The Reform Symposium Online Conference took place during October 11th to 13th, 2013. It has been an awesome weekend for Professional and Personal development.
If you missed any session you can still enjoy the Sessions and Keynotes recordings.
I participated as a moderator and it was a powerful feeling of being involved in a great team of volunteers and at the same time enjoyed presenters’ awesome ideas.
1. The Magic of Games: “D’Amazing Race Project”
Presenter: Ratnavathy Ragunathan
Ratna talked about the importance of games in ESL and presented her project based on this video:
You can see her slides here.
What I learned:
a. Games are tons of fun for learners but also they offer the great possibility to enhance learning. We usually believe that kids and young learners will be motivated to play games, but now I am willing to try games with adult students.
b. Games allow students to deal with soft skills like problem solving and critical thinking, but they can also provide a great opportunity to practice almost any language skill.
c. Designing games takes a lot of time and dedication, setting goals, creating the challenges or tasks, preparing materials and providing some kid of award for the participants who achieve the goals. Many ideas were provided by presenter and attendees like: participation certificates, souvenirs, badges
What I would like to try:
Given my own teaching scenario, I would like to figure out a way to develop a similar game but online, involving participants from different parts of the world.
2. Keynote: Working Miracles
Presenter: Chuck Sandy
Chuck said: “In this session I’ll shine a light on a few miracles in process, shared a simple structure that can spark miracles, and invite you to use this structure to work some miracles of your own. I hope you believe that’s something you can do because as Paulo Coehlo writes, “Miracles only happen if you believe in miracles” and I do.”
Chuck presented an amazing project called Design for Change.
The whole project is based on Design Thinking:
