What is Gamification?

Gamification is putting the curriculum into a game-based activity where students can learn and explore in a safe environment. Students receive immediate feedback on the tasks they complete and can track their performance to know where improvements need to be made.

Instructional Strategies

Educators who use gamification in their classroom will most likely agree that it gives students a better learning experience. They are engaged in technology and using problem-solving skills to “play” curriculum games. Gamification gives both students and teacher feedback on student progress and educators can use the feedback to tailor lessons to students’ individual needs.

Prodigy is a mathematics curriculum based game that many educators are using in their classrooms for students to learn and practice mathematical concepts in a way that is fun, safe and engaging. Dreambox is another mathematics gamification that is also similar to Prodigy. I have seen educators use both, however, if one used Prodigy than they disliked Dreambox and vise versa. I really liked how the educator I saw use Prodigy to tailor lessons to student’s individual needs. I was working in a special needs classroom that consisted of 10 students with behaviour and/or learning difficulties. They would “play” Prodigy and at the end of the day the teacher would look at each students’ results. This is where she could see where students where struggling and where they are succeeding. Often, she would understand why they were failing in one area of math because of their learning exceptionality. She would take this information and create a lesson/activity outside of gamification for the student to have additional practice in a different setting.

Dreambox is very similar, however my experience using Dreambox isn’t as positive as my experience with Prodigy. With Dreambox, I noticed that students can’t create their own characters like they can with Prodigy and that when they earn points on Dreambox, it seems to be more for completing a lesson. Whereas with Prodigy, students earn points to unlock more items for their character. Prodigy seems to be more engaging for students as it seems to motivate them more to earn points.

My Classroom

I could definitely foresee myself using the idea of gamification in my own future classroom. It is engaging for students and assess student data for the educator. However, there are some challenges I can predict that may be difficult implementing gamification in the classroom. For instance, in my placement we often had difficulty with the Wi-Fi connection in the school. However, Wi-Fi connection does not matter if there isn’t technology available for the students to use. In my placement, there was a class set of Google Chromebooks shared between 4 classes. It was difficult booking time for the Chromebooks and you had to keep in mind of the other teachers as to not ‘hog’ the Chromebooks. Besides having to overcome some of these challenges, I agree that gamification is relevant and beneficial to implement in the classroom.

How do you gamify your classroom?