Gamification/Learn Through Fun

Hello friends! Your IT Queen is here. 

If you have read my old posts you'll see that I started on an online teacher training course designed by the Guinevere project. My professor at Istanbul University Cerrahpaşa, Tuncer Can make me attend this course and learn more about gaming. 

Before going into details let me give you some core information.

"Gamification is the application of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts. It can also be defined as a set of activities and processes to solve problems by using or applying the characteristics of game elements." via Wikipedia.

In our case, we will be applying games in education. Learners, especially young ones, get bored very easily nowadays. I constantly emphasize that the Z Generation is not interested in books and basic drills during their lessons. They are born into technology, they grow with it and they expect to learn with the help of it. It's a fact that the new generation of kids' concentration span is relatively low and their point of view is different in many ways. That is why you hear sentences like "make learning fun" over and over again. I am 20 years old and I can say that I was not born in technology yet. I did my homework with the help of encyclopedias, books, journals, and newspapers. I remember collecting interesting articles from them. But when I started middle school there was no such thing as a book when it comes to projects. But old habits die hard and I still today continue my research mostly on paper. The reason why I told this is, even though I'm the new kid I was not born into those I-pad, YouTube generation and I'm learning to use it for 7-8 years. Anyways, the new era is constructed with technology. It is considered a real-life problem-solving activity. Let me give you some examples.

There are lots of virtual environments where you can create your own world. I talked about Second Life before. There is also Minecraft for young learners. There are lots of opportunities to create games in the environment. For instance, If you want to teach your students routes you can make use of places like that. In an environment, you can give a direction card and each student can follow it. Then, they can find something in the place they go solve a riddle for example. Situations are endless. really liked the idea. It is authentic first of all. Secondly, all students can participate without going anywhere and getting any permission. They can practice their skills and learn while having fun.