Gamification

# edc mooc   Gamification: from monetization to social benefit

I just find out about gamification and I have to say  that at first I embraced  the idea of applying game dynamics to a variety of different situations including learning. I agree with the definition that game is a form of play with goals and structure. I liked the idea that people, and by that I am thinking students, need rewards for their achievements when playing games.

Any person needs a purpose to play a game, which in an educational setting, translates into the teacher needing to think of the purpose students will pursue when completing the different activities of the lesson; lessons become games.

Another idea that I really liked was that "games are good when they unfold new things for the player, and they provide the right amount of challenge to keep enganged"; this concept sounds like it could be applied to education. Isn't that,as a teachers, what we are looking for in our classrooms?. And also the panelists talk about how gaming promotes collaborative work. That is another application to education, in my opinion.

The downside of gamification is that as a result of it, a lot of data are generated and according to the panelists, these data are floating around; where do they go? I wonder. Well, apparently a lot of companies get these data and use them to motivate people to buy their products or services. Isn't that manipulating people?

Another video that presents good ideas, in my modest opinion:

Extra Credits: Gamifying Education

I like the idea of changing the traditional letter-based grading into levels; students can move up from one level to the next one once they had master the previous one. I also feel it is very interesting the idea of rewarding the whole class with a field trip, for instance, if after adding up all the individual points the total amounts a total determined by the teacher. It seems to me that students would collaborate with each other to get the most points possible. Team commitment is sometimes strong than individual commitment because the students as individual do not want to dissapoint the rest of the students in the group.