gamification

EdTech

GlassLab and Beyond: Who’s the Designer and Who’s the Learner of the Next-Gen Game-Based Ed-Tech

By: Dr. Idit Harel Caperton The so called “gamification of education” has taken on multiple forms as computers and tablets become more common in the classroom and as games are becoming a dominant media in our lives. At the root of all “game-based learning” is the unique opportunity to engage students in learning where they want to be: inside video games. The ESA reports 32% of gamers are under 18 years old, and the industry only continues to grow.

Personalized Learning

How Minecraft is Teaching a Generation About Teamwork & the Environment

Minecraft, as it stands, has sold around twenty million copies across multiple platforms. It's arguably one of the most successful games of all time, and a demonstration of the fact that videogames do not have to be sexually charged gore-fests in order to be accepted by gamers en masse. Summarily, it's a game in which you are placed in a natural, procedurally-generated environment, and you must cut down trees, mine stone and ore, and generally manipulate your environment to build a home for yourself or go on a journey.

EdTech

11 Steps to Gamify Your Next Lesson

With so many educators today discussing the possibilities and promises of online learning, one key aspect of education often forgotten in the quest to tear down these learning walls is the ability to create classroom magic within those very same walls. Along with blended learning, flipped classrooms, gamification and many other new instructional buzz words, virtual classrooms are unquestionably valuable educational instruments in a teacher’s pedagogical toolbox.

Personalized Learning

How to Hack Into the Joy of Gaming

In schools, we need to figure out how to get our own joy and our students’ joy back, but we are going to have to move past grieving over what has been lost to do this. We need to hack the joyful mindsets of video gamers and use them to reinvent how we engage students, building a bridge to lure them back from the virtual world into the quaint magic of literature, art, and imagination in ours.

Personalized Learning

PBL in Primary: Making Up the Rules

This year, I have been using PBL (passion or project-based learning) in my classroom. Although language arts and math have certainly been involved, I have mainly been using the outcomes of my science, social studies and health curriculum as the focal point of my backwards-by-design planning.