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How do we follow a Chat with Jeremy Harmer? With Wendy Starland of course!
Who is Wendy Starland? Most famous for discovering Lady GaGa, Wendy Starland is an American singer, songwriter, music producer and musician.
Look out for her in English City Soon.
Languagelab @ IATEFL
Next week the Languagelab London team will be relocating to sunny Harrogate for the 44th Annual International Iatefl Conference And Exhibition.
As always there is only time to talk about a tiny amount of the work we have done.
If you are unable to be there all our presentations will be streamed live on this blog.
Languagelab Presentations
Thursday
- Iffaf - A comparison of different IELTS exam preparation courses 1040-1140
- David - Teacher to character: How becoming someone else enhances learner Engagement 1400-1445
Saturday
- Jessica - English for special purposes in virtual worlds 1025-1110
- Shiv - Task-based learning and virtual worlds 1750-1835
In addition to the presentations we will be giving people a chance to experience a virtual world for themselves and also have their virtual world activity built for free.
How kids teach themselves.
“You left this machine that speaks only English so we had to learn English”
For me the most inspiring presentation at Going Global 4 was Sugata Mitra explaining his hole the wall project and what it tells us about kids in unsupervised environments.
Unfortunately the BC have taken down the video of his presentation so here is his TED video instead.
Related Post: Proof that Digital Natives Exist?
To solve problems like hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict, obesity we need to spend 21 billion hours a week Playing Games by the end of the next decade
A great TED video about saving the world by playing computer games
Notes:
- We spend 3 billion hours a week playing games.
- To solve problems like hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict, obesity we need to spend 21 billion hour per week playing games by the end of the next decade.
- In games people become the best versions of themselves: The most likely to help at a moment’s notice, the most likely to stick with a problem as long as it takes, the most likely to get up after failure and try again.
- In real life when we face failure or obstacles we feel : overwhelmed, overcome, anxious, depressed, frustrated or cynical. We never have those feelings when playing games.
- WoW is the ultimate collaborative problem solving environment.
- WoW gamers have spent 5.93 million years solving the problems of the virtual world.
- 5.93 million years ago is when the first primate human stood up.
- By Playing games humans are evolving to be a more collaborative and hardy species.
- The average person born into a country with a gaming culture would have spent 10,000 hours playing online games by age 21.
- A student with perfect attendance will spend 10,080 hours in high school between 5th grade and high school graduation.
- Young people are spending as much time playing games as they are in school.
- >500m online gamers in the world, they play at least and hour a day. In the next decade there will be another billion.
- The 2nd biggest wiki in the world the WoW wiki. There is more information about WoW on this wiki than there is about any other subject on any other wiki in the world.
Factors that make game such great environments (these may seem familiar):
- As soon as you log in you are given a task to do that perfectly matches your skill level.
- There are lots off calibrators ready to help you achieve your mission.
- There is an Epic story.
- There is constant feedback.
- You are constantly on the verge on a EPIC win.
What are gamers getting so good at:
- Urgent Optimism – The desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle with the expectation of a reasonable chance of success. Gamers always believe that an epic win is possible.
- Social Fabric – Gamers are virtuosos at weaving a tight social fabric. We like people better after playing a game with them.
- Blissful productivity – Gamers are happy to be working hard the entire time if they are given the right work.
- Epic Meaning –
These things make gamers
SUPER-EMPOWREED HOPEFUL INDIVIDUALS - people who believe that they are individually capable of changing the world. (Virtual Worlds not Real)
We had our first visitors from the Principality of Sealand today. It’s amazing who you meet online.
Build the EFL Activity of your Dreams
A common question I get asked by teachers who have some experience with virtual worlds is “Can I build an activity that does x, y &z”. The answer is usually yes if you have the resources. Unfortunately most teachers do not have the coding and 3D skills to make their ideas a reality.
To unleash the repressed creativity of such teachers we’ve created EFLUnleashed.com. It is an opportunity for you to have your activity built for you by the Languagelab team.
Those of you that have visited Languagelab will know that our boffins can build almost anything; like FPS style games, MMO Quests, giant fists that chase people, giant computers, collapsing walls and magical hippos, alien autopsies or whatever your imagination can conjure up.
Watching a Japanese student give a presentation on genetic engineering. (In English)
Study: Today's youth aren't ego-driven slackers after all
Today’s youth are generally not the self-centered, antisocial slackers that previous research has made them out to be, according to a provocative new study co-authored by a Michigan State University psychologist.In a scientific analysis of nearly a half-million high-school seniors spread over three decades, MSU’s Brent Donnellan and Kali Trzesniewski of the University of Western Ontario argue teens today are no more egotistical - and just as happy and satisfied - as previous generations.
“We concluded that, more often than not, kids these days are about the same as they were back in the mid-1970s,” said Donnellan, associate professor of psychology.
» via BrainMysteries
