Beginner's Guide to Gamifying Your Classroom

Have you ever wanted to gamify your classroom, but do not know where to start? Below, I have listed the applications I would recommend implementing into your room.

How to 'Ignite' Learning

1. Kahoot

Kahoot is a free application that provides students with an interactive experience.  Educators have a choice of creating lessons, polls, quizzes, courses, and assessments. The most popular feature is just a short Kahoot where teachers create questions and provide multiple choice answers. Instead of making a Kahoot, teachers can also choose to discover premade Kahoots. Students are presented with the question and must choose an answer both quickly and correctly. After each question, students are shown their standing, and the class is shown the top five students. When giving students the Kahoot, the teacher has options as to how they would like to present it. For starters, teachers may assign the Kahoot for students to play at their own pace. The teacher may also play it live with a whole group with up to forty players. Students play head-to-head to try to earn first place. Recently, Kahoot added different game modes, beyond the classic game modes. There are team modes where students are selected into different groups and must work together to beat their opponent team.

There are also modes where students must work together as the whole class. Submarine Squad requires all the students to work together to swim away from the shark that is trying to eat them. Each time the students answer a word correctly, they get further from the shark. Eventually, two students are shown symbols that they must communicate with the class in order to move on. Kahoot is a great application that has many different features and modes to appeal to all classrooms. It provides great opportunities for students to engage in the content before higher stakes such as assessments. Kahoot also allows for teachers to examine the data after completing it. The application provides teachers with students’ accuracy for each question which is great to use as formative data. Teachers can take this data and change future instruction to meet the needs of the learners. 

A teacher's guide to Kahoot:

2. Blooket

Similar to Kahoot, Blooket is another free application that enhances students’ experiences by making it more interactive. Teachers can assign premade questions sets, copy a question set and change some of the responses, or create their own. Blooket allows for teachers to insert visuals such as pictures or GIFs. After selecting a question set, the host must pick which game mode they would like to play. Blooket has a handful of modes that fluctuate from where the students face each other head to head, or are working to be the top scorer. There are over ten different modes that each have their own plot line and provide students with directions to succeed. For example, Crypto Hack is a mode where each student must create a secret password. Then, they are shown a set of questions that the teacher assigned. If the questions are answered correctly, students are allowed to attempt to guess another player’s password. Students receive points for stealing passwords and for getting answers correctly. Blooket also provides teachers with the ability to host a game live, allow students to play solo, or assign it as homework. Similar to Kahoot, teachers can also analyze the data after completing a Blooket with the class. Teachers can see each players’ accuracy which will help with future instruction. One thing that stuck out to me was that Blooket will verify a set to ensure the information on the set is accurate.

A teacher's guide to Blooket:

Please respond in the comments: Do you have any experience with Kahoot or Blooket? If so, how to you use them in your classroom?

References:

Blooket. (n.d.). https://www.blooket.com/

Kahoot! (n.d.). https://create.kahoot.it/?deviceId=ff37cb8d-18db-4611-b751-51650e73e44dR&sessionId=1695659551495

McCarthy, J. (2021, December 13). Using gamification to ignite student learning. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/article/using-gamification-ignite-student-learning

YouTube. (2014, November 14). 5 minute guide to kahoot. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAfnia7-rMk

YouTube. (2020, October 19). Top 5 gamification examples in education today!. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CZtIIy7tRU

YouTube. (2021, February 7). How to play blooket | teacher tutorial. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3H3FLa4FIA

Engagement Crisis

The education field is stuck in an engagement crisis. Due to the lack of engagement, students become bored, which leads to them trying to entertain themselves. Ever walk into a classroom and see a student playing with something in their desk? Or maybe drawing on a separate piece of paper? This is a sign of students pulling themselves away from their learning because their attention is not held. To increase student engagement levels, we must make changes in education. Rather than sticking to the basic worksheet learning style, recent data shows for educators to move towards discovery. Many classrooms expect students to learn (more like remember) from writing content down on paper. They do not engage in the content, explore methodologies, or collaborate.

One solution to ending this engagement crisis is to incorporate gamification in education. What is gamification in education? Gamification takes the principals of game design and delivers it to education. Some principals may include badges, level ups, competitions, and more. Many students have previous exposure to gaming, and enjoy it, "More than 90% of children older than 2 years play video games, and three-quarters of American households own a video game console,” (Alanko, 2023). With such a high rate of students drawn to gaming, incorporating it into the classroom is a great way to engage learners. The addition of gaming features allows for students to be motivated to participate and want to be correct, which helps them learn content. Instead of a worksheet, students are presented with content in different formats that help appeal to different learning styles. For example, visual learners are getting the opportunity to see questions with pictures or diagrams that may go with. Many sites have audio features that also allow for auditory learners to listen to the question. Gamification appeals to the different learning styles while also presenting the content in a user friendly way.

 How Gamification Increases Student Enjoyment

We often give students rubrics that are so strict, which decrease student creativity levels. Students receive tight boundaries that lead to similar end results. For example, projects may look very similar between student to student because they are unable to adhere to their wants. Many gamification sites provide students with choices that they make based on their own desires. These sites will have different path options for students to follow, or the choices your character makes. By adding principals such as choices, we are giving students independence and freedom of creativity, “Autonomy is one of the key motivators,” (Marczewski, 2016). Rather than the feeling of confinement, students must make their own logical choices as they continue through different games. Minecraft is a popular game outside of school that presents kids with often an empty template. Kids have the opportunity to make or do anything they want. Millions of people play Minecraft because they are drawn into the autonomy aspects it presents.

Gamification also teaches students many life long skills they will need in their future endeavors. For starters, although students strive to win, many students will experience losing while playing. I am currently a fourth grade teacher who uses gamification in the classroom and I always have a few students that get extremely upset when they lose. It is important as the teacher to model what behaviors are appropriate, especially after a loss. It also is a good time to share how the winner should look. While winning is great, the winner should never rub it in everyone’s face. Gamification allows for social-emotion learning (SEL) opportunities when playing in group settings. Also, students are using real-world applications that they may see down the road. Gamification provides students with technological knowledge which is important for this day in age.

How to Gamify YOUR Classroom

Overall, gamification provides students with endless possibilities. Instead of working pencil and paper, students are engaged with the content. They have the ability to earn gaming components such as badges and standings to help increase their want to learn. Gamification gives students purpose behind their work while allowing them the wiggle room needed to be creative. Simple implementations such as gamification can help release the education field from this engagement crisis.

Comment Below: How do you use gamification in your classroom? What are your favorite sites?

 

References:

Alanko, D. (2023, January 1). The Health Effects of Video Games in Children and Adolescents. Pediatrics In Review. https://publications.aap.org/pediatricsinreview/article-abstract/44/1/23/190316/The-Health-Effects-of-Video-Games-in-Children-and?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Chen, J., & Liang, M. (2022, September 20). Play hard, study hard? the influence of gamification on students’ study engagement. Play hard, study hard? The influence of gamification on students’ study engagement. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.994700/full

DitchThatTxtbk. (2021, December 3). 20 ways to gamify your class. Ditch That Textbook. https://ditchthattextbook.com/15-ways-to-gamify-your-class/

Marczewski, A. (2017, May 31). Gamification: Meaningful choice. Gamification Expert. https://www.gamified.uk/2016/02/05/gamification-meaningful-choice/