During 14-18 July 2025, I participated in the „Game based-learning and gamification” training course, organized in the Czech Republic, Prague, by ITC International. Participation was possible through the Erasmus Accreditation Project of the Mănești Secondary School, with reference no. 2024-1-RO01-KA121-SCH-000217413.
The course I attended was well organized and efficient for my professional and personal development. The content has been adapted to current educational needs: using game-based learning and gamification methods to facilitate learning, to increase students motivation and improve their outcomes.
The proposed activities were interactive, organized both indoors and outdoors and they facilitated communication with the other 14 participants from Turkey, Italy, Germany and Romania, active involvement, interrelationship and interculturality. These were organized through gamification, with participants receiving points, badges or various rewards at the end of each day, which made learning enjoyable, engaging and motivating, thus providing an example of good practice for classroom activity.
The course started with theoretical aspects regarding the differentiation of the 3 concepts: game, game based learning and gamification. During the 5 days, concrete examples of activities for each concept were provided. Thus, various online and offline games, applications and digital platforms useful in the teaching process were presented: Canva (making posters, flyers, business cards, videos, etc.), skribble.io (drawing and identifying words, the application being useful for vocabulary development), autodraw.com and quickdraw.withgoogle (used in activities for students with learning disabilities), Kahoot and Blooket (frequently used in the evaluation process), Hourofcode (programming games), Goosechase (presenting and completing tasks/missions outside the classroom), Storyjumper (creating digital books). Games such as The pyramid, Treasure hunt, Forbidden words that can be adapted to many subjects and applied online or offline, to develop communication skills were presented too.
We were also told about the evolution of technology over time, reaching the stage of artificial intelligence (AI). Clarifications were made regarding the functioning of the „brain” of artificial intelligence. Various applications that work on the basis of AI were presented: Chat GPT, Copilot.microsoft, Deepfake.civai.org, Mistral.ai, Claude.ai, Perplexity.ai, Zapier.
A cultural activity was also organized, presenting important tourist attractions and the local history.
This mobility has significantly contributed to the development of my pedagogical, digital, linguistic and intercultural skills, while also providing the motivation to implement innovative methods, to use games and digital applications in the learning process.