education

The Gamification Hexad Saves My Classroom! Guest Blog

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User types and learning v2 The Gamification Hexad Saves My Classroom Guest Blog

Well, this is a first, but I hope you will agree, it is a good first! I was lucky enough to be asked to scan a chapter of a new book that gamification and education expert Scott Herbert was writing. It was all about how he had been making use of my HEXAD in his classroom and it was excellent! I asked if he would be willing to write a little blog post about his experiences, what I got was this – and I could not be happier. Enjoy my friends!

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Kids do not really care for school, which as a teacher obviously makes things a little difficult. I teach Grade 8 Sciences and when you are trying to teach someone about cellular biology or the history of light they have a real hard time connecting it to their world. It’s a slippery slope. Read More ...

What would you change?

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I was asked a great question the other day. If you could go way back, what would you change?

It  got me thinking at the time and I have had it in my mind ever since. At the time I said that I would probably change nothing. The truth is that what I have experienced in my life is what has made me who I am. For the most part, I am pretty happy with how it all turned out!

That is a wishwashy answer though. I then started to think about what I would changed if I was being forced and I did think of something. My A-Levels (the exams you sit at 18). I took Chemistry, Physics and Biology and I was dreadful at them all. I would go back and try to take Computing, Ceramics and Physics if I had the chance again! Read More ...

4 part SAMR Model to Analyse Gamification

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I love coming up with new models and frameworks, I find them really handy and hope that when I share them that others do as well. However, I am also a great believer in not reinventing the wheel!

Recently I happened to see a comment from one of my favourite people on Twitter, Alice Keeler, that mentioned something called the SAMR model. Now, knowing that Alice is an awesome thought leader in the education space, I knew this was probably a model I wanted to look up – and I was right.

What is SAMR?

SAMR stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition. It is a model that is used in education to analyse and validate the potential of new technology in the classroom.  They idea is that you put the new technology in question, into one of these four categories. Read More ...

Gamification to encourage my daughter to read more

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As any regular reader will know, I spend a lot of time gamifying my daughter, in a good way. She has taught me a great deal about what does and doesn’t work in the real world.

Most recently I was trying to encourage her to read more, so decided to test out my EEEE framework with her. She was doing it, but it was a real battle, she found it frustrating and not very enjoyable.

My Daughter, based on observation of how she plays games and acts, is part Free Spirit, part Achiever and part Player. That is to say, she likes to have freedom to choose, explore and be creative. She loves when she understands a new concept and nails it, but she does like to see some kind of reward if it is available. Read More ...

The Flow Shift and Bounce

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This is more a thought and possibly even a question to those who know more than me about the Flow concept.  I have spoken about Flow in the past and use it as a core principle to engaging long term design.

However, recently it occurred to me that long term exposure to extremes in frustration or boredom, could alter our perception of flow.

For instance, you spend months in the boredom phase. You have little to no challenge. It seems reasonable that you would need to boost the level of challenge to help improve engagement and in turn try and get closer to this idea of flow. Below is the “ideal” mix of skill and challenge as described in flow theory – only this time plotted against time. Read More ...

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