I have always been intrigued by people talking about gamification in their classroom. I always assumed it meant that the entire class was gamified all year long and the students were always on the computer playing games and earning digital badges. I also pictured a classroom that was completely driven by a product like class craft.
After reading some of the material from this week, I realized that I incorporate some games and gamification in my own classroom. My students love competitive games like quizziz and Kahoot. These are not game based learning but they are gamification tools that are very simple for a teacher to implement in the classroom. I even used Kahoot with the parents who came to my back to school night. I also LOVE to create extension padlets for my students full of digital games that students can play to help master content. Brainpop.com has some excellent science games very similar to icivics that was shown in class. I often have students playing games such as "matter sorter" or "the blood typing game" to learn about the science content that we are covering in class. Gaming is definitely in our students blood. I cannot think of a single day of school where I have not heard students talking about some new video game they play at home with their friends. The most current one I hear them playing with each other is "fortnite". The majority of them also have a competitive spirit. I think gaming has a place in the classroom but I am not sure if an entire classroom or class should be gamified. I do think some gaming is great, so that kids can have fun while learning or not even realize how much they are learning. I think everything should be used blended together so that nothing gets stale or old. Kids love when teachers mix things up.
4 Comments
Shawn
4/29/2018 02:08:46 pm
I think we all tend to do that, over generalize ideas. I know for myself when I go to conferences and see how other amazing educators are using tech in their class I wonder "how the heck am I going to do all that". I think the best thing for our students is to just try new ways of teaching our students. It only makes senses to integrate things are students already excited about doing and bring it into the classroom. I know for me I sometime struggle with how to weave it in to my lessons.
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Mady
4/30/2018 07:03:11 am
I totally agree that gamification is a great way to raise engagement and student excitement in the classroom. My first year I made "the question game," which is where I group my students and ask them to work together to write the answers to review questions on a student whiteboard. They are given one minute to pick a team name (which are usually pretty amusing) and then every team that gets each question right gets a point. I still find it amusing how much they love it, even though it is so simple!
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Scott Marsden
5/1/2018 06:54:49 pm
Where you talk about how games in our students' blood, I think about keeping some of my freshmen boys off of Fortnight! That seems to be the game de jour. If games are so engaging, what if we could turn our whole class into a game?
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joseph williams
5/2/2018 07:51:01 am
@ Scott, I agree. After reading Ken Robinson's Creative Schools, there was so much emphasis on meeting students where they are out or finding what drives/motivates them and using this as your gateway into academia. If games are that engrained into our students then why not utilize that for academic learning purposes?
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