Mum! I want to be a Zombie!
Why is school so boring and Plants vs Zombies so
much fun? Is it possible to add some game elements to learning experiences in order to make them more fun, engaging and effective?
Joining dots? Sure you are!
Kids have changed and it seems all they feel like
doing is hanging out, playing video games or doing whatever that doesn't
involve school stuff and I kind of understand them. I've also been one of those
kids that cannot pay attention to anything but the console screen, because what
they are doing is so engaging, and has them totally hooked on it. I've even
heard that children have lost their memory and attention skills due to video
games and technology, that they have no interest for anything but games anymore or that
Generation Y is a lost one...
But...what if things have changed?
Two weeks ago, I was at the Gamification World
Congress 2013 in Madrid, and something amazing happened. When the event finished, there was a crowd of gamers that gathered around to see some PRO Minecraft gamers play Street Fighter on a giant screen, and they were totally
engaged! Cheering and clapping as if it was the Final of the World
Championships!
Besides, if we compare the time spent on studying
with the hours played on video games and the results produced by both, we'll
realise that there is something wrong in the way that those activities are
engaging and teaching children. But do kids really want to learn, or are they
just interested in playing games and having fun?
And the answer is that children, as any of us, love
learning! They are usually passionate to know more about anything, but only if they have any
interest on it! It's quite difficult that someone that has big doses of daily
interactivity, social contact, and endless fun in virtual worlds, wants to
memorize those boring school notes for 3 hours.
Games are a great source of happiness, fun and
motivation, and that's something that old learning methods cannot provide.
Because in the end, motivating a kid for studying the whole list of Spain's
main rivers with just a textbook, is as difficult as motivating a Formula One
or Nascar champion to drive his car at 50 kph in the city. Obviously,
engagement and motivation tends to zero.
So...Is it impossible to motivate Generation Y students?
Not at all! We are all so much curious since we are
born, and as a kid, everyone loves touching and exploring what surrounds us!
Human beings are passionate about learning but
things have changed and we need to change some old techniques that are still in
use for learning. Just as an example, go and ask any kid where exactly is the
items shop in Animal Crossing, the complete list of their Pokemon's attacks or the way to master those difficult
tricks in Fifa 13 and see what happens...
They know them all! It is just so amazing that
Generation Y kids are able to memorize complete maps that are even bigger than
real life ones, keep in mind thousands of data about their favorite monsters or
execute really complex movement combos to beat their enemies, and that's where
the power of games lies!
So... Can we extract what we learn from games and
apply it to our learning methods to increase kid's engagement, efficiency and
motivation?
Yeah! That is called gamification and to sum it all up,
it's a design technique to improve people's motivation towards a well-intentioned purpose. If you want to learn
more about why gamification works, how to gamify a system step by step or some
great videos about it, just explore this blog!
Looks cool but...does it work in real life?
There are quite many examples about gamified
learning systems but i like these 3 ones:
- Duolingo
is a really great platform for learning english in a very simple, intuitive and
rewarding way, adapting the difficulty to the learners current level while
focusing on the concepts that students seem not to grasp at once.
Furthermore, it offers a full set of points, badges, levels, quests, progress
bars and much more. Thanks to its gamified system and its game-like user
interface, it's one of the most used learning platforms nowadays and it keeps
on growing!
-
Quest to learn
is a public school located in New York that has been turned into an epic
adventure. Mixing old school learning methods and game elements, they have
created a successful combination of fun, motivation and efficiency. For
example, students can be assigned the quest of searching for an old map at the
school library to discover the old secrets of the greek civilization, that will
grant them access to infinite wisdom. How cool is that?
-
Zombie-based learning is a project started by David Hunter, a geography
teacher of Washington that wanted to further motivate his students to study his
lessons. In a world where zombies have taken over, how would you survive? Well,
aparently, geography might help a bit! But rather than going on about it, visit the kickstarter site here and see the video!
Some final words on it...
So you made it down here! Does it all seem like a
madness? Well, no worries, this is quite new and revolutionary, but if you
think about it, it all makes sense. First of all, human beings are said to be
driven by 16 main motivators and they are closely related to what creates fun
in a game (more info here). Besides, if we analyse those factors, we'll see
that they are also related to the main elements of happiness (well-being).
Anyway, going back to our initial question, what is
more effective and fun at the same time?: to be a zombie that perfectly knows the
geography of the place in order to eat our brains out, or memorizing for 3 hours a
day the complete list of the world's main rivers and oceans?
I'm
quite sure you know the answer too.
This post was originally posted on the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Business School Blog in Spanish. You can check it out here
Victor Manrique
@victormanriquey
This post was originally posted on the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Business School Blog in Spanish. You can check it out here
Victor Manrique
@victormanriquey
One of the most prominent issues the students have to deal with while writing assignments is plagiarism. Hence, they extensively use plagiarism checker to check if there are any copied content in the paper.
ResponderEliminarAnother major reason for using plagiarism checkers is that universities do not accept plagiarized content. Plagiarism is a serious offence. Hence, if found, the students are suspended or might even lose the grades.
Due to these limitations, it is evident that the plagiarism checking & wordcounter are not at all effective to check plagiarism. The term plagiarism is actually very broad. It is merely not coping with words. But these tools, unfortunately, detect words but not ideas. Hence, the chances of plagiarized papers remain.