Gaming and Gamification in my Classroom

I'm the person who can't have games on my cellphone, otherwise I'll spend spare time mucking around on them rather than doing something productive, like, you know, reading.

And I do love a game of Tomb Raider. Solving problems, shooting bad guys, exploring exotic locations where the weather radically changes when you come out the other side of a cave.

But am I a gamer? Probably not, and certainly not if I compare myself to my teenage boys. That said, the Bartle test on what kind of gamer I am was a nice distraction, and I wasn't particularly surprised by the results:
Achiever: 53% (win, challenge, compare)
Explorer: 87%  (investigate, create, discover)
Griefer: 20% (hack, cheat, heckle)
Socializer: 40% (share, comment, help)
(Although, realistically, the socialiser bit would probably be a lot lower because I'm not really into that aspect of gaming.)

As an educator, how could I tap into the power of games in a few ways.

There is always room to play games in class! It took me a while to realise this as a teacher but students enjoy the competitive and entertainment factor. Even games as simple as hangman and bingo can engage students and help develop their skills and knowledge. Read more about the benefits of video games here:
http://cms.unige.ch/fapse/people/bavelier/wp-content/uploads/EichenbaumBavelierGreen2015.pdf
Games can be effective learning tools. Students are prepared to spend time playing game, and are focused on it. They have to solve a set of problems in order to win, dealing with complex variables in order to achieve this.

Students can also make their own games, harnessing their own creativity. I've had students develop board games based on a text that they have studied, which was an effective way to reinforce key information. These were paper copies, but there is obvious scope to get students to develop an interactive online game which achieves similar goals. This would have the added benefit of encouraging students to develop problem-solving and programming skills. Very shortly I am giving my Year 9 class an equivalent of Google's 20% time to work on a project of their choosing; I imagine that this would be something that would appeal to a number of students in the class, particularly those who have already shown an interest in using Scratch.

I can also use the world of games to inform my teaching. Gamification is literally everywhere, with game design elements incorporated into non-gaming things, from reward points to classroom management tools such as Class Dojo. Watch Seth Priebatsch's talk below where he discusses creating a game layer in society:



These layers include:
social dynamic;
game dynamic (using forces to influence behaviour)'
appointment dynamic (in order to succeed need to do something in a pre-defined way at predefined place, eg happy hour);
status dynamic (school has levels (grades etc));
progression dynamic (make steps in gradual process)
communal discovery (leverages network to source)
Other ways we see game elements we see in society include:
achievements
bonuses
countdowns
quests
progression
All of this can be applied to a classroom situation. These are the steps I will take:
Continue to use individual, group and class challenges
Give more immediate feedback
Provide more rewards
Reward students with experience points for achievements
Have a visual leaderboard
Provide more choices




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