Gamification of education

“My goal for the next decade is to try to make it as easy to save the world in real life as it is to save the world in online games.”

— Jane McGonigal

The revolution will not be televised. It will be posted and discussed on Facebook and Twitter. Videos will be uploaded to YouTube. It will be streamed, downloaded, chatted, made into an app and played out in video games.

We are in the midst of a revolution in education, but you know that. Learning is growing and moving rapidly online, with or without public schools. Khan Academy has every math lesson you will ever need on YouTube, in video, accessible by anyone, anywhere. Sugata Mitra won TED’s 2013 million dollar prize for his talk “Build a School in the Cloud.” See it here, http://tinyurl.com/bsx6b34.

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 53 percent of public school districts had high school students in distance courses in 2009-10, and that number is only increasing. Forward-thinking teachers and leaders are transforming traditional schools into blended learning models and adding online content, resources and courses as fast as they can to keep up.

I disagree with claims that public education is becoming obsolete. We are adapting, as public education has always done, as quickly as our large systems and resources will allow us. We know we have to engage the digital natives where they live: online, with social media, on their smartphones and laptops or tablets. Teachers coming into the profession today, and for at least the last five years, were born into this age of technology along with their students, and they are accelerating the learning curve.

We are using and uploading video lessons, integrating school-safe social media tools like Edmodo (a school-safe version of Facebook), providing blended learning models and online courses. Burchell High School, like many other schools and our district office, has a Facebook page and a Twitter feed (@burchellhs). One of the great ways we can provide choice and options, and communicate with our students and families, is through technology, and we are adding more every day. Yet there is one venue we may be missing, perhaps the one with the biggest stigma attached of all the tech-based learning modes: gaming.

Game-based learning, or “gamification,” is rich, fertile ground for planting educational opportunities and growing new, engaging modes of teaching and learning. We all know that this generation was born into gaming and that they are now doing much of their gaming live online in a worldwide community, connecting and communicating while having fun and engaging their brains. Gaming often builds in 21st-century skills.

“When we play a game, we tackle tough challenges with more creativity, more determination, more optimism, and we’re more likely to reach out to others for help,” says researcher Jane McGonigal.

Gaming today is heavily interactive, full of complex problem solving. Alone, gaming builds mental dexterity, but the rise of online gaming means gaming is increasingly collaborative. Spontaneously formed teams approach missions and goals in innovative new ways, tacking problems in the exact way businesses and employers hope the next generation of workers will, while casually spanning language, culture, religion and continents in pursuit of common goals. Gaming is not simply recreation or wasting time; it is wiring a generation to think, learn and act in new ways.

Games can enhance learning and engage learners from preschoolers to adults. A company called GlassLab (glasslabgames.org) is developing games designed not for learning and to assess learning. SimCityEDU now allows students to manage cities and use STEM skills, and includes formative assessments aligned to the Common Core Standards. Name any childhood learning challenge and there’s an app for that — flashcards, learning the states and capitols, dissecting a frog or mastering Japanese or German. Though I don’t condone violent video games or mindless game play, it is important to note that cognitive researcher Daphne Bavelier says video games, even action-packed shooter games, can teach focus and multitasking, stating “action video games have a number of ingredients that are really powerful for brain plasticity, learning, attention, vision.” Watch her TED talk online at http://tinyurl.com/cmdz4ga.

What if we can tap into how games keep teens engaged and motivated and instead reapply the hours they spend on gaming to education? One of the more intriguing aspects of gaming is motivation. Increasingly, research shows that what motivates humans to play video games for hours on end can be applied to the school and the classroom. If we disregarded every other point in this article and just took some lessons from how games motivate teens, we could revolutionize learning.

Many young people will tell you that their dream job involves creating video games. This is an incredible opportunity to answer the age-old questions about why math and science are important and applicable. Taking today’s visually stunning and intricately complex games for granted, students may think creating games is a simple process. Developing a video game takes thousands of hours of complex, three-dimensional engineering involving programming and coding along with physics and high-level mathematics. Reading and creating code in the digital age may be the new 21st century literacy. Just as higher-level math is taught at a lower level in school every year, high schools can begin teaching basic coding and game design and development — territory once reserved for specialized programs in college.

At Burchell High School, Diony Tribble is teaching AV technology in a new and innovative way using game design. With this and his robotics class, he combines teamwork and collaboration, programming, problem-solving, creativity, communication and technological engineering — all 21st century skills — in the classroom, and all with at-risk youth who can take these skills and become leaders in tomorrow’s business world. The revolution will not be televised, but if you want to see it in action go to the next state robotics competition.

I believe deeply that the U.S. education system is the best in the world, moves mountains daily, and that if you are seeking Superman (and Superwoman) they teach in a classroom just down the hall. We have always changed and adapted with the technology and the times, and we are able to do so along with this generation. While we should be embracing school in the cloud, there will always be a place for real educators and schools to facilitate and support learning.

We won’t be made obsolete. Let’s keep looking at modern learners, meeting them in their habitat and matching our teaching to their needs and skills. Gaming is one great, and overlooked, way to do this. If not, we won’t need laws like “No Child Left Behind” because it will be the children leaving us behind.

Adam W. Mokelke is principal at Burchell High School and a self-professed gamer.