In our time, e-learning has enabled us to access quality education from anywhere in the world tailored to the needs of students and teachers who manage learning. It is a very convenient and flexible method that has allowed many to see the educational process from an interesting new perspective as an adjunct and/or alternative to traditional learning.
Technology is often the driving force for learning and curriculum development. To achieve better results, today’s educators are increasingly using digital tools and cutting-edge strategies in their teaching methods.
Gamification for learning is one of these strategies that is increasingly being used by educators around the world. The use of gamified elements can positively impact student engagement and collaboration, allowing students to learn more effectively.
Gamification is the process of using game elements in a context that is not a game. It has many advantages over traditional learning approaches, including increasing learner motivation, improving knowledge retention and better engagement of learners through social mechanisms such as badges, points or leaderboards. So, MY Smart School platform presents a new training model for primary and secondary school teachers based on open online educational resources and offers flexible digital tools and assessment tools for teachers to use during online courses.
Highlighting the playful nature and possibilities offered by the MY Smart School platform it can significantly contribute to mobilizing and activating students’ interest in the course with the goal of developing students’ cognitive, social and technological skills. The application of gamification as a learning technique motivates the child’s participation, engagement and interest. Its use achieves increased student engagement with the subject matter in question, and in a second time it can help the child to adopt behaviors favorable to the acquisition of knowledge. Children feel enthusiasm and encouragement, without having the concept of learning in their minds, which is particularly important for pupils with special educational difficulties and needs.
Using the MY Smart School platform we can implement tools such as Kahoot, Quizzes, Quizlet, Socrative, Google forms as they support specific gamification characteristics such as quiz with a timer, clearly defined number of trials, time interval between each attempt, provision of points, minimum score and feedback. Another feature of the platformed related to gamification is the possibility of digital story telling using graphs and pre-designed slides.
In general, using different tools, apps or even platforms is a great way to keep students engaged. Teachers can achieve student engagement through tablets, smartphones and other means to allow students to access their learning resources anytime and anywhere.
