Learning is Intrinsic to Games

As one gamer has said, “In a game, you want to learn because you’re playing it, and if you didn’t want to learn, why would you be playing it?” (Selfe & Hawisher, 2007, p. 1). For this very reason, games are uniquely powerful tools that help teachers understand how to build empowering lessons and shape how students experience learning. Each game is a curriculum unto itself; each game is a unique engine that can reengineer learning experiences. Every game gives the player an opportunity to learn something new by trying out a different set of skills. It gives the player exposure to a new metaphysics—an entirely different way of thinking about the world that that game uniquely imparts.

Games are not “eye candy”—each game is a distinct semiotic system affording and discouraging certain kinds of behaviors. In school, when students fail to have a feeling for the whole system which they are studying, when they fail to see it as a set of complex interactions and relationships, each fact and each isolated element they memorize is meaningless. Further, there is no way they can use these facts and elements as leverage for action—and we would hardly want them to, given that acting in complex systems with no understanding can lead to disasters. (Gee, 2007, p. 60)

Notes:

Folksonomies: education gamification

Taxonomies:
/food and drink/food/candy and sweets (0.653926)
/technology and computing/consumer electronics/tv and video equipment/video players and recorders/dvd players and recorders (0.587606)
/technology and computing/consumer electronics/tv and video equipment/video players and recorders/blu-ray players and recorders (0.392658)

Keywords:
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Entities:
Selfe:Person (0.940396 (neutral:0.000000)), Gee:Person (0.818607 (neutral:0.000000)), Hawisher:Person (0.753616 (neutral:0.000000))

Concepts:
Play (0.972002): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Learning (0.896082): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Game (0.827788): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Psychology (0.759179): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Education (0.729104): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Knowledge (0.662581): dbpedia | freebase
Skill (0.600280): dbpedia | freebase
Games (0.588178): dbpedia
Study skills (0.532369): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc | yago
Debut albums (0.470892): dbpedia
Toy (0.469357): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Mathematics (0.463443): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Chemical element (0.450929): dbpedia | freebase

 Level Up Your Classroom: The Quest to Gamify Your Lessons and Engage Your Students
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Cassie, Jonathan (2016), Level Up Your Classroom: The Quest to Gamify Your Lessons and Engage Your Students, ASCD, Retrieved on 2017-03-10
Folksonomies: education gamification