OnBoarding, Tutorials and Learning by Doing

Feelies OnBoarding Tutorials and Learning by Doing

For me one of the most effective uses of gamification that I see in education (at the moment) is the inclusion of things like onboarding and tutorials.

When I was young, games came with manuals that you could knock a donkey out with. They had all the instructions, keyboard overlays, back stories and more! It could take a day just to read them, let alone start to play.  Who can forget the microscopic space fleet that came with the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?

I sometimes wonder if a lot of this was acceptable to us because of how long games took to load. Ah, the joyous sounds of the Commodore 64 loading – not to mention the amazing music you used to get (Ocean Loader v4 being my favourite – sad I know!). Read More ...

Looking back at my life – Computer games are in there!

Jedi logo decal 87463 Looking back at my life 8211 Computer games are in there

As I turned 36 yesterday, I started to reminisce a little about what things have helped define my life. I am not talking about family or friends, but actual things.

The first that came to mind was Games, more specifically video games. Now, I am too old to be a millennial – so I of course have not had computers in my life since I was born. However, I have had computers in my life from pretty much the first memories I have – and that is around 4 or 5 years old.

First we I remember us having an Apple II and playing Star Trek with my dad. After that it was a ZX Spectrum+ with a Micro Drive. My dad had only a few games for this, but I strongly remember Ant Attack – one of the first survival horror games!. Somewhere around this time I discovered my dads Acetronic MPU 1000, This was my introduction to multi-player games as we would spend hours playing Space War, Golf, Tank Plane Battle and Space Invaders. That system came out many times over the years! Read More ...