Games and Gamification in the Classroom

 Games and Gamification in the Classroom

 

                From almost the beginning of my career as a classroom teacher, I used to subscribe to magazines published to cover topics of interest in education.  I was always a pioneer of sorts although I would have never thought of myself that way when I first got into a classroom.  But I was always looking for ways to enrich my teaching practice.  These magazines always featured some really great ideas for teachers and one time, I happened to pick up a magazine with an article featuring the use of games to help teach mathematics.  Back in the day, it would have been like using Monopoly to learn concepts concerning the use of money and practicing arithmetic skills.  Snakes and Ladders could help young children practice their counting skills and checkers could address the need to concentrate and think strategically.  So naturally I tried to keep games on hand and use them.

                From there, it was only a few steps to creating your own game and making it a challenge for art and mathematics.  So, students would think about board games and how to design their own that would feature the same ideas of arithmetic and numeracy.  These were taken out of curriculum ideas for gifted education but if you mixed students in small groups ensuring that there would be gifted students matched with students more challenged in the classroom, there was still much to be gained by devoted classroom time to creating games.  Besides, the small group work enabled one to help students learn how to communicate nicely and properly and work in teams effectively.

                Now of course, board games are sort of passee. There are lots of people who still have them but more frequently, it is using electronic tools and bringing Artificial Intelligence and avatars and all those kinds of things into the classroom. There are lots of parents who are no pleased to see these things in use but they play an important part in helping kids develop a wide range of skills that will only become more important in the years ahead.  The trick is to figure out how to guide students in using the games and not just playing effectively but again, thinking strategically and understanding how the digital world works.  As well, the teacher has to be moving about all the time to enforce proper rules of engagement and so forth.  

                I am sure a lot of people reading this have images of GameBoys and Xboxes and so forth,  but remember that increasingly, work is no longer face to face and knowing how to work with an avatar and manipulate behaviour on screen is a tremendously valuable skill.  The. Day is fast approaching when every classroom will feature artificial intelligence and robotics and the sooner we see these tools as part of the classroom, the sooner we will know that we are helping to educate our students for future success, not just drilling specific, easily assessed skills.  The difference between the past and the future is that in the past we were drilled on skills and that supposedly prepared us for a world of routinized workplaces.  However, in the future the highest paid jobs will go to those who understand how to conceptually move things around virtually and move into new frontiers.  Just think about the difference between operating on a man or woman using an operating theatre and tools manipulated by hand as opposed to operating using a robotic arm and having to be able to manipulate that arm using a computer.  There is where the future lies.