Apps AR-and-ARGs

Greetings! I'm Scott Nicholson, author of Everyone Plays at the Library: Creating Great Gaming Experiences for All Ages , and an associate professor at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. During the 2011-2012 academic year, I was on sabbatical as a visiting professor at MIT, where I worked with the GAMBIT game lab.

Gamification. Marketers love it, game developers love to hate it. I hardly know what to make of it. At its most basic definition, it is the application of game-play mechanics in nongame settings. It is increasingly used by marketers to sell more products and encourage desired consumer behaviors.

"Today's schools face major problems around student motivation and engagement. Gamification, or the  incorporation of game elements into non-game settings, provides an opportunity to help schools solve these  difficult problems. However, if gamification is to be of use to schools, we must better understand what  gamification is, how it functions, and why it might be useful. This article addresses all three questions - what,  how, and why bother? - while exploring both the potential benefits and pitfalls of gamification."

Using an experience point system instead of a grading system. While the numbers are similar, the execution is different. Students start with 0 points and work their way up in an XP system, rewarding knowledge and skills gained. This is different from a typical grading system, which assumes you have an A at the beginning and removes points for every failure. Two totally different ways at looking at how to quantify student learning.

A curated list of 100 articles related to games and learning.

An infographic overview of the different types of game-learning.

Interesting infographic about using gamification in education. Also includes links to additional readings.

GSummit 2013 presentation by Professor Amy Baskin

Someone to look up? finneycanhelp told her about gamemooc while there. "share her secrets of how to accomplish great leaps in performance and engagement with limited resources"

At GSummit SF 2013, Professor of English at Florida State College at Jacksonville created something called the Grammar Olympics.