Week 13

Digital

4 Keys to fun

• Hard fun - challenging levels to hook you in but balanced with easier levels to keep you going. If master it and find the cheats then enjoyment can fade.
• Easy fun - novelty
• Serious fun - meaning
• People fun - friendship

Games for education

According to Amory (2007), Educational computer games should:

• Be relevant, explorative, emotive and engaging
• Include complex challenges, puzzles or quests
• Be gender-inclusive and non-confrontational
• Provide appropriate role models
• Develop democracy and social capital through dialogue
• Support authentic learning activities
• Support the construction of tacit knowledge

Why are we not tempted to use the design and learning of a learning quest as an assessment? If someone completed a game to a high level you would not test them to see if they knew it because the game shows what they know. Why do we then test kids on what we already know they know?

Applying the 4 keys to fun to games in the classroom - How do you use digital or non-digital games in your practice? Why?How do you apply 4 keys to fun in your practice? What is going on in the classroom that relates to these types of fun?

Thinking of Mathletics that we use regularly in the classroom and for home learning… the students seem to enjoy life mathletics, particularly when versing other children in the class. This has the people fun (social interaction), even level of easy/hard as similar levels of ability and serious fun as it is practicing their basic facts.

Leadership

Gamification and education - making learning fun.

How can we use gamification (appointment dynamic, influence and status dynamic, progression dynamic, communal discovery) to influence follower behaviour / change initiative?

Discussed how we can use gamification in the classroom to promote independence and self-regulation. In depth chat about how there is a fine line between scaffolding and using prizes etc that then take away the independence and move from intrinsic motivation to extrinsic motivation.