tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557254.post8457499353198280493..comments2024-03-18T13:02:53.349-06:00Comments on blog-efl: What's wrong with giving Josh +1 for teamwork?blog-eflhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09532316449457675061noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557254.post-21872219216902136212013-10-25T08:40:33.189-05:002013-10-25T08:40:33.189-05:00Gamification sounds to me a little like the role-p...Gamification sounds to me a little like the role-playing which is very fashionable in employment based training. I have never been in favour of this method of teaching as it takes the particpants out of their comfort zones, and seems to me to reduce the retention of what is being taught in this way. The information imparted will always be associated with the discomfort of the learning process. Maybe however I am just old fashioned!Kevin Keanehttp://www.writtenenglishcorrected.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557254.post-79159542420568278472013-10-21T21:40:51.566-05:002013-10-21T21:40:51.566-05:00Hi, there! I want to explore gamification especial...Hi, there! I want to explore gamification especially Class Dojo. Yes, there are downsides of gamification. I have to agree that gamification can be very competitive. As teachers, we should be alert when there is already unhealthy competition.Betty Chapmanhttp://ielts-singapore.org/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557254.post-62759821866767657972013-10-01T15:15:14.098-05:002013-10-01T15:15:14.098-05:00Thanks for coming along to the blog, Chris - good ...Thanks for coming along to the blog, Chris - good to hear from you. <br /><br />Grading is definitely not 'gamification' - quite the opposite I think. In fact one of the points of that Lee Sheldon makes in his excellent book (the Multiplayer Classroom) is how moving away from pass/fail or A/B/C/D grades and moving towards a level/points system can be far more motivating. <br /><br />One of the factors is that your grades go up and down but you don't drop in level in a game and you never lose experience points. What can be demotivating for students relating to grades is that they can feel they are not getting better - using an experience points/level system can give students a much better sense of progress (i.e. my XP/level is rising and I am getting better all the time).blog-eflhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09532316449457675061noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557254.post-13508539243383441162013-09-29T11:18:14.073-05:002013-09-29T11:18:14.073-05:00Just in from cel.ly on twitter cy.tl/1awFjji
&quo...Just in from cel.ly on twitter cy.tl/1awFjji <br />"Starting this term, every public school student in Oregon is supposed to be graded solely by whether they have mastered the academic skills covered in class.<br /><br />Turning everything in neat and on time, bringing back signed forms and racking up extra credit won't boost grades. Turning assignments in late, skipping homework and talking during class won't hurt, as long as the student can demonstrate the key skills and knowledge covered in the course."<br /><br />"In reality, it won't always work that way, especially not in this first year that, by law, grades must be based purely on academic achievement."Chris Fry Barcelonahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03287610884191026086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557254.post-3601132819843261952013-09-28T10:15:03.706-05:002013-09-28T10:15:03.706-05:00This may be a little off the point of your blog po...This may be a little off the point of your blog post, Graham, but I think there is a connection. <br /><br />Up until now I have been setting workbook 'assignments' (homework) and grading students for it in the hope that the desire to get good grades from me would stimulate them to do more workbook homework. In a sense this was a kind of gamification. Incidentally, I also grade their writing and speaking regularly to provide formative feedback and the continuous assessment the school demands (and rightly so IMHO).<br /><br />At the end of last academic year I became disillusioned with the results of the grades for workbook homework as they weren't stimulating many of my adults to do more homework and so I made some changes, moving away from the 'gamification' of workbook exercises. Instead, I asked them to reflect every week on what they had done out of class and tell me scores if they wanted to, but more importantly, talk about how satisfied they were with what they had done and any progress they noticed. As usual, some took to it immediately and other ignored it completely, but I shall persevere from the very start of the coming course this time.<br /><br />Part of my idea is to get rid of unwanted and unnecessary homework by asking my students what their priorities are: speaking, writing, reading, listening, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and then suggest that they only do workbook homework which matches their priorities and then to reflect every week or two on this work.<br /><br />In a sense, instead of using gamification to motivate my adults, I hope to appeal to their own sense of the importance of the work I suggest they do. Will I be able to kill two birds with one stone? Get students motivated to do as much self-selected as useful work out of class as possible AND for them to develop as reflective, autonomous learners.Chris Fry Barcelonahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03287610884191026086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557254.post-38178214178792316582013-09-27T11:58:00.250-05:002013-09-27T11:58:00.250-05:00No worries, am a bit worried about the first half ...No worries, am a bit worried about the first half of the comments - the answer was too long so I'd split it into two.<br /><br />Well...anyway, in the meantime....<br /><br />see the thing is that although you say games are played for lots of other reasons than just fun, but I think maybe the word 'fun' is being misunderstood too. Fun is not just relaxing, spending time with others, fun can also be hard and demanding. And so without repeating myself, the thing is that the philosophers have been arguing about games since the time of Plato, and if a game is played for any other reason than to play that game, it isn't a game. <br /><br />That's not just me spouting pretty, that's Schiller, Huizinga and Callois. In terms of clear-cut definition, yes, there isn't one but again the philosophers have already determined that they are four different categories of play, these being agon, alea, mimicry and vertigo (competition, chance, roleplays and free-fall).<br /><br />Your comment on the voluntariness was interesting and worth further exploration... yes, I was forced to play by my PE teacher. Thing is, I didn't enjoy it and thus didn't take anything away from the experience. As you said there is more to games, there's also autonomy, competence and mastery. So if I play because I am forced to play then I am not being autonomous. As my heart is not in it I don't gain new abilities (or at least not as many as if I were doing it because I want to) and because I don't get better, I can never become a master of this game I don't want to play. <br /><br />I guess referring to your comment, I think it is more ridiculous to call a learning activity a game... I think we should refer to them as gamified e/activities and stop using this word inappropriately. Moreover, in terms of the incidental learning that occurs from playing games, real games, i.e. games that were originally created to be games and taking them into the classroom... well that is a real, tangible and interesting. However, this is not gamification. It has more in common with authentic reading activities, like bringing a newspaper into class or TED videos, the use of games in the classroom is not the same thing as taking into class a learning activity which has been modified to look like a game because the teacher wants to increase motivation levels. I make that distinction again because there is also this popular confusion.<br /> Karenne Sylvesterhttp://kalinago.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557254.post-2308829400376251032013-09-27T11:17:19.528-05:002013-09-27T11:17:19.528-05:00Thanks for the comments, Karenne. Lots of points t...Thanks for the comments, Karenne. Lots of points to respond to here too.<br /><br />Game - I think people actually play games for lots of other reasons than just fun or for more than 'just to play' or pass the time. I'm not sure I agree with you that a game of football played by professional football players stops becoming a game because they are paid to do it - sure, it's more than a game because of the money, but it is still a game. <br /><br />I think there isn't really a clear-cut definition of a game that everyone can agree on, but I believe the definition needs to be inclusive rather than exclusive as you imply above.<br /><br />As for 'gamifying' part of the classroom experience over many classes or a semester, etc not being 'gamification' but something else - what, then shall we call this if not 'gamification'?<br /><br />I also don't agree with you that games are always voluntary - I think they are usually voluntary: weren't you ever forced to play a game at school (by the P.E. teacher? Or peer pressure?)If you believe this, then you have to say that no activity 'played' in a classroom can be called a 'game', which then starts taking us into the realm of ridiculous. <br /><br />I agree with you about the length of time that you can use something like Class Dojo or another gamified system - this is indeed in line with my experience, and the nature of games in general - every game has a time limit. At some point you get tired of playing a game and want to stop or play another game. The same is true of you 'gamify' an activity in the classroom. A teacher needs to be aware of this and to change the rules of the game or change the game when appropriate. <br /><br />As for motivation for the 'losers' - the trick is to multi-layer the experience so there isn't any one way of 'winning' - a great example of a popular game that has done this successfully is the iPad game 'Clash of Clans' (worth a blog post in itself - watch this space) - there is so much you can learn from how the points / levels / badges system works in a game such as this and how there are different ways of 'winning' that appeal to different player types (ref. Bartle)...<br /><br />My thoughts on your thoughts at least :-)<br />blog-eflhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09532316449457675061noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5557254.post-31733145436183825102013-09-27T10:31:42.770-05:002013-09-27T10:31:42.770-05:002.
Historically and philosophically, the word game...2.<br />Historically and philosophically, the word game strictly refers to an activity which is played <br /><br />for fun. <br /><br />It is fundamentally something that is played for no other reason or no other purpose <br /><br />than just to play. <br /><br />For example, a game of poker between a brother and sister exchanging jelly beans is, yes, playing <br /><br />a game... but Poker played in a casino is not a game, it's an attempt to earn money through a <br /><br />favouring of chance. Football played by a group of teaching colleagues is a game, but football <br /><br />played by professionals is a not a game, it is a profession. Walking on a rope tied between trees <br /><br />might be a game between two friends, but under a tent it's a circus act. <br /><br />So, now we understand what a game is and what a game is not, let's return to what gamification is.<br /><br />This means to digitally modify an activity or product that is not a game - in its core objective - to an activity or product which only appears to its players as if it a game. However, both the players and the game-maker and all other interested parties know before play, that play is not the reason for doing the activity. There is another end-goal. The objective of the experience is 'only' housed within the illusion of game play. Moreover, and this is important, it is an illusion that the players understood going in and voluntarily accept before playing.<br /><br />In education, the illusion of game play might be doing exercises in a strange world where in <br /><br />order to get forward they have to grasp algebraic formulas. Or it might refer to shooting a <br /><br />basketball into a hoop in order to gain access to options where they can learn the difference between the present perfect and past simple.<br /><br />In terms of gamifying the entire class experience, over weeks and into semesters- surely to <br /><br />do this is more akin to doing a really long triathalon, and that's not really a game, is it? <br /><br />Sure, there are badges and points at the end but is this gamification? Additionally, the voluntariness of this experience, over time, is this there? Categorically, games are always <br /><br />voluntary. Always. But ClassDojo is chosen and implemented by teachers. This is not an attack on <br /><br />ClassDojo, as I said before, if I was teaching teens I might give it a shot. But over long <br /><br />periods of time, given its competitive nature, just like the star charts on walls, surely <br /><br />certain people "win" over and over while others "lose" over and over. <br /><br />How motivational is it for the losers? Long term? Year after year? Are they are still voluntary players by the end? Are the neither losers nor winners playing for the sake of the game or they engaged an alternative activity of only wanting to get to the top. <br /><br />And in all that focus on the winning, or the not losing, has attention now split away from the actual educational content?<br /><br />In my opinion, gamification has much more to do with changing short, time-limited, <br /><br />specific exercises that are not game-like in their essence (e.g. dull grammar gap-fills) into <br /><br />ones that seem like they are fun to do for a brief moment in time. I think gamification is <br /><br />about, for example, taking a list of words which the learner 'needs' to learn and then making <br /><br />that experience fun for the learner so that (s)he voluntarily plays - perhaps at home, or at <br /><br />school, with or without others. There's no loss of face. There's just the fun.<br />Karenne Sylvesterhttp://kalinago.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.com