I've always wondered how teachers came up with ideas to gamify their classes. Most of my teachers never did any gamification at all, but I've seen extremely creative examples of gamified classes online. Also, some of our classmates did a project with a practical example of gamification for one of our master's classes. It was awesome!
Potential issues of gamification in the classroom
As I said in last week's post, I think too much gamification and games in general can be counterproductive. We all like games because we are not playing all the time. Even as a big fan of games, I doubt that I would like to play that much myself. Also, in my opinion, part of growing up is learning to do things you may not like. We all have to do things we don't like and are utterly boring. That's just life. Of course, this doesn't mean that everything has to be sleep-inducing, just that not everything needs to be a fun game. The best teachers I had never used gamification or game based learning at all or only used them very sparingly. Would their classes have been better with some game elements? Maybe. However, they weren't bad without games.
It is also important to take into account that not everyone perceives gamification in the same way. I have to admit that I like traditional classes, especially when I'm tired. They are actually very relaxing. I can sit in the classroom and listen to the teacher and it's up to me if I want to pay attention or if my brain is elsewhere. I loved my classmates' example of gamification and I think they did an amazing job preparing that class. It was fun and different and -and this is a very subjective opinion- I thought it was great that they didn't reveal how Squid Game ends because I still haven't had the chance to watch it. Having said that, I would find it extremely exhausting for those games to take place in every single class every single day. Also, to be honest and now thinking about the future, I seriously doubt that I would have enough imagination to design a game for each class.
Good points of gamification as an education tool
Even though I just said that I actually like to sit in traditional classes, I don't have anything against gamification as a tool. In fact, I do think it can be very useful to change things a bit every now and then. There is a huge middle ground between no gamification or games in the classroom at all and gamifying every single class. Doing something different every now and then isn't bad.
At the moment, I'm trying to figure out how to use video games in the classroom. Video games might be the only thing I have in common with teenagers since I prefer French-Belgian and American comic books to manga. I may play Overwatch instead of Fortnite, but I also love FIFA, Assassin's Creed, Pokémon and Final Fantasy, which are games that I think are still popular since new versions are being released all the time. Of course, this doesn't mean that these games are still popular among teenagers, but I refuse to lose hope.
Even if I never figure out how to include video games in my classes, there's a very specific part of gamification where I can most definitely include anything: the narrative. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter if town items are explained from the point of view of a regular town or from the point of view of Animal Crossing's islands. Sure, these islands don't have a few key buildings, such as hospitals and police stations, but it's always possible to create them or to point out that they're not on the list of official buildings.
Have you ever used gamification or did your teachers use it? Feel free to let me know in the comments.
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