Gamfication

Gamification is a hot topic. Can games enhance education? Definitely, they can. Use games and apps that are out there, freely available over the Internet, on your mobile devices, depending on what kinds of access your students have. There are lots of free great games.  Check websites that review games. Parents can get engaged in those kinds of games as well too, because they can really help students focus on skills that they may need to build when they are at home. So that is one strand of ways to use games or to gamify.  The second strand is to do it yourself via applying the rules of gamification to lessons. Like using leaderboards in  your class to create healthy competition,  or creating levels and giving badges.  The third way to use games is introducing students to games like Minecraft and Scratch. They allow students to not only play a game in those environments, but then to also build, be creative, and to get real great exposure to technology and even programming.