The first way I can see incorporating game thinking into my class is to embrace the idea of mastery learning. The way that I facilitated my students learning in the past was with mostly direct instruction, with the beginning and end of lessons, chapters and units dictated by my timeline. I decided when we moved to the next subject, and while it would be amazing to not move on to the next concept until all my students had mastered the content, that was just not feasible. But, by incorporating mastery learning, with a game like prodigy I can better increase student growth. Math is a subject that builds on itself almost exclusively, and when a student is missing a piece of the puzzle, then the rest of the concepts will never be mastered.
Another way that I see that game based learning is superior to my practice is the constant and timely feedback that students get. In the book I read for 791, Hattie explains why quality feedback is essential and how to give it. While I am always trying to improve my practice, feedback is something that I know I can be better at, but I always seem to run out of time and energy when trying to give students individual feedback so they can improve. Game based learning takes care of that for you, and while the feedback given depends on the game, it also is dependent on the student. That is, are they responsive to the feedback, can they adapt and learn to change in order to succeed in the next round? Even non digital games, something as simple as a class jeopardy game gives instant feedback and depending on how you play, can inspire whole class discussions as to why the answer was correct or incorrect. I love to incorporate games into my class lessons, and have done a few different digital games, but the bank of examples and videos has inspired me to get out of my comfort zone, and give students the opportunity to get competitive, think deeper about the content, and support their social communication through game play. I would love to be able to include the ideas from Katie Salen in my classroom practice regarding students applying their knowledge to create their own games.
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