Gamification in Education

We received lots of comments on 21 Things That Will Be Obsolete in 2020. To those who expressed doubt that any of those predictions will come to fruition, the writer Shelly Blake-Plock wrote an elegant response. But many more were intrigued by one commenter's assertion that many of those items on the list are already happening.

While I was working on " 6 steps to use gamification in your classroom" I came across this interesting graphic which sheds some light on the difference between gamification and serious games. The words gamification, games, and serious games are not to be used interachangeably and here is why.

Mashable defines gamification as "applying game thinking or even game mechanics into a non-game context. " Game mechanics in the "real world" include earning badges, completing missions and leveling up. Non-game companies, like Amazon, Deloitte and Salesforce.com, gamify to increase customer engagement. Gamification puts the customer on a journey motivated by intrinsic, or personally meaningful, rewards.

There are over 1 billion users of virtual worlds, online communities where users have avatars and participate in various simulated environments. Even more impressive than that number: roughly half of those virtual world users are under age 15.

http://www.digitalplay.info/blog/2013/05/31/top-ten-game-based-learning-articles/ You may have been using digital play elements with your classes for a while now and want to know a little bit more about what's happening in the field. Here are our top ten (in no particular order) reading tasks for you edugamers out there.