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Kathy Sierra, a popular technology blogger, author and game developer, believes that incentivizing learning-related behaviors poses risks. Sierra says rewards should be left at the classroom door. She is critical of the way gamification is practiced in the classroom, and believes well-intentioned educators may be missing the mark.

“A well-designed game only deploys certain mechanics to support an intrinsically rewarding experience,” Sierra explains. “When you remove that experience but keep the mechanics, you are now working from an entirely different psychology than actual games, and it is one that, in essence, uses mechanics to drive mechanical behaviors.”

Matthew Farber is not keen on the term “gamification”

That’s what we want to do. Well…OK, that’s what I in my omniscient infinitude want to do. This is the problem of the connected classroom how can one give up the hiearchy, trusting that the course of things will be taken up in manifold ways and products?

And therein lay the rub: in response to the fear and confusion I sensed in my students I became Uncle “Hub Central”. Understanding how to summarize became an external act outside their own minds consisting of checklists, algorithms, and templates designed to connect the dots that I so faithlessly put on the page. But in the end I believe that summing up needs to be an internal algorithm that rises up as a personal exigency, a massing together of sets of neuronal allies, firing and wiring like a mosh pit of nodal “hands” holding up the crowd surfing madman named Summary.

Meaning making and perhaps internal connecting? A consummation devoutly to be wished.

In my social studies classes I am a fan of games that go beyond the simple answer a question get a point and instead cause students to debate within and without their table group, think critically, and make a decision.  Games are not some aberration that teaches students to think life is a game, but instead is creating an environment that allows for difficult concepts to be acted out in a safe environment.

even if the game doesn’t come out great the teacher tried to be creative instead of hiding behind what “works". 

 I also think that at times to much has been pushed onto the “best practices” and has slowed creative thought.  The best practices have a place and they work very well when used properly, but when do we stop saying what teachers are doing is wrong because they don’t look like the person next door?  Are we all supposed to be clones teaching in the same way all the time?  I think not.  But I suppose that is a different topic to tackle on different post.