Lu Palacios XXI Anual Convention TESOL Madrid, 7-9 March 2014
Points that matter How to gamify your KET class 
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Lu Palacios XXI Anual Convention TESOL Madrid, 7-9 March 2014
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Table of contents
What is gamification?
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What’s a game?
5
Gamification vs games
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Why should I gamify my class?
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How I gamified my class…
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My mistakes: Volume 1
17
Three kingdoms
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Useful tools
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To know more
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About Lu
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Lu Palacios XXI Anual Convention TESOL Madrid, 7-9 March 2014
What is gamification? !
To understand the core of this talk, we should start by defining that word that is so trendy today. Wikipedia describes it as: Gamification is using game-based mechanics, aesthetics and game thinking to engage people, motivate action, promote learning and solve problems. It is a device that is used in many situations, as for example: Weight Watchers: a programme to lose weight. Super Better: a web-based application which would help you to achieve your goals. If you want to have more information about this one, you can have a look at the TED Talks by its creator, Jane McGonnigal: Gaming can make a better world and The game that can give you 10 extra years of life are a nice start on the world of gamification. Wii fit: The game for the Wii console also uses the principles of gamification to help players to improve their health. Zombie run: Mobile application for android which changes your way of running as it introduces you into a story of survival against zombies. McDonald’s Monopoly: A way of winning free burgers by collecting stickers.
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Lu Palacios XXI Anual Convention TESOL Madrid, 7-9 March 2014
If you want to look at some more examples, type in Youtube “Theory of fun” and see how people were encouraged to use the stairs instead of the escalator or to recycle more.
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Lu Palacios XXI Anual Convention TESOL Madrid, 7-9 March 2014
What’s a game? It seems easy to define what a game is, but it isn’t. Instead of giving just a simple definition, a definition from the book A Theory of Fun by Ralph Koster is provided, and afterwards we will analyze some of the elements in the definition:
A game is a system in which players engage in an abstract challenge defined by rules, interactivity and feedback, that results in a quantifiable outcome often eliciting an emotional reaction. Let’s have a closer look at the highlighted elements on the definition: System: a series of interconnected elements which frame the situation. Players: the people who engage in the game. In our context we will remember that our players are learners. Abstract challenge: there must be something that the players want to achieve and win, usually a reward. Rules: They show what is acceptable or not in the game and how to achieve the challenge. Interactivity: it is a part of the game and it contributes to the fun. Feedback: either instant or delayed, it will help the players to change or reinforce any behavior that is not acceptable in the game
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Lu Palacios XXI Anual Convention TESOL Madrid, 7-9 March 2014
Quantifiable outcome: this will help to decide how well a player has done in the game and to choose a winner Emotional reaction: not only at the end of the game, but during it, players will face frustration, happiness, anger‌
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Lu Palacios XXI Anual Convention TESOL Madrid, 7-9 March 2014
Gamification vs games ! If you are planning to use gamification in class, be ready to listen to the famous sentence “I’ve always played games in my class, does this mean that I’m gamifying my class?” These two charts may help you to answer with something more than a “No”.
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Gamification
The game in itself is the end. The game is a tool for a There is no purpose in gaming. purpose. Only the intrinsic motivation of Besides the intrinsic motivation the fun is present. fun, we have the extrinsic motivation of achieving the goal It can be applied only in some The game element is present in restricted situations (you play, when your daily life. you play). The behaviour of the player may One of the ultimate goals of the change or not. activity is to change the behaviour of the player.
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Why should I gamify my class? ! There are many reasons besides fun that should encourage you to gamify your class: It promotes social learning. It fosters the achievement of a goal by means of intrinsic motivation (the fun of playing). It is based on scaffolded learning (harder tasks will come after easier ones). It fosters positive behavior. It evokes episodic memory.
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Lu Palacios XXI Anual Convention TESOL Madrid, 7-9 March 2014
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How I gamified my class… All my mistakes and some right decisions
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Set a clear goal ! The main goal for me was clear: I wanted that the majority of my students to pass the Cambridge English Key Exam. Some of them were eager to face the challenge, but some others really feared the idea of taking an exam which would make them speak English in front of strangers. Besides, I wanted them to improve their English and realize how well they were doing. Finally, I wanted to increase the motivation of those weaker students who sometimes felt as they didn’t fit in a classroom that was going to take an external exam which they weren’t going to take.
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Lu Palacios XXI Anual Convention TESOL Madrid, 7-9 March 2014
Study the teaching situation ! Maybe you should start by this point and not with the previous one, because this will lay the foundations of your project. Will the institution where you’re working accept the experiment? Because this could be a great success or a miserable failure. Do you know your students well enough to be sure that they’ll enjoy the experience? Will they make the most of it? And maybe most importantly, will their parents agree to something new? I was quite sure to have a positive answer to all the questions. As well I had secret compromise with myself: I had set a deadline by when I would decide if the results were satisfactory enough to continue or to stop the experience.
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Set an objective ! Is it the same as setting a goal? Well, for me it wasn’t. The goal was that my students passed KET, the objective was more precise. I knew that not all my students would take KET but I wanted them to know all the parts of the exam and I wanted them to be ready to speak English in front of people. My objective was clear, I wanted that around
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Lu Palacios XXI Anual Convention TESOL Madrid, 7-9 March 2014
75% of my students would be ready to take the exam and that at least a 90% of the students who took the exam succeed. This meant that I had to read quite a bit: what was required in each part of KET, what was meant to be achieved in a A2 level of the CFRE, what applications would be useful to record a video and even what parents permissions I needed to upload the kids’ pictures and videos on the internet. Within the idea of making a realistic provision in your objective, you may find the Gauss bell. You should take into account that there will be students who will love the experience and they would want more than you give them, a majority that will like the experience and there will be some students that will hate the experience. Don’t expect all of it to be a bed of roses.
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Set a story ! This is one of the most important elements in gamification is the story which gives cohesion to the experience. The creation of the story is probably the real core of all the activity. Do you remember that in gamification the real objective is always hidden? This is its disguise. I made up a story about a witch, a dragon and knights and ladies: Far far away, there is a place where a sleeping dragon dominates the land. This dragon's name is KET. It wakes up every June and many warriors try to defeat it. The land of the three kingdoms is a magical place. There are many knights and ladies willing to defeat KET, but they are not prepared yet. The Black Witch will help them to prepare for the battle and defeat KET.
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Lu Palacios XXI Anual Convention TESOL Madrid, 7-9 March 2014 Are you ready to live the adventure?
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But this may not be the one that suits your students. What about being selected for the Super English Grammar Olympic Team? Or a group of scientists working against a virus? The possibilities are endless. The rest of the game will depend on this: the reward system, the names of the tasks, the prizes… so think carefully.
Set the rules !
This is the moment you were waiting for, weren’t you? The rules define what is acceptable and what isn’t in a game or in any situation. These should include the ways of leveling in the game, the groups… It is a good idea to make provisions for collaborative work as well as for competitive work. Here is the place to state how long your experience will be: if a course long seems daunting and exhausting (I can tell you it truly is), maybe a couple of months is enough. It really is up to you. In any case, don’t make many rules and don’t be too restrictive with them. Gamification provides, as any other teaching situation, a changing and alive setting which you and your students would need to adapt to.
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Lu Palacios XXI Anual Convention TESOL Madrid, 7-9 March 2014
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Where are you going to play your game? !
Maybe one of the hardest decisions, especially if you, as I am, work in a language school and at the end of the day, you have the pressure of an external exam. Here are some of the questions I made to myself when considering the situation:
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Classroom
Blended (online + classroom)
Do my students have the necessary skills?
Is it very time consuming?
What kind of parents permissions do I need?
How do I integrate it in the class?
Will all my students be engaged?
What time should I devote to the activity?
What kind of parents permissions do I need?
Will it slow down the class pace?
Will all students beengage?
Finally, I decided to take the blended version. I considered this would be the optional activity of an extracurricular activity. I didn’t expect that many students would want to participate, but depending on the task, there were between 2 and 10 students taking place in the tasks.
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I set the tasks in a blog and when the deadline of the task was over, I corrected it in class. In this way, all my students would benefit from the task, even if they decided not to take part in the game. As well, we did some compulsory tasks in class (like studying verbs or vocabulary). In this way, all of them could take place in the experience, even if they didn’t want to devote more time to English that they have already do with their classes.
Set a reward system ! Points and leaderboards! Probably the first two words that came you your mind when you thought about rewards. This is OK, but… why do your students need those points? I made them think that they were not winning points, but money from the land of the Three Kingdoms. The exchange rate was 15 golden coins: 1€. The money they earn would be the budget for their end-of-course party. Maybe is not the best idea, but, if they were going to have a party in any way, they would want to have an idea of earning the party. Obviously, this is not the ideal reward, as you’re paying your students, but that is what came to me. I’m sure you’d find something much better.
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Lu Palacios XXI Anual Convention TESOL Madrid, 7-9 March 2014
Tasks !
This is a really demanding activity… for the teacher. Well, this is not exactly true. This can be as demanding as you want it to be. If you make a provision of tasks and plan in advance what you want to do this won’t be a disruption of your class and your routine. If you are doing this as a way to gamify an exam-set class, don’t focus only on exam type tasks, even though this is a great way to make your students learn how to write on a computer in English! But this is a great way to expose your students to other type of activities that you can’t do in class due to the lack of time. The possibilities are endless!!!
Personalization !
Even though in the end I couldn’t use this feature, this was one of the real reasons why I decided to start this adventure: Gamification sets a great way to offer extra challenges for students who need more help or want to know more. What is more, they would feel rewarded by that extra work, and if you know how to do it wisely, they wouldn’t feel ashamed that they needed extra help because it could look like that they got a bonus for extra work! (What in fact, it is what they did!) As I told you, even though I made provision for this, I didn’t do it. I spent so much time thinking how to do it, looking for a solution that I couldn’t find one… and it was always in front of my nose! I could have used e-mail or a simple photocopy. You don’t really need hyper sophisticated tools to do something!
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My mistakes: Volume 1 This is not penance for my sins, but when I hear teachers speaking about their teaching experience, it is always an account of what went right; but you can never find a piece of advice about what was wrong, so that you’re more successful than I was. Probably the biggest mistake of all was that I didn’t make a provision of tasks, so when the hard times came, I had to stop the activity. It was a real pity because my students really loved the idea… I sorted my students into three teams. I didn’t plan them to be re-sorted, so some of them really feel frustrated. If I had to plan this again, I wouldn’t do teams, but I would think for both cooperative and competitive tasks. I thought that all my students would be able to do things with the computer (aren’t they what Prensky called “Digital Natives”?) but they weren’t, so I had to put aside some of the “coolest” activities. I am not happy at all with the reward system. As I told you, “paying” my students for learning was not a good idea.
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Three kingdoms I have been speaking throughout all this document about what I did and how I did it, but I haven’t shown you anything. Now, I think it is the moment for doing so. Most of what I did can be found at: http://threeenglishkingdoms.blogspot.com.es As I told you, it was a great experience that I’m sure that I’ll never forget. How can you explain otherwise that your students spend a Saturday planning a weather forecast programme? Or that kind of emotion the day that they received comments on the blog from the USA? The results of the exam were not defining as I have told you, I stopped in February, long before the exam, but if you are interested, they went really well. So, as I told you, this is an experience I would definitively repeat if the opportunity comes!
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Useful tools These tools may be helpful if you want to try ramifying your class: Blogger: A blog was the easiest environment to use and navigate; and blogger is, in my opinion, the easiest blog management platform. Google Drive: As I’ve told you, some of my students weren’t able to use many ICT tools, so by creating questionnaires on Google Drive, I was able to receive all their answers, which was easy for both of us. Youtube: It is not new, but both for uploading and finding material for your experience, this is a great library of videos to use. Slideshare and Isuu are great sites to host your students’ work. VideoFX is an application for IOS devices which allows you to record your students and add funny animations. Most of my videos were recorded with it. My students loved to choose the effects to their video. Spreaker. I didn’t use this one to record for The Three Kingdoms, I used Audacity. But recently I’ve found this application and it is really great! It makes sound recording really easy.
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Lu Palacios XXI Anual Convention TESOL Madrid, 7-9 March 2014
To know more Gamification is the trend, and I think it is here to stay, so maybe you want to know more about it. These are some of the books that I have read and found useful.
The gamification of Learning and Instruction: Game based Methods and Strategies of Learning and Instruction Karl M. Kapp Pfeiffer
What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. James Paul Gee Palgrave Macmillan
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How computer games help children learn. David Williamson Shaffer Palgrave Macmillan
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Lu Palacios XXI Anual Convention TESOL Madrid, 7-9 March 2014 A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Raph Kosher O’Reilley Media
! But not only these books are available. There are quite a big amount of resources about Gamification on the net: from Coursera courses to articles‌ it just depends on how much time you want to devote to it.
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About Lu ! Interested in the use of technology in the EFL classroom even before finishing her degree, her involvement in this area led her to be an active part and lecturer in several courses and activities in different Andalusian Educational Events. When she got hired at a Cambridge Preparation Centre she decided to try and give a shot to different approaches on how to prepare her pupils to succeed in this very exigent, and very well regarded, tests; with a great achievement ratio to proof the value of her methodology. This, and her natural interest in different and more innovative approaches, made her to open different blogs in which she explains and compiles different learning related topics, CLIL approaches to EFL, etc. that are centralized in her website www.myenglishcorner.net. She has been an active part in several collaborative projects, as well as tutor for an online course about Digital Storytelling in the EFL Classroom held by the Education Ministry’s INTEF. If you want to have further contact with her, please send an email to luisapalacios@myenglishcorner.net and she will be more than glad to contact you back.
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