In this week’s blog I am going to discuss the meaning of
gamification and how we can inject it into our normal life to make it more
rewarding and, less boring. Firstly I am going to explain the meaning of
gamification and how we as humans, include it in our everyday lives unknowingly.
Gamification basically means ‘applying game design thinking to
non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging.’-Reference from http://gamification.org/wiki/Gamification.
Now I can think of many times in my life were I’ve made a game out of
nothing in many different places for example; Walking in the street and trying
to overtake someone ahead of me, avoiding certain tiles on the floor in a
corridor and even, seeing the same car more than once on the road. I’m
sure there is hundreds of other games I used to play and thousands more people
used to play all over the world. My point is, we use these games to bypass the
day and disconnect yourself from the world for a small amount of time that, we
do for most our life. The need of being
instantly rewarded for achieving a goal or a task we set that has been set out
for us reminds me of how video games work. Video games can be very stress relieving
as they tend to have objectives, placed that are to be completed and when they
are completed; immediately rewards the player for the quest he/she just accomplished.
So with that in mind I think of how gamification can be
added in to school systems in the country and then to see if it actually could
work. Being instantly rewarded for attending class, or doing your homework
would seem like a much better system for student that don’t have the motivation
to go into lessons. You can’t always blame students for not always wanting to
come to school, we’ve all had the moment when we just do want to go into work
or school. Our Morales drop incredibly low and for students like myself, go
into school/university and sitting in a boring lesson not taking anything in, you
then question yourself on why you even bothered. But for example; Lets just say
during the lesson you attempted to answer 5 questions that were put forward to
the class. And as a reward for attending plus, participating in the class you receive
a cash prize at the end of the day I would
definitely become more encouraged in attending lesson, even if they are still extremely boring. The fact
of the matter is we all enjoy being immediately noted for completing something.
If schools could possible find a way of letting the pupils
know that their education doesn’t have to be so boring and tamed, and also that
becoming more creative and, different would draw people into the whole idea of
having fun whilst being educated. In a workshop this we all discovered that we
became very engaged in a theses discussions and our lecture pointed out that ‘it
had been the first time this year the class were fully focussed on the task and
had smiles on our faces, on a Tuesday morning! So I think it doesn’t even have
to be money that the students are rewarded with for attending class, it could
be; a point system and if you save up your points that you receive for each
attended lesson you can use the points to purchase books for your course or
even all types of equipment for your course or, just in general. Because school
shouldn’t be something you just turn up to and hope you’re not bored to death,
but we should receive education in a more engaging method and I think
Gamification has something that could just work out for school systems that are
government funded or universities.
No comments:
Post a Comment