Blog 5

I liked the article Things you should know about...Gamification.  It really opened my mind to the amount of ways you can incorporate games into everyday academics.  Even though it can be hard work for a teacher to start doing, I believe it can be worth it in the end.  I know I responded well to educational games when I was younger, and video games are growing more and more popular with school age children.  

I would one day like to implement gamification in my classroom.  I really like the example at the beginning of the article that explained how one professor turned learning about new plants into a competitive game.  I would love to use this activity in my classroom, however, I would not make all games a competition against others in the class.  Some children shut down when they have to compete against others.  when a game doesn't involve competing with others in the class, I will have them compete against themselves.  

Gamification can be used in any subject.  I would love to use it in math classes because it's one of the most confusing subject for a majority of school age children.  A good way to gamify a math lesson would be to have the kids play MathBlaster.  Math blaster is a game in which you are on a space ship and you have to blow up asteroids by picking the right answer to the problem.  A teacher could use this game many ways.  He or she could use it as a whole group and divide the class into competitive teams, or it could be an individual activity.