Gamification - What's That?

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So, what does it mean to “gamify” something?  It means to add elements or attributes that give that “something” a game-like feel, to make it engaging in the way that games are engaging.  “Gamification” is the idea of adding game mechanics (jargon for those elements that make games engaging) to a process with the intent to convincing people to interact more and longer.

Here’s a video of Jane McGonigal at the 2011 Gamification Summit explaining what makes games so alluring and how adding those elements — gamification — to processes can encourage participation in ways you’ve never imagined.

You may have heard of Jane McGonigal. She creates alternate reality games, such as Evoke.  She was on NPR discussing how she created a game called Superbetter that helped her recover from brain damage that she suffered due to illness.  She also wrote a great book, Reality is Broken, which explains how we can leverage the power of game mechanics to make different aspects of life more engaging. This video gives a good introduction to her book thesis as well. Jane speaks for the first 25 minutes, then answers questions for the remaining 23 minutes.

Jane McGonigal: How Games Can Change The World

from The Gamification Summit on FORA.tv

Now that you get the gist of gamification, what examples or stories of gamification come to mind?

What examples can you think of in marketing or even inside businesses that might be making use of gamification?

Gee: What We Can Learn From Video Games

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In our quest to provide you with some background on games and education, we must not forget forgot James Paul Gee, aka, J.P. Gee, the baby boomer scholar who explained why boomers shouldn’t dismiss the educative power of video games in his book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Second Edition: Revised and Updated Edition.

The book is a great read; educators should read the book. Here’s a Edutopia video of Gee explaining the types of learning that take place in video games to give you taste of what he discusses in the book.

How About Digital Visitors and Residents?

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Not ‘Natives’ & ‘Immigrants’ but ‘Visitors’ & ‘Residents’

Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement

by David S. White and Alison Le Cornu

From the Oxford University TALL Blog

 http://tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk/index.php/2008/07/23/not-natives-immigrants-but-visitors-residents/

Here’s a link to a blog post that summarizes a paper written by Dave S. White and Alison Le Cornu that reframes the Prensky idea of digital native and immigrant — which is based on technological skill or comfort as a function of age — as digital visitors and residents, which is base on culture and context.  Digital residents thing of the internet as a space in which to hangout, while digital visitors consider the internet as a giant toolbox.

This link takes you to a video in which David White talks about digital visitors and residents and their implications for education.

http://blip.tv/play/AYGm8AwC.html?p=1

Want the full story?  Here’s a link to the entire paper:

http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/3171/3049

What do you think?

  • Which do you prefer, digital natives and immigrants or digital visitors and residents?
  • Are you a visitor or a resident?  Do this change in a different context?
  • What implications do you see for residents and visitors in education?

Can Old Folks be Digital Natives?

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by Zoe Handley,

Oxford University Press

http://oupeltglobalblog.com/2011/01/20/digital-natives-fact-or-fiction/

Blogger and English as a Foreign Language teacher, Zoe Handley, explains her frustration with the Digital Natives versus Digital Immigrants hypothesis that Marc Prensky published in 2001.  (Go here for an earlier post on this topic.)  In this blog post she refers to research that questions the supposition that people born after 1982 tend to be Digital Natives.  She references studies that state, for example, that people aged 35 to 44 tend to be the heaviest users of technology, and that younger people are heavy users of technology for social networking and not for content creation.

By the way, Prensky has revised this hypothesis since in articles published in 2002 and 2009, however, the original Digital Natives v. Immigrants hypothesis is still widely quoted.  In 2009, he conceded that “old folks” can be digital natives.

  • What has been your experience with working with the “under 30 crowd” and their use of technology?
  • Have you found them to be strong in using technology for social networking and entertainment, but weak in its use for content creation?

More on Digital Natives and Immigrants

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Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part II: Do They Really Think Differently?

By Marc Prensky

http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky%20-%20digital%20natives,%20digital%20immigrants%20-%20part2.pdf

H. Sapiens Digital: From Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom

by Marc Prensky

http://www.innovateonline.info/pdf/vol5_issue3/H._Sapiens_Digital-__From_Digital_Immigrants_and_Digital_Natives_to_Digital_Wisdom.pdf

Here are links to the next two article where Marc Prensky continues to develop the idea of digital natives and digital immigrants.

Take a look and then tell us what you think.

Chocolate Covered Broccoli?

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What's The Secret Sauce To A Great Educational Game?

by Annie Murphy Paul

http://bit.ly/ChocoBroccoli

Ms. Paul’s blog post highlights the research conducted by Jacob Habgood and Shaaron Ainsworth, two researchers from the University of Nottingham in England, who wanted “to find out whether children could detect such subterfuge, and whether they benefited more from lessons that masquerade as games—or from games that make learning an end in itself.”  Their research showed that children who played a math game that use intrinsic reward tested better than those who played a game that used extrinsic reward.

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Okay, in the old days when I was a kid in school, we played games in the classroom in order to practice a newly introduced concept, principle or skill.  Teachers used team competitions, relay-races,  scavenger hunts, variations of hot-potato and baseball, even a knock-off of Jeopardy to help us practice what we learned in a more engaging way.  If implemented correctly, there was a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic reward, and for a few moments, we students forgot that we were stuck in a classroom.  This was before the age of video games.  These days, the holy grail quest to create educational games that inspire commitment and devotion in the same manner as do entertainment role-playing video games seems to result in a lot of  “chocolate covered broccoli.”

Sadly, there seems to be many “chocolate covered broccoli” online financial games on the Web.  Most of the online games we’ve investigated present more as interactive activities than flow-inducing games.  What has been your experience with educational games, especially those that teach financial literacy?  If you’ve identified engaging financial games, please tell us about them.

Are You a Digital Native or Immigrant?

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Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

Marc Prensky, 2001

http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky%20-%20digital%20natives,%20digital%20immigrants%20-%20part1.pdf

By now you may have heard of the concept of digital natives vs digital immigrants. The link above takes you to the article that coined that concept.

In 2001, Marc Prensky published a paper that got the world debating the supposition that people born after 1982 could be considered digital natives for having been immersed in and raised with technology.  Everyone born BEFORE 1982 should be considered digital immigrants since they where introduced to technology later in life and no matter how comfortable they may become with technology, they would always have an “accent.”

Prensky says the impact of digital native vs immigrant concept is huge in education.  Here is a quote from the linked article:

“But this is not just a joke. It’s very serious, because the single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language.

This is obvious to the Digital Natives – school often feels pretty much as if we’ve brought in a population of heavily accented, unintelligible foreigners to lecture them. They often can’t understand what the Immigrants are saying. What does “dial” a number mean, anyway?”

Prensky has revisited this idea twice since he published this article.  We’ll publish links to the other articles in the next post.  For now, read the article and tell us what you think.

  • Are you a digital immigrant who teaches digital natives?
  • Are you a digital native who must work with digital immigrants?
  • Or do you think this native/immigrant idea is poppycock?

NEFE HSFPP… Say What?

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Don’t you just hate acronyms sometimes?  But you’ll just LOVE this one.  While this one sounds big, what they represent is really big in both name length, reputation AND value.

NEFE = the National Endowment for Financial Education, found at www.nefe.org

HSFPP = the NEFE High School Financial Planning Program, found at www.hsfpp.nefe.org

Now doesn’t  NEFE HSFPP seam easier by comparison?  Okay, maybe only when you have to type it out…

Both of these sites offer valuable consumer financial education resources.

NEFE provides resources for financial educators, adults, parents and kids of all ages. Resources include articles, research, evaluations on public policy, activities, links to other useful websites.  And it’s ALL FREE! We love free!

The NEFE HSFP is focused on high school educators and students.  They offer a complete FREE program that high schools can offer to their students.  

COMPLETE  means: Detailed step by step training guides for the educator, materials for the students, letters to send to parents explaining the program and how they can help, certificates of completion, and a dedicated website with portals for educators, students and parents.  All materials are available in hard and soft copy.  Students can download copies of materials if they lose their books or forget to bring them home.  But wait, there’s more: the NEFE HSFPP provides free annual training to educators at regional conferences, AND they arrange for regional support in case educators have questions.  

And did I say that all of these is FREE? Here’s a statement from their website:

“How much will the new program materials cost?

Nothing. NEFE provides the print materials, shipping, and web downloads at no cost to nonprofit organizations solely for instructional and education purposes…”

 

Oooh! Another thing!  The NEFE HSFP ensures that the program remains relevant to students by asking a third party to conduct period evaluations of educators and students, and then updates their materials and website based on this information. AND anyone can read the findings from the research.

Okay, so you can see that we’re a fan of the NEFE HSFP.  If you’ve used the materials as an educator, student or parent, PLEASE tell us about your experiences!

Going For Flow

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Almost any discussion about the benefits of game play includes the concept of flow.  And discussions of the flow experience usually include mention of the psychologist who coined the term flow — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced: Chick-zen-meh-hall-yee  I hope).  Flow is that state you enter when you are completely absorbed in what you are doing, and includes a deep sense of pleasure.   In this TED Talks video  Csikszentmihalyi describes what the flow experience is and how he identified it.

Which games or activities cause you to experience flow?

Generation G: Greater Expectations

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Gabe Zichermann talks about how video games have groomed a generation of people with greater expectations for challenge, creativity, and community, and how these expectations are starting to impact society.  He explains how the activities employed in a great game — seeking novelty, creative thinking, challenge of self, networking and figuring things via trial and error —  are the same activities that increase brain gray matter.  These activities increase fluid intelligence — intelligence that drives problem-solving.  He says Generation G — the generation of people whose principle form of entertainment is video games — expect similar challenge and engagement from school, work — and life.

What’s been your experience?

How have you “gamified” your approach in attempt to improve results?  What happened?

Gabe Zichermann is an entrepreneur, author, highly rated public speaker and gamification thought leader. He is the chair of the Gamification Summit and Workshops, and is co-author of the book "Game-Based Marketing, where he makes a compelling case for the use of games and game mechanics in everyday life, the web and business.

Gaming Helps the Brain

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Here’s a link to an article that was published in the WSJ on March 6, 2012

When Gaming Is Good for You
Hours of Intense Play Change the Adult Brain; Better Multitasking, Decision-Making and Even Creativity
by Robert Lee Hotz

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203458604577263273943183932.html

This article mentions some of the recent and ongoing research on the impact of video game play on the brain.  Here are two points from the article:

  • Researcher Mark Blair at Simon Fraser University, located in Vancouver, British Columbia, has been studying the effects on the brain of people who play the video game StarCraft II.  He has been collecting data on game play impact on such cognitive function as perception, attention and decision-making
  • According to University of Wisconsin pyschologist C. Shawn Green, playing video games changes your brain, as do learning to play an instrument or learning a foreign language.

What do you think?  Have you noticed improvements in thinking, creativity, decision-making in yourself or others that you think might be attributed to their dedication to playing games?

This article focuses on the effects of video game play on cognition.  We’d like to open the discussion to the effects of all games on the brain.  What’s been your experience? Have you read any noteworthy books, articles, or research? Tell us what you think!

Cheers!