Group items tagged

There has been so much buzz around gamification recently that it can be difficult to separate the hype from the reality. With clients asking the first questions about gamification, in this post I'm attempting to draw some lines around gamification in learning. First off, as I understand it, gamification in learning means attempting to apply the principles that make individuals play games for thousands of hours. Gamification is not 'gaming', we needn't create digital games costing thousands of dollars and hours to benefit.

gamification - incentives to learn?

Linked to the "game-based learning" technology outlined in the NMC Horizon Report 

This infographic is probably the most dense I've ever seen so I won't waste your time (it's the school year, no one has a spare minute) with my blabber. Enjoy the graphic and be sure to share it with your fellow gamification-loving colleagues!

Not just the information, but the presentation, are awesome. I LOVE infographics.

Infographic on Knewton's website

A company that uses game theories to drive desired behavior - e.g. points, levels and badges based are awarded on courses you take, comments, & contributions you make. See the Value Proposition PDF for details

"65% of today's grade-school children will end up at jobs that haven't been invented yet." Infographic detailing some possible future directions for educational technology including gamification, digital classrooms and novel computing methods.

Opinion in edutopia

Guidelines for embedding access into game design.

This Forbes article mentions the Horizon report that we read earlier for class, plus some emerging trends in ed tech. Talks about games, mobile, and adaptive learning (we have touched on some of these topics in class).

There's been a surge in the number of Infographics published this year that focus on instructional technologies and how they are evolving and being used.

A reminder that technology is not in and of itself a motivating force in the classroom.

I wonder if different types of technology have different impacts. For example, I can absolutely see where students wouldn't be motivated by a digital whiteboard or a blog...too adult and too similar to traditional education. But what about things like games for learning? Would they draw in a non-traditional student and actually motivate them to learn, albeit indirectly? There seems to be research on the gamification aspect that shows its positive impact, so do Bill's comments only apply to a subset of educational technology?

The author has updated his list that he made a yr ago. Comparing to that, he has kept the below 4 from last year's list. (apple ipad&other tablet devices, gamification of education (although last year he used the phrase ''gradually taking hold'' for this), student response systems and other synchronous tools, open educational resources).  He seems to be  an advocate of 'flipped classroom' but as mentioned within the article 'Educators Evaluate ''Flipped Classrooms'' posted by Prof Dede on Aug 29th, whether all of these 10 are 'transformative' is a different question. They are 'emerging' though. Some of the new entrants for this year include those everyone else here has been sharing such as free online courses with potential for credentials, BYOD move within classroom and effective data usage in learning settings. To me it seems like he is closely paying attention to the emergence of the last category. 

The technologies that can have the best impact on education are evolving quickly from year to year, and the pace seems to be quickening.

related to discussion in section on 9/10 - "takes the most cutting-edge graphics and couples them with some of the most important lessons a student needs" 

This is a bit of an older article, but I think it's a great illustration of the way that 'gamification' can transform the exploration of a real-world conundrum into an engaging, appealing experience (with very practical applications).

Also a neat example of the ability of modern formats to draw upon the expertise and skills of an enormous (but broadly distributed and amorphous) community

an interesting writeup on on the basics of Khan Academy- including a couple of example teachers & classrooms. Also includes interview excerpts with Salman Khan.

It seems that the gamification of Khan Academy is undermining the "dropping out/back" of the technology after a certain amount of time, but students are learning, so is this good or bad?

This article seems pretty consistent with what we heard today. I think the most interesting aspect of the whole Khan Academy phenomenon is not what he does (make direct instruction videos- People learn to cook that way from Emeril), or how he does it (very few production values), or even that the internet makes him so distributable. The most incredible thing to me is that this one guy who did an end run around the entire establishment of EDUCATION is having this much impact on kids, teachers, and policy makers around the world. He isn't doing anything all that innovative and yet he is having the impact on education that one would think would come from an extraordinary innovator. Why isn't that innovator coming from EDUCATION. I think the big generative questions KA offers us in Education are: Why is this such a big deal? (And I do believe it is), Why didn't we think of it?; and Given all we know about education, shouldn't we be able have a much more substantial effect with much more substantial outcomes with as few resources as KA? If not? What are we doing?

I wish my undergraduate experience had looked more like this :-) how cool! Check out the vision, mission, and goals of the school of interactive games and media...some interesting reading. Thanks for sharing!

Chocolate-covered broccoli. jk Says the key is "intrinsic integration": ensuring that the mechanics of the game mesh tightly with the content the game is trying to teach.