Author Archives: grahamstanley

I am a teacher, social media consultant based in Barcelona, Spain.

More than a just digital star chart for learners

I have decided to try gamifying a class again this year. Two years ago, I adapted Chore Wars to use with a group of teenagers studying for the First Certificate Exam and had mixed results. Since then, I introduced Class Dojo to teachers of our school, and it’s been a real hit with the primary and [...]

World of Work vs World of Warcraft

Most people don’t make a connection between the world of work and World of Warcraft, but they intersect in many ways. On 5th August, in a webinar for IATEFL BESIG, Graham Stanley looked at this and some ways a Business English teacher could make use of computer games and gamification in their practice. The recording for [...]

Digital Play post-ELTon win interview

The British Council website English Agenda has added more ELTons related content to the site, with video interviews of the winners and photos taken during the ceremony and on the red carpet and afterwards. Here’s the interview we gave after winning our award:

New in Town

New in Town (http://apps.facebook.com/newintown) is a Facebook game which has been getting a lot of attention recently, and was nominated for an award at the recent Gamelab conference. It  is a life simulation game, similar to the Sims in nature, but with less of a focus on building and decorating your house. About: You play the part [...]

Digital Play (the book) wins an ELTON

We’re still reeling from Digital Play (the book) winning the British Council’s ELT award for innovation (the ELTons) in teacher resources, presented to us at a ceremony held in London at Tavistock House on May 23rd. Kyle and I went to London the same day and walked to the BMA building (Tavistock House), where the [...]

Reading Game – Harry Quantum

Level: Intermediate Location: Multiple computers (Computer room /class set of laptops, etc.) Skills focus: Reading Game: Harry Quantum Episode 1: TV Go Home (point-and-click adventure) Time: 20 minutes+ Learners will probably need 30-40 minutes to finish, but they can always finish the game at home (a great way of giving them reading homework without them thinking [...]

Focus on genre: Escape the room games

If you are a regular to this blog, then you’ll know that not all online computer games are ideal for using in the language classroom. Some genres are better than others. This is a new series looking at the genres we recommend, why they are good for language learning/teaching, how best to exploit them, and [...]

Unlocked achievements

We have written about gamification in previous posts on this blog, including tools such as Class Dojo and Chore Wars. Here’s another way you can use the idea of gamification in class if you have a data projector and computer (or IWB) in order to motivate students to work harder and for you to help [...]

Digital Play on the short-list for an ELTON

Kyle and I are very excited that Digital Play (the book, not the blog) has been short-listed for a British Council 2012 ELT Innovations award (an ELTON). This prestigious award is given to the very best in English Language Teaching. Competition is fierce, given the amount of very high quality language teaching and learning materials [...]

Gaming the EFL classroom

It’s my pleasure to introduce a guest blog post by James York, who, as I mentioned last week, has been doing some very interesting things in his classroom, using gamification to motivate his students. Thanks, James for an inspiring piece on how you get started – I’m sure it will lead to more language teachers [...]