Although I didn’t call it by this same name, gamification has long been a part of my classroom. Gamification happens in a classroom anytime a teacher sets up a management system with rewards, points, team efforts, levels of achievement. For example, where I did my student teaching, the entire school had a gamified system for math fact fluency. Every classroom did a 5 minute speed/accuracy math facts quiz daily. When you achieved accuracy and fluency you leveled up to the next quiz. Quizzes were grouped in sets and the students on that set belonged to a level named for an animal. After mastering a particular set of quizzes you moved to the next animal group. Many teachers gamify their classroom management system. Fred Jones has a system he calls PAT (Preferred Activity Time). The class begins with a certain amount of PAT time and can increase or decrease their time by meeting behaviorial or procedural goals. For example, a teacher has given the class multi-step directions on how to move into small groups and prepare for team projects. She wants to minimize the transition time and discourage dallying. She tells that class she thinks the transition will take 4 minutes. If they can be ready in less, the extra time is added to the PAT time. Shazam! Gamified! Often, PAT time, the reward, IS time for learning games. Which begs the question… how are games for learning different than gamification? Gamification is the system for incentives. Learning games incorporate this incentive but dive deeper and include content knowledge. Their goal moves beyond motivation and active participation. It’s purpose is mastery of content and/or a skill. One particular experience comes to mind when I think of the power of learning games. One of the courses I took for my K-8 credential was Teaching Math. Thankfully, the course content included the idea that playing math games was a valuable practice. I tried out a game with my students that was simple yet powerful. The game is used to introduce place value units. I’ve now tweaked this game for use in 5 different grade levels. Let’s call the game “Make it Greatest” or “Make it Least”. The object of the game is to make the number with the greatest or least value, you pick or alternate. Players all draw one digit card or roll a die to get a digit. They must place the digit into a place value frame. This can be as low tech as lines on paper, and you can choose to what place value they play. For example, first grade students would begin with ones and tens while fourth graders might play to the hundred thousands and one millions places. Students must all draw digits simultaneously and place them into the frame before drawing another digit. Make the game more complex by including zero as a digit. After creating their numbers, they read them out to one another and discuss who has the greatest/least number. So simple. I found that playing this one game caused the students to experience at least 4 or 5 of the lesson concepts from the unit. Effectively, they practiced actively the concepts that were meant to be instructed over the course of 4 or 5 days of direct instruction. And they had fun doing it. So did I.
Jane McGonigal’s TED talk on how gaming can make a better world highlights these strengths of gamers. As a gamer herself, McGonigal makes a very convincing argument for teaching and learning through extensive, multiplayer games. She makes the case that the qualities gamers cultivate will be valuable assets for our future need to solve problems. It’s easy to see the distinction between gamification and gaming for learning. Gamification is part of learning games, but gamification alone does not always result in learning. This is not to say that gamification doesn’t have a useful purpose in school. It’s a fun motivator. It’s uses as a motivational tool are not just useful in school. Look at the world around us and you see gamification everywhere. Rewards cards at retail and service providers is a form of gamification. Earn points by more purchases, get more purchasing power. Retailers are playing the game to get your business. Many work places incentivize by gamification. A local resort tries to motivate safe work place practices by entering every employee into a Bingo game board for every day that there is no accidents reported in the work place. Employees have a greater chance to win for every incident free day and the cash winnings increase for every “safe day”. There isn’t any harm in using gamification to grease the wheel of classroom management and systems & procedures, just make sure that if your goal for a game is actual content mastery, that you choose the correct game to provide deep learning.
5 Comments
7/15/2017 10:37:05 pm
In Depth revaluation of gamification with information that reaches beyond the classroom to the workplace. I agree that gaming does aid group work, setting norms for interacting with each other for a common reason. If your students have practices breaking into smaller groups and taking turns talking, playing, interacting with each other. They understand how to work in groups with each other to solve problems, make projects, blog in groups for break out.
Reply
I used to do those timed math quizzes, too! Man, I was stuck on that stupid subtraction level FOREVER! I could not remember that 14 - 8 = 6! That one stumped me every time, and SLOWED ME DOWN!
Reply
james
7/17/2017 10:46:31 am
Nancy,
Reply
Nai Saelee
7/17/2017 03:02:44 pm
Nancy,
Reply
dan
7/18/2017 07:11:31 pm
I think the idea of gamification helps get all students involved in whats going on in the classroom. Students that overachieve and students that struggle with getting involved. The fact that you found a way to use these in all your classes is amazing!
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Nancy JaminetArchives
December 2017
Categories |