Meh by obeyken, on Flickr
I’m so sorry to say that this topic just did not light a fire under me. As a matter of fact, I was kind of turned off when reading some of the posts saying COETAIL should be gamified. It just isn’t for everyone and I’m afraid I’m one of those people. The Christmas my brothers and sister and I got the first Atari (Yep, that’s how old I am.), I built the Lego castle my little brother got while the rest of them learned the ways of Space Invader and Pong. This feeling goes way way back. I’d rather play with my hands, I guess.
I even had a discussion with my homegroup students one morning about it. I totally did not show my bias and asked them what they thought about using gaming for educational purposes. They were surprisingly not into it. One of the biggest concerns they had was how they get so into a game that they look up from it having spent hours in it and feel they’ve accomplished nothing – even as far as progressing in the game. Kind of a time suck. So I worry about quality learning vs. quantity of time spent.
Now it’s not that I can’t see some benefits or uses. Remember I'm more Meh than Dislike. I eventually learned how to avoid some of the lasers on Space Invader (but seriously never had the eye-hand coordination to keep up with Pong).
dislike button by Sean MacEntee, on Flickr
Look, I use IXL Math constantly and there are definitely gamily elements to that. It was highly motivational for the students.
Screenshot of IXL website
The score keeps going up, there are ribbons to show achievement and you “win” pictures on a gameboard (honestly, I don’t pay attention to that part and neither do most of my students. Every once in awhile I’ll hear someone say “I got a trombone, ” but it isn’t what they are working for.) I will highly endorse the use of IXL for math practice. Not only does it give great repetitive practice, but there are awesome reports that I use as a teacher with the kids and with parents. I love this “gamification” of math practice for sure.
By Bobamnertiopsis
SpectacuLarsen vs. the World 
You are not alone. I recently offered my students the choice to make a model and they had the choice to do it in clay or in minecraft. It was not surprising to me that there were just about equal numbers who wanted to do each activity. I was not surprised that most of the boys wanted to minecraft and most of the girls wanted to work with real clay. But I was surprised that there was more than just indifference to minecraft among those who chose clay. It was more like they were anti-minecraft, anti-gaming and a bit annoyed by the pull that gaming had on the attention of the devotees. Interesting.
I so agree with you. I’m still not sold on gamification (although game-based may have potential and an occasional math game has its place). I’m also glad that COETAIL isn’t gamified (at least not yet), because like you, I was turned off at the thought of having our program gamified. I chose to work on this certificate because I was already motivated to push myself and learn. It would turn off my motivation to have badges, levels, etc.
My efforts toward gamification produced the same results in my “Values” class. The summative assessment provided two options: a traditional gameboard-style product or a digital videogame-style product. Several groups attempted to start their project creating the videogame, but all of them abandoned their efforts when they realized the time that it would require. Their options were to use http://www.Scratch.com (for beginners), and some of my students that have already dabbled in game-making could try GameMaker, Unity, GameSalad, Clickteam, and Blender. That lasted for a class period before the posterboards were purchased, markers were borrowed, and glue webbed childrens’ fingers together. I don’t know of any really well done game-making software that can be incorporated into the needs of our students yet, aside from recreational. They’ve abandoned their efforts.
Hi Deneen – Many many many years ago I also taught Values at RIS. That was an interesting class to teach. 🙂
I think if we can make sure the time they are spending playing games isn’t a “time-suck” then there could be something there. I’m not a competitive person and I don’t really need badges to inspire me to work or to “level up”. But I must admit, I appreciate recognition of the work I’m proud of (simple certificate or a thank you note). So how can we recognize progress or engagement in learning in a way that’s authentic? I don’t have an answer, but more for me to think about.
Thanks for sharing.
How funny, Laurie!!! What a small world!
I’m in partial agreement with you. I think, though, it depends on the nature of the game and the quality of it. I have found some really good, quick games that go through some fairly hard science topics- like membrane structure and function. If you have a look at my post here I found list of Science games and some of them are good. Some are not. Bit time consuming searching them, but nonetheless I can see value. That is not to say that they couldn’t learn things in other ways, but for some abstract and difficult topics, modelling simulations are great. The ones from https://phet.colorado.edu/ are not exactly games, but come close and have been excellent.