide immediate feedback; results only appear after strong efforts, which can generate frustration. In contrast to this, our learners are spending an increasing amount of hours playing on digital devices and don’t seem to struggle much. What can we take from games to improve their learning experience at schools? This active presentation will introduce the power of play as an emotional motivator in education. It will also provide different, easy-to-apply, low-cost gamification strategies. These are real examples that have been developed over several years at Escola Pia in Calella, mostly with kids aged 9 to 12. And yes, just in case you were wondering, you’ll be invited to play, too!

I had this talk in mind since last year’s APAC ELT Convention. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it then, so I applied again this year. I had a good experience from the talk I gave in the 2014 edition. I must admit I knew hardly anything from the Convention then, but the huge number of participants and talks amazed me.

The APAC’s (“Associació de Professors d’Anglès de Catalunya”) new board members have changed their website (which actually needed to do asap!) and have organized another shocking and inspiring convention. I wasn’t able to see much this edition, but I have been tracking some trustful contacts and resources online. I was specially happy to attend to Ellie Abad’s successful talk: “How to take the youtuber phenomenon into the EFL Classroom”. I met her in the first edition of a #gamification summer course known as #gamificurs. In addition, I would like to state another brief issue… I have been following Usoa Sol since then. Her amount of projects impressed me. I don’t think she was in the organitzation then, but she is the vice-president now, so I glad to discover that my intuition wasn’t wrong then. She may the effort to come as say hello, very kind!

I’m attaching the presentation used and the speech mp3 recording of the session. Credits go for Ross Flatt from the Institute of Play from whom I saw for the first time the “Rock, paper, scissors” competition experience that I use often and to Natxo Maté, another real magic teacher, who gave me the secret for the magic trick. I also have some nice pics from the talk from Gina Aguirre and Irene Escudero.

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consells d'aula formació i educació opinió

The New Pokemon Collection – Activitat AICLE per Educació Artística in English a primària

Com sempre m’acostumo a retrasar a l’hora d’actualitzar el blog…

En aquest breu vídeo, enregistrat l’agost del 2016 parlo sobre una activitat col·laborativa que repeteixo des de fa anys amb alumnes de Cicle Mitjà i Superior. L’anomeno “The New Pokemon Collection”, un activitat AICLE (d’Aprenentatge Integral de Continguts i Llengües Estrangeres) o CLIL, (Content and Language Integrated Learning). Tot seguit us en faig un breu resum…

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dia a dia formació i educació opinió

Gamification in my lessons (Spoken English)

Gamification in education is about transforming learning into a game. It’s been a quite hot topic this last few years. It sometimes happens you instictively do things and after some time you discover they have actually got a name. I think most things are already invented but many get improved time after time.

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Entre Profes formació i educació

English 2.0 Entre Profes: converses amb docents

Entre Profes: converses amb docents

La Monste Paradeda i la Mònica Castanyer són les responsables de Monprojects i porten anys integrant projectes TIC en les seves classes d’anglès. En el setè capítol d’Entre Profes: converses amb docents ens expliquen com s’ho fan i comparteixen  alguns exemples pràctics.

A la secció de recomanacions proposen el llibre “Flip you classroom” i les trobades de Ciberespiral i Moodle Moots. També suggerim un dels MOOCS (Massive Online Open Courses) de Coursera, el de eLearning and Digital Culture (#edcmooc).

La música que acompanya la conversa és de Davic Nod i la podeu descarregar des d’aquí.