I'm a huge advocate of video games. I've played and enjoyed them since I was 3 I personally believe that the root of my enjoyment comes from the fact that video games were a way for my dad and I to connect when I was little. The social and emotional connection I have with video games is not unique to me however. I have met many people who have an emotional or social connection to video games, whether it be lifelong friends via Xbox or memories of arguing with an older sibling over which controller you get to use, there are many ties that a lot of people have to video games. Knowing this, the question becomes how can educators facilitate learning with the help of these social or emotional connections that children are arriving with. I believe the answer to that is what we discussed on class this past Monday, Game-based learning.
As stated previously, I advocate highly for video games. However, my feverish advocating has evolved over the years into a respect for the art medium as I get older. The main conflict that arises from that is that I would hate to see integration of video games into the classroom done in such a manner that it becomes a perversion of the art form. Therefore, if I were to implement video games into my class (still not sure how to do that for an English class but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it) I'd need them to be good games so that i don't give my students a negative experience with something I hold dearly.
Gamification in the classroom doesn't necessarily need to be video games (despite how much I want it to be). Random thoughts I've had since Monday about how I would implement include:
-Implementing a point system with some sort of rewards for class participation
-Class based reward (competition between all of the classes I have over something)
- Jeopardy (EVERYONE loves Jeopardy)
In total, I think making some fun out of curriculum is a net positive. As a martial arts instructor, I cannot express the value of having some sort of end-of-class decompression, especially if it was a particularly difficult or taxing class. We play exercise ball dodge ball, so I'll need to think of some other things to do for the English class I plan to run, but I have some time.