Gamification links

Ambra Scarlet presented a Gamification information session for educators which was really interesting.

Unfortunately, I had to leave half way through. I did ask a friend to scribble down titles and links for me in my absence and between us we managed to note down a number of links.

Some readily recognisable examples she gave of gamification in every day things include the Khan Academy, Biggest Loser, Weight Watchers, Fitocracy/Get Addicted to Fitness.

Gamifying your classroom activities can be as simple as giving out rewards and badges for achievements – ie. Give rewards for achievement of microtasks.

Gamification is about creating aims/it’s about the milestones – and about getting reward for achievement.

Gamification does not necessarily involve IT or tricky technology – it can be be quite simple to include it in your current teaching without much modification at all.

• www.khanacademy.org
  From the site: “The Khan Academy is an organization on a mission. We’re a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere. All of the site’s resources are available to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy’s materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.” It’s a little Amercianised but many topics can be used elsewhere – history is probably an exception.
  See http://www.khanacademy.org/about for more information how you can track student participation, etc.
• Cell Craft – http://www.cellcraftgame.com/Home.html
  Subject: Science.
  You build cells (yes, as cells that form part of your body and such) that help fight viruses, etc. You may need to have the site with the game unblocked at your school if you wish to use it.
• Dafurs Dying – www.darfurisdying.com/
  Good to use as a guided exercise. It teaches about society and the environment – more suited for older students.
• Launchpad Launchball – Science Museum – http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/launchpad/launchball/
  Year 3-8. With younger classes use as a classroom exercise. Older students can do work through this on their own.
• Fate of the world – http://fateoftheworld.net/about or http://store.steampowered.com/app/80200
  Topics: civilisation. The world is melting and you need to create a world where civilisation works and the world does not work.
• Chore Wars – http://www.chorewars.com/index.php
  Compete within your household or office for experience points. Win badges. This was not mentioned in the presentation but I thought it was silly enough to share – I think it’s a game where you might let others win and smirk when they do.
• Interger Jim’s math squads – http://www.mathsquad.com/
  You can buy resource books for these activities/concepts which Ambra says is worthwhile.
  • Quest for the Gold Calculator- http://www.mathsquad.com/
    Students get a map – which Ambra said she divided up into game squares for math topics for 2 terms so one square might be integers, one might be multiplication, one might be division – and so on… When students achieve they get ‘quest bucks’ – which they can then use to buy options – for example out of four quizzes that students get they can have one not count – usually they don’t get to choose which one… but if they have 20 game bucks the student can choose which quiz doesn’t count. They can also buy things like pens, etc out of their game bucks. If they forget their stuff and have to borrow items from others then this costs them game bucks – so students soon learn to remember their stuff. They can also buy activities – like extra or alternative math questions, etc. Can also be used for writing activities.
  • Adventure math journal- http://www.mathsquad.com/
    Students make an Indiana Jones style adventure journal which maps their math activities out. As part of this concept – students also are doing tech, design and art. Students often get really involved in the journal while learning math. Fun! (Can I go back to school please?)
  • Adventure Express- http://www.mathsquad.com/
    Topic: Society and the environment (this is a good activity for when you have spare time in class).
• Mystery of Time and Space (MOTAS) – www.albartus.com/motas/
  May have been recommended by one of Ambra’s colleagues.
• Tran Towers – http://www.transum.org/Software/Trantowers/trantowers.asp
  May have been recommended by one of Ambra’s colleagues.
• Stop Disasters – www.stopdisastersgame.org/
  Older students. Helps them think about disaster management. They really need to read all instructions – you can’t play without it and she recommends the easiest settings on the first attempt. This might be done this as a classroom activity where one student reads instructions and others participate.
• Space Chem – http://spacechemthegame.com
  Topic: Chemistry
• Wondermind – http://wondermind.tate.org.uk/
  From the site: “Wondermind is about a few things. It’s about the brilliant, amazing and truly mind-boggling stuff that’s going on inside your brain as you grow. It’s about the art of Alice in Wonderland, the exhibition at Tate Liverpool. And it’s about putting together both of those things: mixing art with science. Being good at one doesn’t mean you can’t be good at the other (in fact, it’s often the opposite).”
• Thingdom – http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/WhoAmI/Thingdom.aspx
• Minecraft – http://www.minecraft.net(this is the main mindcraft site – there are other links for educators below)
  • About Ambra’s example mindcraft game design for Lunchtime Bytes
    • Ambra advises teachers that they do need to build and design minecraft learning environments but you don’t have to make it that beautiful to be engaging. The example that she showed for the lunchtime bytes presentation even though it was beautiful, only took 5 or 6 hours.
    • The way Ambra used the minecraft world showed a large amount of teaching ability. She used the game as a teaching tool.  The educational design of the games was definitely there. It was a  nice balance of entertainment and learning.
    • A really good example of making students think was a math puzzle on the wall (in game).  The room had a range of doors with numbers (the answer to the math problem) on them and only one was right. All of the doors opened to more rooms but only one was not a dead end (right answer obviously). One room was a restroom where you could pause game. One was an abrupt dead end. Another looked like it would be the right answer because when you looked through the bars on the window you saw a door – but if you didn’t do the math and just focused on appearances you’d have been at a dead end (the second door was fake). The only way forward was to do the math and pick the right door.
    • To teach electricity and explain it there was a circuit with one box in one place another in another place. The electricity looked like red dust and had a path and if you added more red dust in the square to join it the electricity worked and you could keep going. You could get all the way into the game and see the missing square but if you didn’t read the instructions earlier you probably wouldn’t have had the red dust in your inventory to complete the circuit.
  • Massively Mindcraft – http://socialmediaclassroom.com/host/MassivelyMinecraft/
  • Minecraftedu.com “Bringing minecraft to the classroom” – http://minecraftedu.com/
  • A local school has it’s own minecraft server and they have minecraft sessions at lunchtime – it’s pretty much run by the students.
  • Jokaydia Minecraft – http://minecraft.jokaydia.com/ (for educators)
• Gamification video from Good Game on the ABC (feature story) – http://www.abc.net.au/tv/goodgame/stories/s3187937.htm

Some popular games available on Steam that have learning components (but where education was not necessarily the key objective)

• Bob came in pieces (Steam) – http://store.steampowered.com/app/46000
  Bob is not whole… you need to help bob become complete. You need to find his parts and put them in the right place.
• Machinarium (Steam) – http://store.steampowered.com/app/40700
• Portal – http://store.steampowered.com/app/400/?snr=1_4_4__13 and
  Portal 2 http://store.steampowered.com/app/620/?snr=1_5_9__13
  Portal makes holes in walls and you end up using to make sense of space and time.
• Windowsill – http://store.steampowered.com/app/37600
• World of Goo – http://store.steampowered.com/app/22000/

IMPORTANT NOTE TO TEACHERS: Always play the games and check the resources yourself before using them with your classroom. While they are great now, you don’t always know who owns them – or when the ownership changes hands. Sometimes the games are changed turn into something different – and this may mean they are no longer suitable for use in with students.

Note: I am not an educator – the comments here are from a talk by an educator who is also a gamer. I work closely with a number of educators but mostly I’m just interested in stuff – and often that stuff seems to have some cross over with the world of education.