Gamification In Children

Sir Ken Robinson states that, “Children are living in the most intensely stimulating period in the history of Earth” (TheRSA). They’re getting distracted by Iphones, television, recreational video games, etc. Which is leading to a possibly rampant misdiagnosis of ADHD in children across America. This is important to gamification because it exemplifies the dissonance that instructors may express towards this idea of bringing play into work. The students are going to require mental stimulation from an alternative source to keep their attention upon their work. Gamification introduces a method in which mental stimulation is a possibility through intractability with the coursework. One way that we saw this was through the implementation of

Levin agrees that a student should not be judged on a 100-point scale, rather students shouldn’t have their knowledge scored as a percentage value at all. Instead, he proposes a system where assignments, quizzes, tests, etc, are all based on “experience.” This is borrowing an element from video games in which characters’ progress over time through the experiences they transverse through. He suggests creating a strange conversion factor that would be used to convert a student’s score from a percentage into a value of experience. This is to discourage the student from attempting to devalue themselves. Since students are ranked in a value of experience, they are free to consider these assignments they complete as tasks that yield personal knowledge that they’ve acquired regarding the subject they are working on. The more knowledgeable they are in the area that is being tested, the more experience they’ll receive (up to the maximum score on the assignment). Whereas, if the student doesn’t perform very well in a topic they’ll see that they do not have a very high amount of experience in that topic. To encourage the student to better themselves the student should be given opportunities to retake course material to gain more experience. Levin’s badges are incorporated

We both understand that schooling is vital to a child’s development, and that creating an ideal hybrid system from the start will be the only successful way to implement gamification into a classroom. However, these game mechanics are not going to work in every classroom environment. One may argue that high schoolers and college students would completely disregard the purpose of gamification so long as they received the grade they were searching for. They have the existing grading scale ingrained within their mind that they wouldn’t be able to prevent themselves from asking, “How much experience is this assignment out of?” I’m in complete agreement with this argument, and I do not believe that this version of gamification would be as successful for mature age groups. Similarly, I don’t believe kindergarten students would have a strong understanding of what responsibility and perseverance is in terms of their academics. This version of gamification can be used effectively at a time in a student’s life where they are not worried about what grades they are receiving and where they are willing to improve upon themselves. This age range can vary however, it seems that students would possess this mindset around their middle school years from as early as fifth grade up until