Gamification is basically bringing a
game into the classroom to enhance non-gaming skills such as engagement and participation.
Children love to play games so why not
as educators don’t we used what they are already interested in to engage them
in lesson that is going to teach them essential skills for adult life. Gaming
is littered with creativity that children are really enjoying so why not use
gaming in the classroom. The main issue within education is people are afraid
of change, although education claims it has changed, since my parents were in
school there has been no real big changes that can validate that. It is time
for change and it is time to use the recourses around us for the good, if children
are interested in something, use it to your advantage and create an activity
that’ll easily engage the student is something they enjoy outside of the
schooling environment while they learn vital skills. Nothing is wrong than
children enjoying education, what I actually think is wrong is forcing student
to sit at a desk and learn when they could be actively learning and enjoying themselves.
Education for some is a very small but incredibly important part of their lives,
there is no harm using this time for the children to enjoy themselves while
learning. Think about it, would you even as an adult prefer to play and game
rather than sitting at a desk? Just because children are enjoying themselves doesn’t
mean they are not learning and if we as educators can make there time in school
fun and meaningful why wouldn’t we do that. Classcraft Studios found ‘’by the
time kid are 21, they’ve played 10,000 hours of video games, the same amount of
time they’ve spent in school’’. (2019).
Below
I have included a video of a teacher called Scott Hebert, talking about the power
of gamification in education. This video really hit hard for me with the realisation
of the current day education and how much it needs to develop to help our future
generation.
‘’The biggest unused resource in
school is the students, we will ask everyone bare the students about the
education we are teaching them.’’ (Hebert, S. 2019). This statement is
incredibly true, we go off the recommendations of people who have no hands on input
in education yet we ignore the people going through it. Why? Why would we do
this? When they are the people having the hand on experiences in how they are
being educated. Herbert carried out an experiment within his classroom, he
stripped his classroom and allowed the children to design their own classroom.
Take Minecraft for example, children
do not need instructions to play to game, they can create a small building and
each time they complete one they want to do it again bigger and better, so why
not take this and used it within education?. Gamification is basically using a gaming
app within education.
Although I haven’t had the experience in
gamification within the classroom myself, I have seen first had how exciting and
engaged in lesson it gets children. There is a large age gap between my
siblings and I and seeing the education they have no compared to when I was
going through school is incredible. The enthusiasm in which they come home with
when they have participated it a fun and engaging lesson really does go to show
how gamification can engage students. While my brother was in school the teacher
constructed a lesson around Minecraft and at the time my brother was obsessed with
the game, he’d come home from school, go straight on his computer and we wouldn’t
see him until it was time for tea. Using the idea of using a game the children
were interested in really shocked me when I first heard he was playing Minecraft
in school. Only now I look back have I realised how much that lesson impacted
my brother as he was so interested in the game outside of school.
Although there is some huge positives
around using gamification in school to engage the students, but it does bring
up the issue of keeping the children safe when the are online. Due to the
children using online gaming in schools it is going to higher the risk of
online safety for the children and become more of priority to ensure the students are aware of
online safety.
Classcraft Studios LTD. (2019). Why use gamification in education?. Online
at: https://www.classcraft.com/gamification/.
[Accessed 21.02.2019].
Hebert, S. (2019). The Power of
Gamification n Education. Online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOssYTimQwM.
[Accessed 19.05.2019].
No comments:
Post a Comment