Schools Can Blame Factors Other Than Teachers, Game Devel...

Most teachers work very hard, of course, and all of them want kids to succeed. But when kids don't learn what's been laid out for them, schools typically look for answers in the things that are going wrong in children's lives: poverty, trauma, bad parenting, poor nutrition, disability, sleep deprivation, lousy study skills. All of these are real problems that can have a tangible effect on kids' ability to learn, research shows. But if players fail at commercial video games, game designers can...

 Facebook is a Game

Game designer Robin Hunicke has noted that Facebook is actually a complex, massively multiplayer online game, with challenges, rewards, and levels just like any other. Think about it for a second and you'll realize that the rules are simple: be the most fun, intelligent, witty, caring version of yourself. The benefits are obvious, Hunicke observed: Facebook "makes people feel like they matter, like they have friends and family across all kinds of distances," she said. "How many games make you...

 Social Media Distorts Socialization Through Gamification

The problem with social media isn't that we aren't sure how much privacy we want to have or how long the things we say should stick around. The problem is that social media is a gamification of social interaction, and it causes us to behave in ways that we normally wouldn't. In normal life, people don't take turns loudly stating their political opinions to a room of people and then looking to see how many people agree with them. They also don't have product placements or subtle advertising i...

 Arcade Games in Game-Based Education

Arcade games such as Pac-Man, Asteroids, Tempest, Gauntlet, and the like are not useless to the gamifying teacher. Rather, their use is limited . . . and their usefulness makes them more akin to board games than contemporary video games. What is Pac-Man but a game of pattern management? Gauntlet is as much about resource management as anything else. These are notions that were discussed in the previous level. So, don’t exclude the value of the old-school video game . . . but don’t equate ...

 Gamification Stock Holding Mechanic

Mrs. Lazarus has some experience with games such as this and decides to construct a blank environment (a planet without biomes) with a 10 × 10 grid, thereby creating a board with 100 squares. Before play, each student is given three different animals or plants (one with a broad tolerance for several different habitats, one that is a bit more particular, and one that is very fussy indeed). The players then use their numbered tiles and shares to shape and manipulate this blank environment to t...

 Gamification Simultaneous Action Selection Mechanic

Dr. Mays uses the Simultaneous Action Selection mechanic to structure his lesson. He creates two decks of cards—one with names of different cellular components (e.g., ribosomes, endoplasmic reticulum) and another with a wide assortment of cellular functions and processes. He seats students in groups of five or six and explains the rules. During each turn, one student is going to pick a card from the component deck and read it out loud. Then the other students select a card from their hand (...

 Gamification Set Collection

I recently codeveloped a game with a colleague who teaches a course in global studies to advanced high school students. We called the game Global Shuffle, and it was meant to simulate two realities of the 21st century global marketplace. First, the developed world creates certain kinds of resources, and the developing world creates different resources. Though this is true, these resources relate to each other and have a reflexive quality; resources that are available or made in the developed ...

 Gamification Racing/Grid Movement

Ms. Spooner, a long-time game player, realizes that the Racing/Grid Movement mechanic is the right choice for her students because it is particularly good at helping to assess highly granular pieces of content or skills. She envisions a game in which her students are divided into two- or threeperson teams. She wants these students to be able to identify and produce three different things: (1) the pitch of particular notes, (2) the sounds of distinct instruments, and (3) the work of particular...

 Gamification Pickup and Deliver Mechanic

Dr. Boxer decides to create a game board that depicts a cell and pieces for 12 different materials that might be transported into or out of the cell. Students are assigned to teams and given the opportunity to place certain materials either in the cell or in the bloodstream (which surrounds the cell and through which these materials move around the board). He then adds a small role-playing element to the game by giving each team an identity (such as a moving company) and an objective separate...

 Gamification Pattern Building Mechanic

Ms. Forsythe divides her class into four teams (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome). Each team, over the course of the unit, learns about all four artistic cultures but becomes an expert in one. For a 20- to 30-minute exercise in discerning and judging the difference among these artistic cultures, Ms. Forsythe displays a piece of sculpture from each of the four cultures onto a large piece of heavy paper or cardboard and then cuts that image into smaller tiles and tosses all of the pieces to...