5 gaming dynamics that truly engage students “How do we get kids to walk out of our classrooms and continue to think about what they’ve done in class?” he asked. Games give students an “endless list of things they have to complete–but the difference [compared to homework] is that they’re making the list,” Kiang said. The top five most addictive games, Kiang said, are: 5. There’s a great amount of power in the open-endedness of Minecraft as a learning environment, Kiang said. “When you know who your kids are, it makes a huge difference in how you see them–you can’t expect kids to fit in one mold,” he said. Kiang described the five gaming dynamics that engage students and make it easier for educators to integrate gaming into their instruction: 1. 2. When students save their progress in a game just before trying to solve a big challenge, they know their progress won’t be lost, and they’re more apt to explore. “In my class, I don’t necessarily want to create ‘A’ students–I want to create kids who are confident risk-takers,” he said. 3.
How to Apply Gamification in Education | Tablets For Schools Gamification, and the gamification of education in particular, is a huge and complex area. We have written about gamification in the past (in the form of educational apps that gamify subjects such as maths or languages). But what is the theory behind gamification? And what is the best way for educators to actually create gamified versions of traditional subjects? What is Gamification? Gamification involves introducing game design thinking to areas that aren’t traditionally games. How Does Gamification Work? However, gamification, despite the name, is about much more than making boring subjects “fun” – though this is the common perception. There is also a positive bias toward constant learning – the more the student knows about the subject (ie, the mathematical formulas), the better they become at the game. (*) Image courtesy of Gwyneth Anne Bronwynne The Process of Creating Gamified Learning There are many resources out there on how to gamify learning outcomes.
Octalysis: Complete Gamification Framework (This is the Gamification Framework that I am most known for. Within a year, it was translated into 9 different languages and became classic teaching literature in the gamification space in the US, Europe, Australia and South America.) Octalysis: Complete Gamification Framework Gamification is design that places the most emphasis on human motivation in the process. Most processes design around function and efficiency – they try to get the job done as quickly as possible. Even though many Gamification techniques were in use long before video games were around, games were one of the earliest examples of a holistic approach to implementing Human-Based Design – so now we call it Gamification. In the past few years, I have been digging deep into the formulation of a complete framework to analyze and build strategies around the various systems of Gamification. In the end, I came up with a system that I feel is instructive, useful, and elegant. The 8 Core Drives of Gamification 8) Loss & Avoidance
Gamification increases engagement and retention levels - HRreview Gamification is on the rise and has become one of business’ recent buzzwords. But what are we talking about? Defined as the use of game design mechanisms in non-gaming contexts, the term gamification was first introduced in 2002 by computer programmer Nick Pelling. Although the idea behind gamification has been around for a while, it is only in the last four years that attention has grown exponentially – up to the point that some critics report an abuse of the term. What seems to be evident is that gamification has brought tangible benefits to business, such as the ability to reach a larger audience, connect with prospective employees, and promote employer branding. Similarly, L’oreal’s Brandstorm offered its users the opportunity to become virtual brand managers and design a new product line for the company. The applications listed above should have given a hint of the potential of gamification for business purposes. Article by Sergio Russo
The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies Listen to this article as a podcast episode: Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:22 — 53.1MB) Subscribe: iTunes | Android | When I worked with student teachers on developing effective lesson plans, one thing I always asked them to revise was the phrase “We will discuss.” We will discuss the video. We will discuss the story. We will discuss our results. Every time I saw it in a lesson plan, I would add a note: “What format will you use? The problem wasn’t them; in most of the classrooms where they’d sat as students, that’s exactly what a class discussion looked like. So here they are: 15 formats for structuring a class discussion to make it more engaging, more organized, more equitable, and more academically challenging. I’ve separated the strategies into three groups. Enjoy! Gallery Walk > a.k.a. Basic Structure: Stations or posters are set up around the classroom, on the walls or on tables. Philosophical Chairs > a.k.a. Pinwheel Discussion > Socratic Seminar > a.k.a. a.k.a.
Gamification in Education The breakthrough happened after the student took the Bartle's Gamer Profile Quiz and we found out that he was a "killer." Off-the-charts killer, but achievement meant nothing to this student. Just like grades. No, we haven't identified the next school shooter, and I sure wish that Bartle hadn't named one of the four gamer profiles "killer" -- but nonetheless, this student identified with this profile. My ninth grade students have partnered on an epic quest with grad students at the University of Alaska Southeast and members of the Gamifi-ED OOC to study serious games, create an encyclopedia of serious games, and ultimately to create their own serious game in Minecraft. 1. Game mechanics are part of game theory. 2. As we saw with my "killer" student, there are four game-player types using this psychological evaluation. 3. Sixth grade teacher Michael Matera wowed me and other members of the OOC as he shared how he has completely gamified his sixth grade classroom. 4. 5. 6.
What We Can All Learn from a Montessori Classroom As we scramble for ways to improve our schools, to meet every student’s needs, to push back against a test-score driven educational culture, many of us wonder what the right path might look like. Is it possible that path has been under our noses for more than 100 years? Until five years ago, I had no idea what Montessori was. For some parents, it wasn’t that simple. Several years ago, a tiny educational revolution started in Bowling Green, Kentucky. First, they held several meetings to see if enough families would be interested in the school. The only problem was, no one in town was certified to teach with the Montessori method at the elementary level. I visited the school a few weeks ago to learn more about how the Montessori philosophy is applied at the elementary level. What I didn’t expect was the attitude of the students: They were focused. And I thought, what they have here, couldn’t we have some of this in a more traditional school? I think we could. Are you a kindred spirit?
Defining competencies via Gamification Build out Learning Competencies through a Gamification Strategy – something simple and something that works! Competency development is one of the most foundational and tricky areas of learning. Building out good competencies- which map to good learning, that map to good assessment- allows for a full feedback model that you can use to track learner development and understand and address knowledge gaps. The challenge with delivering training on a competency model after it is built out is that often times it is presented in a way that is much too formal for the average learner to get much use out of. Many times you have built excellent terminal and enabling objectives, fantastic performance objectives and have spent a good deal of time mapping everything to a learning plan with assessments and gap assessment models built in. A strategy that I really like and have implemented in the past is to build out a Gamification model that maps competencies into tangible elements. Assign Points: Author:
9 Tips for Engaging Your English Class with Pop Culture This guest post has been contributed by Jay Meadows. I’ve been teaching English for many years, across multiple grade levels, from middle school to high school to college. I’ve read (and have written) heaps of education books and research articles. And yet the premise for this post is so simple, I’m willing to bet that any one of our students can pin it down without a moment’s hesitation. What is the most essential ingredient to a rockstar lesson? It’s student engagement. We sometimes dress it up with the bells and bows of PBL, or strip it down to its bare components: authenticity, motivation, relatability. And for what? To better engage our students. In recent years, I’ve had the greatest success in achieving these things—and in evoking that sensation of having time-traveled—when I’ve gone out of my way to make deliberate connections between my students’ most popular interests and the “stuff” of my class. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Gamification in Education: Top 10 Gamification Case Studies that will Change our Future New to Gamification? Check out my post What is Gamification & my Gamification Framework: Octalysis Education Gamification in Action. There’s a lot of potential in the field of Education Gamification. If you ask children, “What is work?” Clearly there should be a way to help kids learn from what they do best – play. No longer viewed as a mundane process for presenting information while testing for retention and understanding, the modern educational challenge involves tasks of engaging students, stimulating their interests, retaining their attention, and maintaining a positive attitude in a nurturing environment Key to these goals is the effort to maintain a rich communications environment that encourages feedback and reinforcement, not only between the instructor/teacher and students, but also between the students themselves. Education Gamification Example #1 – DuoLingo:Learn a language while translating the Web Each student gets an avatar which can be visibly displayed in ClassDojo.
Four Tools to Merge the Digital and Physical in Your Maker Classroom It’s a new world: the digital and tangible are merging, and educators need to help students navigate the changing terrain. The solution? Let them be Makers. I’ve been involved in digital learning and education technology for more than 30 years, and the burgeoning attempt to merge the digital and physical worlds has been one of the most interesting aspects of the evolution of EdTech to date. It’s no longer enough—if it ever was—for teachers to lecture to a row of desks; today’s teacher must be more of a coach. See, Understand, Make There are several evolving spaces in which we are seeing the blending of the digital and physical successfully fostering critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity. Perhaps most obviously, 3D printing is enabling students to imagine, design, problem-solve and create in the digital domain, and the outcome of their work is a product they can hold in their hands. 2. 3. 4. Today’s Makers Solve Tomorrow's Problems We can tackle these obstacles.