The 20 Best Blogs About Game-Based Learning - Microsoft UK Schools blog. How To Use Game Dynamics In The Classroom. Edudemic is all about finding innovative ways to get through to students. That’s why we’ve talked about game dynamics more than a few times. Inspiring students to learn through the gamification of a large lecture hall has not yet been broached by us Edudemic-ers. Lucky for us, Liz Gross has an incredible look at the gamification in her newest post “ Can Game Dynamics Improve Attendance, Grades, and Engagement In A Large Lecture Course?
” Below are some selected excerpts that I thought would be important for the discussion. How It Works The Set-Up Before the semester begins, university students registered for a large-lecture introductory course will be randomly assigned to either a control section or an experimental section. How Smartphones Are Used Students in the experimental section will use their Android or iOS devices to engage in academic challenges in order to earn badges. The Technology Used Drawing Conclusions Learn More. Oxford Learning Lab Brings Gamification to Education | NEWS. OXFORD, England, August 2, 2012 /NEWS.GNOM.ES/ – Boom, Crash, Bang! These are the normal noises of a good online game. But must it always be like that? What if the same techniques of making progress, gaining points and earning badges of honour are applied to an educational environment? That’s one of the challenges set by Oxford Learning Lab ( , the leading site for marketing training and education.
Oxford Learning Lab makes it easy to share the learner’s progress on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter accounts. The badges of honour have names that can be easily recognized as Marketing career steps, such as Marketing Executive, Marketing Manager, or Chief Marketing Officer. However, is gamification more than just the latest buzzword, and can it aid the participant’s career? People who like photography, art or cooking will often show and share their achievements with their online social circles ; the same now applies to acquiring new knowledge and professional expertise. How to Motivate Physical Activity: Are rewards the key? | the Zamzee Blog. It can be hard for kids – and families – to make physical activity a regular part of daily life..
But the right amount of incentives can help make physical activity both rewarding and fun. The truth is, kids do all sorts of fantastic things spontaneously, without being rewarded for it. One morning, for example, they might declare they want to be the next JK Rowling – and then spend hours writing stories. For parents, it can be particularly encouraging to see kids remain dedicated to a worthwhile task, an important life skill for any of us.
The question is: How can we foster this type of intrinsic motivation, the impulse and determination to continue just because something feels right, to help establish patterns of healthy behavior, like regular physical activity? These days, kids are less likely to be physically active than kids in previous generations. Sadly, it’s the exception for kids to run around and get daily exercise, not the norm. We highly recommend reading Martin S. Like this: Gamification, Super Mario and STEM: Notes from the Games Learning Society Conference. The Future Of Education: An Online University That Charges $199 Per Month For Unlimited Classes. The higher education system in the U.S. is in trouble. Jobs for college graduates are in short supply, and student debt is becoming an ever-larger burden. There is at least one school that’s getting it right, though--it’s profitable, growing 30% to 40% each year, charging students less than $500 per month, and operating on a competency-based model that allows students to complete courses at their own pace.
That’s what’s happening at Western Governor’s University, a little-known online school. In almost any other industry, there would be 10 copycats right behind such a successful model, but there isn’t one here. Financial aid regulation in the for-profit education world (where credit has to be earned based on so-called "seat time") and resistance from traditional professors in the nonprofit world are powerful roadblocks. The school’s "freemium" model allows anyone to access its curriculum without paying. [MONITORING] 10 millions de dollars pour gamifier l’éducation de la jeunesse | Gamorlive, The Blog.
Aux Etats-Unis, l’industrie et les associations du jeu vidéo se sont récemment associées afin de créer un laboratoire du « game design » dont le champ de recherche va être fondé sur l’engagement et l’apprentissage des étudiants. Cette initiative tombe dans un contexte de société où la grande tendance actuelle de »gamification » se mélange au domaine de l’éducation dans le but de rendre tout enseignement ou apprentissage, aussi amusant et engagent que le plus commun des jeux. Ce nouveau labo aka le « Games, Learning and Assessment (GLASS) Lab » sera géré par « The Institute of Play », une association à but non lucratif qui sera soutenu à hauteur de 10.3 millions de dollars par la fondation John D. et Catherine T. MacArthur, la fondation Bill et Melinda Gates, l’éditeur de jeux Electronic Arts ainsi que de l’ « Entertainment Software Association (ESA) ».
Le laboratoire a été présenté le 28 Juin dernier à l’ » Aspen Ideas Festival » au Colorado. Plus d’infos ici. Video Games, Addiction, and the Potential for Addictive Education | Learning Through Play & Technology. By Hap Aziz Dr. Paul Howard-Jones has been creating somewhat of a stir for the better part of the past year in a series of interviews and conference presentations regarding the addictive nature of video games, and the possibility for leveraging that addiction in the process of education. There has been a series of articles published in the recent weeks covering Dr. Howard-Jones’ ideas, research, and findings, and the education and the game communities have been enjoying a fair amount of discussion and debate on the topic.
As the Senior Lecturer at Graduate School of Education at University of Bristol, specializing in Neuroscience and Education, he does have a natural interest in the field, and his research is currently focused on finding better ways to help students learn. “It certainly didn’t arise from trying to find an application for interactive whiteboards. To understand where Dr. Dr. . (1) Koepp, M. Like this: Like Loading... The Trouble with Gamification. In a May 29, 2012 post on her blog, game designer Elizabeth Sampat outlined some of the problems with the gamification movement as seen from the perspective of a seasoned game designer. Here is a look at what Sampat believes is wrong with the gamification of education as well as a few other issues with the concept, and some suggestions for what we might do to move the concept beyond the canned solution it is becoming. The Game Designer’s PerspectiveQuoting herself on Twitter, Sampat stated her main issue with the movement is that: "Gamification assumes all games share the same mechanics, which means everything that’s gamified is basically the same shitty game.
Using badges and leaderboards and offering toothless points for clearly-commercial activities isn’t a magic formula that will engage anyone at any time. Demographics are different, behavior is different— things that will work to motivate users of product X will not work to motivate users of product Y. Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net. Apprendre de 7 a 77 ans. 3 raisons pour lesquelles vous devriez passer au Serious Game pour vos prochaines formations. Gamification In The Classroom: How (And Why) One Teacher Did It. Latinity Points (XP) as a Replacement for Grades, Part 4.
In the previous three parts of this exercise, I laid out the criteria required in order to evaluate without grading, explained how Latinity Points are utilized as a part of Operation LAPIS, and then provided a full discussion and response from a group of three students. In this final part my aim is to elaborate on what the end of that process looks like, specifically when it comes time to assign a traditional grade in a very non-traditional classroom.
As a reminder from the first post, the following were the four criteria that I argued had to be a part of this system.Continuous embedded formative assessment of progressA record system with meaningful feedback towards meeting learning objectivesA record of all student workStudent agency in the evaluation process 1) Continuous embedded formative assessment: Every component of Operation LAPIS is designed with this at the core. There are no superfluous mechanics or deliberately gamified elements for cheap extrinsic motivation. Gamification And UX: Where Users Win Or Lose. Advertisement The gaming industry is huge, and it can keep its audience consumed for hours, days and even weeks. Some play the same game over and over again — and occasionally, they even get out their 15-year-old Nintendo 64 to play some Zelda. Now, I am not a game designer. I actually don’t even play games that often.
(Image credit: Axel Pfaender) So, what do games have that we miss in UX and Web design? Using game theories in areas not otherwise associated with games is often referred to as gamification. In this article, we’ll explore how and when to use gamification to improve the user experience of websites and apps, and also when not to use it. Table of Contents Definition Of A Game Sid Meier, creator of the Civilization series, once said that a game is “a series of interesting choices.” In their book Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design, Rollings and Adams speak of four actions related to games: play, pretending, rules and goals. Play Pretending Rules Goals Resources: Storytelling. In The Office | SuperBetter Labs. NewsiT Raises $500K To Gamify Crowd Journalism. Crowdsourced news platform NewsiT.net just announced that it has raised $500,000 in seed funding. And, timed to match the beginning of South by Southwest, it’s also launching its iPhone app.
The company was founded by longtime journalist Melinda Wittstock, who has worked for the Times of London, BBC Television, the Guardian, the Observer, ABC News, National Public Radio, and MSNBC/CNBC. Wittstock says she wanted to reinvent the newsgathering and publishing model after attending “too many conferences with a lot of moaning and not a lot of solutions.” This is hardly the first experiment with crowdsourced journalism. So the startup doesn’t expect any of its members to create a complete news report on their own. For example, the site is currently working on a story about the effect of digital media on politics. Eventually, someone from the NewsiT editorial team will take on those contributions and combine them into a polished article.
Investors include Sandra D. Candidats à l'Elysée et gamification. La grande question que se posent les communicants politiques quant à la campagne présidentielle de 2012 porte bien évidemment sur la manière d’investir et d’optimiser la présence de leur favori sur les médias sociaux. La grande question que se posent les communicants politiques quant à la campagne présidentielle de 2012 porte bien évidemment sur la manière d’investir et d’optimiser la présence de leur favori sur les médias sociaux. Avec un taux de pénétration et une puissance de diffusion incroyables, Facebook et YouTube ont en effet de quoi faire de l’ombre aux supports médiatiques traditionnels.
Certains me diront que l’étendue de leurs cibles n’est pas comparable. En s’attardant sur les chiffres, force est de constater que Facebook ne touche pas qu’un public d’adolescents et de pré-adultes. En effet alors que les 18/24 ans représentent 25% des inscrits en France, les 25-34 eux occupent 26% des places et les 35-44 ans 16%. Mais là n’est pas le sujet. No Longer An Awkward Teenager? Gamification Grows Up.
Editor’s note: Guest contributor Joseph Puopolo is an entrepreneur and startup enthusiast, who blogs on a variety of topics including green initiatives, technology and marketing. Over the last year, you may have noticed that a once-niche trend not only crept into the mainstream, but is starting to really make a big splash. Gamification has become one of the hottest buzz words in the industry and is probably in the process of taking over a website or user experience near you. For the uninitiated, gamification, said simply, is the use of game design techniques and mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences.
Over the last year, even large companies and enterprises are starting to get in on the game, with Gartner saying that all CIOs should have gamification on their radar, and M2 research predicting that the gamification market will reach 2.8 billion in direct spending by 2016. Badgeville started by making a big splash center stage at Disrupt in the fall of 2009. Of Course iPads Belong In Classrooms — It’s All About Balance. “iPads And Digital Textbooks Don’t Belong In Classrooms Yet”? What a headline. Alas, it doesn’t quite do the post justice; Matt actually raises a few valid points on the potential woes of digitally assisted learning, but they’re lost under a headline that (falsely) paint him as some sort of luddite. iPads absolutely have a place in the classroom.
It’s just a matter of finding a balance. Let me tell you a bit about my childhood. I grew up in an interesting place, in an interesting time. By the time I hit gradeschool (’92 or so? And thank heavens for that. Now, what does all of this have to with Matt’s post? Even in my little town located but a stones throw from the core, there was some resistance to letting computers make their way into schools. “What if it becomes a crutch? This is a matter of curriculum, not the tools used. With a connected device in hand, I am a demigod. Take away my device, and I am a shadow of my former self. I am the kid Matt worries about.
Of course they will! How Bill Gates' Favorite Teacher Wants to Disrupt Education. In 2008, Sal Khan had a bright future making millions as a hedge fund manager. He gave it up to produce low-budget math films on YouTube for free. Fortunately, hidden among his millions of loyal students, were the wealthiest of educational philanthropists, Bill Gates and the Google Foundation. Now, with a whole lot of cash and even more street cred, Khan aims to demote the institution of "school" to just one of many educational options. Beginnings Khan Academy, the YouTube open-course series, began as verbal contract with a 7th-grade girl. Since YouTube encouraged universal access, Khan thought “Why not? “Random people started watching it, and I started getting good feedback,” Khan tells Fast Company. The Success Factor and Company Growth To his amazement, the videos were far more popular than his dedicated tutoring sessions. Five years and dozens of lessons later, the YouTube series was reaching tens of thousands of views a day.
The Motivation Changes to the System. Can Technology Transform Education Before It’s Too Late? Editor’s Note: This guest post was written by Prerna Gupta, who is CEO of Khush (now part of Smule), whose music apps, like Songify and LaDiDa, have been used to create over 125 million songs worldwide. You can follow her @prernagupta. As technology continues its march toward the Singularity, transforming the way we work, socialize and play at an increasing rate, there is one very important aspect of American society that lags behind: education. Many in Silicon Valley have strong opinions on how education should be improved, perhaps most notably Peter Thiel, who believes we are in a higher education bubble and should be encouraging kids to skip college and pursue entrepreneurship instead.
I agree that Americans are placing too much emphasis on higher education, but I think the debate over Thiel’s statements misses a much deeper point. Why is higher education overvalued? Dave McClure’s fund, 500 Startups, plans to invest in 10-20 education startups this year.