Gamification

May I encourage you to study this growing gamification movement? It is not "edu-tainment," it's engagement. Getting students to compete against themselves and others, to strive for higher levels and to reach beyond mediocrity can only be good for learning. Gamification adds in badges, earnings, leaderboards and anything that creates high interest. Look back at this school year and ask yourself, "How much fun did my students have this year?" I'm not talking about fun for the sake of fun, but fun as in the joy of learning. If your class was pretty dull, it may be time to consider gamification. It can start with a simple passport system where the students travel through the content of your course and earn badges/stickers for completing the learning. It can get as intricate as keeping a leaderboard with constantly updated results of progress. Adding a higher level of expectations and successes will give your students the edge to be naturally involved in your class if they think they are playing. It's the child's way!

How can you gamify your classroom, workshop or meetings? The key is to find a theme so that you can develop characters and levels of expertise. I am a part of a conference next week where they have designed all our workshops around a Ninja theme and each of the levels are earned by completing deliverables throughout the conference. It's quite creative and my role as a presenter is to break my content down into point values for the participants to earn in order to compete to become the highest level of learning. This type of competition is not cut-throat because everyone can gain the highest level if they are working hard enough. We are even going to have a dynamic leaderboard for teachers to check on their levels. It has really helped me organize my content and expectations into portions of the day that may need more time and has encouraged my really look at the importance of the content. Gamification has great potential at any level of learning, with any subject and within any community that is concerned with highly engaged students.

PS. Have a sweet time of summer rest, refreshment and relaxation. This is the 8^th summer that I will host the "Best of tuesdays" for the next 10 weeks. I will join you with new content again in mid-August. I look forward to sharing your ideas with others.

       

Found in rural Pembina Hills, Alberta

ipadio   

LiveBinders 

Doceri 

NASA's Image Gallery 

Popplet 

Zoey's Room
Finance in the Classroom
Fotopedia 

The Common Good Forecaster  

Google Earth 

UJAM 

Symbaloo.edu 

Google Science Fair 

Stossel in the Classroom
Word Sift 

Lee Kolbert