MOBILITY 8. “Interactive teaching - Using educational games and new technology in order to enhance learners’ motivation”. Eruditus Language School. Konstanz, Germany. Daniel Arador. Day 3

Today the class has begun with an “unusual” activity. We were told to write down one unusual thing about us on a piece of paper (along with our name) and hand it in to the teacher. The teacher then read them out loud without saying the name and we had to guess whose paper it was. It was a good warm-up activity and again it helped create a more cohesive group (the more you know about the others and the others about you, the more comfortable you will feel around them).

After that, we spent a big part of the class learning about some useful Internet tools:

• Kahoot. Most people had already used Kahoot in the past, but we were made aware of some of its hidden features (how to get a detailed account of the results, how to automatically set the questions in a random order, etc.).
  
• Classtools.net. This is a website where teachers can find lots of resources they can later use during their lessons.
  
• QR Treasure Hunt Generator. It is a tool that can be found in classtools.net which makes creating a QR treasure hunt much easier and quicker.

Afterwards we conducted a QR treasure hunt ourselves. Then we played three different games that can again either be used as fun language activities or as activities to help unite the group.

• Brain teasers. We were presented with many different riddles that we had to solve in groups. Many of the riddles had a language element that can easily be used to exemplify some phenomena in the English language.
  
• Speed dating. We were seated in two rows facing each other and had two minutes to find out as much as possible about our “date”. Then, after we had had a chance to speak to most of our classmates, we changed our seating arrangement to a circle and the teacher asked what we had found out about our classmates. This activity not only helps to get to know each other better, but can also be used to practice specific language points (a specific verb tense, vocabulary, etc.).
  
• Hedge your bets. Students are given a certain amount of fictional money and are told to bet part of that money in each round. In each round there is one question they will have to answer. If they think they will know the answer, they can bet more money. They will bet BEFORE knowing what the question. is. If they get the answer right, they double the money that they bet. This game is played in teams and is a great way of fostering cooperation. Again, this can also be used to practice specific language features.

This class was also very interesting and useful.