Mark Graner on using images and playful elements in education

Mark Graner
We want to show how to weave game concepts into your teaching and help you as a teacher get started with it
Name
Mark Graner
Current role
Educational Design & Technology at Education Support

There is still plenty to discover to enrich education. Mark Graner, team member of Educational Design & Technology within Education Support at Radboud University, hopes to offer teachers new insights during The Education Days. He will do so with the workshop 'Pimp Your PowerPoint' and with a session on the use of game elements in education.

'You may recognize it: a PowerPoint with many sheets, filled with extensive text. The idea behind this is often to make the presentation also serve as a reference work for students who cannot attend the lecture. An understandable reasoning, although such sheets distract from your story. You do more justice as a lecturer or researcher if your presentation supports your story in the background. Using more images and less text helps. But how do you go about this? The workshop 'Pimp Your PowerPoint' gives you practical tools to deal differently with the content of your presentation, based on topics such as contrast and use of color. All this to positively influence the attention of your audience and get your story across in the best possible way. 

I am also part of the Games & Education special interest group. During The Education Days, the four of us will be hosting sessions around the roundtable discussion on Wednesday, March 20, on the use of board and card games in education. We will have games ready to play and discuss. These are partly existing board games, partly board games developed specifically for education. Using games can help gain new insights, in group dynamics, for example, or better understanding of complex issues such as democracy or sustainability. As a special interest group, we want to show how to weave game concepts into your teaching and help you as a teacher get started with that. 

For me, this will be my second year attending The Education Days. Last year I experienced that you can easily and quickly gain new insights and that the workshops help you to actually put them into practice. Looking at the program this year, the new minor 'Energy Innovations: a planetary perspective on challenging learning' seems interesting to me, as does the workshop 'Art as a driver of teacher development'. I like to be surprised, and I am particularly curious about themes that are unique and current. With our Team Educational Design & Technology, we work for all faculties to arrive at creative and innovative educational products with teachers. The Education Days help with that.'

Workshop 'Pimp Your Powerpoint'

Do you use PowerPoint for your education, but do you lack the skills to create great presentations? Let's take your PowerPoint knowledge to the next level and take a different approach to designing presentations! In this session, we will discuss the purpose of PowerPoint presentations and how slide design affects student's attention and learning outcomes. Based on examples from real courses, we will discuss the creative and proper use of text, images and colour. You will go home with inisghts and practical tips on topics like contrast, copyright and color picking, amongst others. And if you want to apply them on the go: bring your laptop and PowerPoint application!

Date and time

Wednesday 20 March on 13:15 - 14:30 at the Experience Centre of Radboudumc (Geert Grooteplein Noord 15), room -1.123, Snelbinder (route 5).

Register

Workshop 'Physical and digital games for learning'

Games are a great way to encourage reflection, skill development and learning! In this session, we bring together a collection of physical and digital games, both ready-made and self-developed, to stimulate a wide range of learning objectives. These include collaboration, political theory, biological inheritance, communication, moral reasoning and more. Participants will have the chance to play the games and discuss how they can be used in teaching. Moreover, participants are welcome to bring their own games to add to the showcase, so we can all play and learn new games together!

Date and time

Wednesday 20 March at 14:45 - 15:45 in the Experience Centre of Radboudumc (Geert Grooteplein Noord 15), Central Hall, floor -1.

Register