The EDUxperience Conference focuses on how to make learning processes more attractive to younger students. This year’s conference revolved around two key topics: teaching innovation and the high school to university transition.

How do I get my students’ attention?

Following the conclusions of the EDUXperience conference, using technology, social networks and gamification are key to raise student interest in class. The following methods will sensibly increase your students’s hunger for knowledge:

• Online games. Maria Sabiote, a secondary school teacher, opened the conference by presenting a successful class experience: how to teach a social sciences course while playing the online game Apprendices of Prof. Miguel Ángel. In this game students had to find the disappeared professor Miguel Ángel while learning history and art concepts. “Games are the way through which humans learn difficult things," added her colleague, Gonzalo Frasca, developer of Dragon Box (a math online game for children).

• Video games: Video games have stopped being considered lonely activities and they are now used to promote teamwork. Carla Sevillano, a bachelor student of videogaming, presented different video games in which children and teenagers learned to work as a team, manage resources and make collaborative decisions.
   
• Escape Rooms: Escape rooms also burst strongly into the educational world. Txema Arenas, a secondary teacher in Barcelona, ​​explained how he took his secondary school pupils to Finland and turned the entire trip into an escape room. Following the journey of a Syrian refugee family, students had to interact with each other to achieve a common goal. This enhanced the students’ decision making, collaborative analysis and reflection skills.

• Blogging and booktubing: "Young people still like to write or read. They just need to find their way or channel", claimed Catalan booktuber Marta Botet. When she was only 11, Botet began to upload YouTube videos recommending books for children and teenagers. Her popularity grew so much that she now owns a literary blog. At the end of her talk Botet advised teachers to encourage their students to create online content.

• Music: Using songs to learn is also a highly acclaimed mnemonic technique amongst teenagers. K.OS, a Catalan rapper still in high school, told the EDUxperience audience to use rap music for topics that require a great deal of remembering, such as the English phrasal verbs. At the end of his intervention, K.OS performed an improvised rap where he linked a series of words previously written down by the audience.

Once EDUxperience came to an end, the Transmedia Literacy International Conference took over. “Transmedia Literacy” refers to how teenagers develop transmedia skills to generate and learn content through interactive digital media. The Transmedia Literacy Conference is directed by Professor Carlos Alberto Scolari and it is a part of an H2020 European project awarded to the UPF’s Communication Department.

Learn more:

• KIT for teachers (Transmedia Literacy project)
• EDUxperience and critical competence in the classroom. Article by Marta Lopera