After 4.5 years of hard work, memorable moments and exciting discoveries the iRead project will shortly be coming to an end on 30 June. In advance of our final newsletter we wanted to share with you the details of an upcoming special online event hosted by the UCL team and Learnus which will reflect on the use of learning games in education, drawing on our experiences with using Navigo in the classroom. The event will focus on the UK pilot but we hope attendees from other countries will also contribute to the discussion and share any similarities and differences with their own contexts.

See below for the full details and sign-up information – we hope to see you there!

Children’s learning in digital games: The theory and the practice

The use of learning games in schools is increasingly widespread, with research demonstrating their potential to promote more independent learning, foster children’s motivation and benefit learning outcomes. In this webinar we introduce empirical work backing each of these claims. We invite teachers who were using the Navigo literacy game in the primary classroom to share their views and experiences. Navigo is a personalised literacy game designed for primary children funded by Horizon 2020 EU funding. During the past 2 years it has been used by over 300 pupils in a range of primary schools in England. Before using it, teachers were given training and resources, but were free to choose how best to integrate the game within their teaching and everyday practice.

Dr Mina Vasalou and Dr Laura Benton (UCL Knowledge Lab)
Tuesday 22nd June at 5pm-6:15pm BST 
A Zoom Webinar

Reflecting on teacher experiences with using Navigo we will debate the following key questions around the use of games in education:

* What is the role of the technology vs the teacher? Do children need external support when playing learning games?

* How do learning games sustain children’s motivation and does this apply for all children?

* In what ways can games foster learning?  How do we evidence this?

 Dr Mina Vasalou is Associate professor at the UCL Institute of Education: technologies for learning and sociability; participatory design and design thinking; technologies for SEN 

Dr Laura Benton is Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Researcher at UCL Knowledge Lab, part of the UCL Institute of Education

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