 Hi again, everyone. This is another live stream session by ITTT and my name is Liza. I'm happy to welcome you to this live stream session and today we're going to discuss three interesting tools you might utilize to make your lessons interactive and engaging, because these things will help you to gamify your classes. So in my previous live stream, I actually shared several trends, like 10 trends for 2022 that you have to think about to implement in your online classes. And today I will dive into this idea of gamifying lessons and share several tools that you might actually use to help your students get excited and engaged into your content. And I hope that you will love these ideas. These are going to be actually online teaching tools. So some of them, they can be used free of charge, but at the same time, some of them cost a little bit. So just make sure you learn everything about all of those things I mentioned and try them out with your one-on-one classes or maybe with your groups and see how it works for you. So let me quickly change my screen setting so that the presentation is bigger for you. And I also have to say that today's live stream is going to be shorter than usually because I just want to give you this piece of information that you can implement straight away. And it's not something, you know, it's not this rocket science. I don't have to explain everything in details because the main point is to try it. But before I start my presentation, so let me quickly introduce myself if you don't know who I am. So my name is Lisa. And I'm an ESL teacher and at the same time I'm a marketing specialist. And I also work for ITTT as a Teflon TESOL expert. So if you have any questions related to these three different spheres, feel free to ask me. And also I would really love to hear from you. Use your comment section to let me know where you are from. What are you doing? Like at what stage of your Teflon career development you are right now? So as for me, I've been teaching for many years already, I should say. I started like back in 2014 when I was a university student. And then I worked in real classrooms. I also worked one-on-one and had a really nice opportunity to spend some time abroad working in China. Like last year I decided to switch to this online teaching mode and I've been working as an ESL teacher online for two years already. So yeah, something like that. And yeah, don't be shy to use your comment section. I really appreciate when you communicate with me. And it's always easier when I know that there are some people watching and someone who finds these livestream sessions useful and helpful. And I can actually see Adam, who is actually a regular visitor to these livestream sessions. Thanks, Adam, for tuning in. And let's move on and discuss the first tool that I have already prepared for you. So you can check out this online teaching tool which is called AdVy. But a couple of months ago, like a month ago, they actually were called Progress Me. So you can actually find both versions. That's because they decided to change the brand name. So for the global audience, they are going to be AdVy. But this is a great online tool that contains various templates that you can use to create your lessons interactive and engaging. And this is also a great way to gamify your classes because each time your student does some exercises, they can see the result really quickly. So it is like partially this gamifying technique. But it also depends on how you structure your class. So basically, you can utilize these beautiful lesson templates to create whatever idea you want to make up whatever style of a game or lesson you want. So basically, step by step, you can lead your student through various stages of the lesson. And it might be also created as this online game something. So using this platform, it is really easy. So by the way, apart from lesson templates that you can use to create your lessons, there are also such options as virtual classrooms, online classes. So basically, you don't have to use any other soft to deliver your classes. So you can start your one-on-one class right there. You can also schedule your lessons and your students will get notified via email or SMS. So this is a really nice choice if you want to have everything for yourself to create and deliver your classes. And also, if you are a teacher who wants to create a language school, for example, this platform can also be used. So you can create all different classes and set up dashboards for each teacher and for each student and organize everything on this platform. So it's not just this exercise tool or activity tool, but it is something bigger like a platform that you can use and compete with huge online teaching schools like VAPK or something like that. All right. The next tool that I really, really like to use myself is called Wordwall. And these are actually just activities templates, but apart from online teaching templates, there are also modes for in-class teaching. So regardless of the activity you create, you can actually set it for both online teaching classes and offline classes as well. So this tool is really, really nice if you want to versatile both online teaching classes and real classroom lessons. And also, there are many different designs that you can use to make your activities more engaging, but you have to pay a little for these two. So basically, I can't say how much it is now because I have this recurring payment and I don't even notice when they charge me, but it's no more than like five dollars or something. And you will have so many various templates. There are just like nine of them, but in fact, they have maybe 15 or something, I think even more. And each template has various designs. So for example, as for this maze chase, there are such options as this space maze chase and also this Christmas mode. So this is a really nice tool to create various types of activities. And you can set your students to play, although using your screen sharing mode, for example, or you can assign this template to play. For example, if your students have like if you work with a group of students, you can just drop out the link to your class chat, and they will open each one on their own computers, set their names and play as a group like against each other. It's a really nice way to support this competition, to boost their interest and also to engage into the lesson content. So there are various types of activities you can create. And also it's a really nice website where you can find actually ready made materials. So if you, for example, don't have any time to prepare for your classes, you can just type into your keywords, like for example, if you are going to teach present continuous, you can search for ready made materials in the community section. And you will get all various templates done by other teachers. And you don't have you don't have to spend any time preparing for your class. So you will just use something that the other teacher has already created and implementing your classroom routine. So as you can see, there are quizzes, matchups, word games, and many more. And the last template, no, not template, the last website, which is also an incredible gamifying tool. It is called Kahut. It is more popular, I would say, in the western world, because I saw that huge universities and, you know, colleges use this tool to engage huge groups of people like students during lectures or some workshops, you know. And it can also be used in many various ways. There are also ready made templates by well-known organizations, like for example, I found lessons created by Disney, what else, NASA and stuff like that. And probably the only option you can do using this tool is to create like quizzes. But at the same time, you can utilize these activities in many various ways. So you can actually introduce new topics, review content. You can break the ice using these quiz templates. But on the other hand, there are some more ways to ask your students to get into the content. So you can also review their knowledge this way. So if you don't want to spend time on a regular test, you can create this test with this tool, Kahut, and offer it as a non-standard way how to carry out a regular test. So it is actually really easy and motivating as well. And as you can see, you can create your template. So you can create your game or any other type of activity. Then you can host it during your lesson and make your students play it. Or on the other hand, you can set it as an assignment as a part of their homework by sharing a link to this game. And that's it. This is how it is done. So three ideas, three tools that you can actually Google right now and start working with them in your next class. So that's it. So easy. But you know what? I actually know a little bit more platforms where you can create games and motivating activities. So I would like to share those ideas in a blog post in my Facebook group. So here you can see this QR code. If you scan it, you will get to my Facebook group. And I will definitely give you access first of all to this presentation so that you could click on every link from this presentation. And also I will share several more ideas that you can use to make your lessons game-like mode. And I hope that it will help you to versatile your content and make your students more motivated and engaged. So I have just dropped out the link to the chat box. You can copy it and join my Facebook group. That is actually it. I wanted to share just these three tools today. But if you guys have any questions related to gamification or different ways how to create lessons, please feel free to ask me out right now in the comments section. Because otherwise, I will finish this live stream a little bit earlier than usual. So yeah, feel free to ask. And I can see a comment by Koa. I hope to pronounce the name correctly. Thanks a lot for your feedback. I hope that these tools are useful for you and you will definitely try them out at least once each one. So yeah, that's it. All right, if you have any questions related to gamification, creating material, some stuff, feel free to ask me out right now. Okay, yeah. There is also a letter who is our regular viewer. Thanks a lot for joining in and sending your feedback. All right. And what I would like to add is that if you follow ITTT on your favorite social media, you know that we try to share valuable content on a regular basis. So just stay tuned. And if you want to get some more ideas of online teaching materials or online teaching tips and tricks, feel free to ask right now. Because I'm here to exchange my experience with you. So today's presentation was shorter than usual. But I think that it is more precise this way. Okay, that's an interesting question, I should say. I don't manage students who have different abilities because this is the best part of freelance teaching. I can choose those students I want. So at the beginning of this school year, I decided to interview each student who I was going to work with. And that was so successful, I should say, for me as a teacher on the first place, and for students as well. So I narrowed down my niche. I stopped offering those general English courses, but rather focused on people who prepare for international exams. And that's it. That's how I started managing just one type of request. And I also narrowed down the age group to students of about 13, 14 years, so teenagers. And that's it. Yeah, so how I did it. But when I was a school teacher, I mean, an in-class school teacher, I worked with various types of students. And what helped me was to getting more involved into their interests and lives. And that's how I worked with all of them simultaneously. But I should say that I didn't deal with huge groups really often. I worked with 35 plus groups when I worked in China. But at that time, I got some help from the Chinese teachers, from the classroom teachers. Anyway, it wasn't that successful, as I can reflect right now. So if you work online, what I suggest doing is narrowing down your niche and focusing on a specific request. It should be much better for you as a teacher because you save time on preparation. You don't spend much time on building those relationships with people who are not actually that interested in learning English in the long term. And so on and so forth. So this is actually one of the trends in 2022 in online teaching. If you want to boost your teaching career, you should consider narrowing down your niche and picking the sphere which is really in demand and which is more profitable as a consequence. So in my opinion, it was exam preparation and also that group of teenagers I really adore working with. So I don't like working with adults, for example, because they quickly lose their motivation. At first they come really inspired and say that they really, really need English. But then eventually I see, I notice that that's actually not what they want to spend much time on. And yeah, I have to be frank and say that, well, sorry, I can't work with you right now because you have some other interests and something more important than English. Yeah, so that's it. All right, guys. Do you have any further questions related to online teaching or English teaching tools? Feel free to ask. And yeah, so if you don't have any further questions, I think that that's it for today. But as I have already mentioned, check out my Facebook group tonight because I will drop out several more ideas of online teaching tools that you can use to gamify your lessons, to spice up your lessons. Feel free to ask me any questions on Facebook as well. And see you next week. Bye bye.