The Gamified Classroom

In this lively and practical book, seasoned educator Jonathan Cassie shines a spotlight on gamification, an instructional approach that's revolutionizing K–12 education. Games are well known for their ability to inspire persistence. The best ones feature meaningful choices that have lasting consequences, reward experimentation, provide a like-minded community of players, and gently punish failure and encourage risk-taking behavior. Players feel challenged, but not overwhelmed. A gamified lesson bears these same hallmarks. It is explicitly gamelike in its design and fosters perseverance, creativity, and resilience. Students build knowledge through experimentation and then apply what they've learned to fuel further exploration at higher levels of understanding. In this book, Cassie covers What happens to student learning when it is gamified. Why you might want to gamify instruction for your students. The process for gamifying both your classroom and your lessons. If you want to see your students engaged, motivated, and excited about learning, join Jonathan Cassie on a journey that will add a powerful new set of ideas and practices to your teaching toolkit. The gamified classroom—an exciting new frontier of 21st century learning—awaits you and your students. Will you answer the call?

In this book you will learn how gamification can create lessons that truly engage students, challenging them to solve problems and develop their own computational thinking. We look at the methods used in video games to create hooks, on-board students, and keep your students motivated. We also look at flow, which enables us to ensure the learning curve is neither frustratingly hard nor boringly easy, and then provide you with a complete system to create your own gamified syllabus. Gamification has become especially important during the Covid-19 crisis, where you might need to engage in distance teaching, and some teachers are reporting very low online engagement. Contrast this with my own online classes, which had 100% attendance and in some cases students were putting in an extra 60 hours of extra credit work. There has never been a better time to learn from video games! Using gamification will improve the motivation of your students and even make assessment fun! And it can be used in class and at a distance too! "As a creativity zealot myself, I am eager to incorporate all I have learned from this must-have book into my own practice as soon as possible and to support the Faculty I support in my role as a coach to do likewise for the sake of the children we aim to encourage and support. Get this book. Consume it. Put it into practice. Share it with every teacher you know." Sean ThompsonTeacher, Author, ADE & Creativity Guru"It is very approachable with many concrete examples and I loved the humour. This book should be compulsory subject matter in teacher training!!!"Tommy GysenbergsTeacher, Apple Distinguished Educator

This book is a field guide on how to implement game-based learning and «gamification» techniques to everyday teaching. It is a survey of best practices aggregated from interviews with experts in the field. Much of the book draws on the author's experiences implementing games with his middle school students.

Textbooks are symbols of centuries-old education. They're often outdated as soon as they hit students' desks. Acting "by the textbook" implies compliance and a lack of creativity. It's time to ditch those textbooks--and those textbook assumptions about learning In Ditch That Textbook, teacher and blogger Matt Miller encourages educators to throw out meaningless, pedestrian teaching and learning practices. He empowers them to evolve and improve on old, standard, teaching methods. Ditch That Textbook is a support system, toolbox, and manifesto to help educators free their teaching and revolutionize their classrooms.

Go beyond gamification’s badges and leaderboards with the new edition of the book, first published in 2011, that helped transform education. Going far beyond the first edition of The Multiplayer Classroom, forthrightly examining what worked and what didn’t over years of development, here are the tools to design any structured learning experience as a game to engage your students, raise their grades, and ensure their attendance. Suitable for use in the classroom or the boardroom, this book features a reader-friendly style that introduces game concepts and vocabulary in a logical way. Also included are case studies, both past and present, from others teaching in their own multiplayer classrooms around the world. You don't need any experience making games or even playing games to use this book. You don’t even need a computer. Yet, you will join many hundreds of educators who have learned how to create multiplayer games for any age on any subject. Lee Sheldon began his writing career in television as a writer-producer, eventually writing more than 200 shows ranging from Charlie’s Angels (writer) to Edge of Night (head writer) to Star Trek: The Next Generation (writer-producer). Having written and designed more than 40 commercial and applied video games, Lee spearheaded the first full writing for games concentration in North America at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the second writing concentration at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he is now a professor of practice. Lee is a regular lecturer and consultant on game design and writing in the United States and abroad. His most recent commercial game, the award-winning The Lion’s Song, is currently on Steam.

What if going to school captured the thrills and excitement of a theme park? Just imagine what your classroom would be like if the activities inside elicited the same sense of fun and exhilaration as a roller coaster! How much more engaged would your students be if your curriculum were filled with the same mystery and mastery they found in an escape room full of puzzles and surprising twists? School should be fun! In EDrenaline Rush, John Meehan pulls back the curtain on what it takes to create thrilling learning experiences in your classroom. Packed with lesson planning tips, instructional design ideas, and plug-and-play teaching resources, EDrenaline Rush will challenge you to think differently and equip you to push your pedagogy to incredible limits. Create classrooms where students willingly step outside of their comfort zones and boldly dare to attempt the impossible. "Packed with practical tips and great writing that will have you coming back for more of his dynamic, rigorous approach to classroom teaching." --Alexis Wiggins, teacher and author of The Best Class You Never Taught "This is a must-buy and should be a must-implement for anyone who wants to create positive change in their schools." --Michael Matera, teacher and author of eXPlore Like a Pirate "Every classroom can be filled with 'student-centered edrenaline, ' and after reading EDrenaline Rush you will be motivated to make it happen." --Scott Rocco, EdD, Hamilton Township (NJ) School District Superintendent and co-author of 140 Twitter Tips for Educators and Hacking Google for Education "EDrenaline Rush is the ultimate surprise and delight!" --Monica Cornetti, CEO of Sententia Gamification, GamiCon Gamemaster

Serious games provide a unique opportunity to fully engage students more than traditional teaching approaches. Understanding the best way to utilize these games and the concept of play in an educational setting is imperative for effectual learning in the 21st century. Gamification in Education: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice is an innovative reference source for the latest academic material on the different approaches and issues faced in integrating games within curriculums. Highlighting a range of topics, such as learning through play, virtual worlds, and educational computer games, this publication is ideally designed for educators, administrators, software designers, and stakeholders in all levels of education.