FINAL: Paige Explores Gamification

Paige demonstrated stellar tutoring instincts as she finished her phonics notebook.  She distilled her research into Orton-Gillingham by compiling  appropriate reading lists, and she looked to her own experience as a student to devise learning activities that visually exceeded the traditional emphasis on multi-sensory processing.  No less importantly, she did not lose sight of her intended  audience:  an elementary school student.  Early on she realized that she had to incorporate fun into her lessons:  "I started to think of the best way to make a student understand what I wanted to teach them. I wanted to make it fun because trying to teach a student - just sitting there, going over the rule - wouldn’t have been fun." She set off to bend her lessons towards a mock student's interests in order to build rapport and help solidify the lesson's content.

In order to reach these targets, Paige began to explore gamification.  According to The Engagement Alliance, this term refers to "the process of using game mechanics and game thinking in non-gaming contexts to engage users and to solve problems. Gamification leverages game design, loyalty program design and behavioral economics to create the optimal context for behavior change and successful outcomes."  If we break this definition down, gamification allows individuals to transform non-gaming scenarios using elements of games (e.g., points, tokens, virtual/​simulated reality, etc.).

As journalist and NYU (@nyuniversity) professor Adam Penenberg (@Penenberg) relates in a Forbes article, CEOs and companies have given this approach much attention in recent years so that they might improve employee competence and morale.  Indeed, as Penenberg relates, "Google (@google) engineers have been able to spend an in-house currency called 'Goobles' on server time—often a scarce resource at Google—or use it to bet on certain outcomes."  Microsoft (@Microsoft), too, "released a game, 'Ribbon Hero,' to teach users how to make better use of its Microsoft Office software."  In education, however, gamification is perhaps merely a new name for an old practice.  Teachers have long designed games in order to help students remember their timetables and alphabet, after all.  That said, their tools - and the applications for games - have changed with the advent of iPad classroom initiatves, MinecraftEdu (@MinecraftEdu), and video games more generally.

Paige began to design her Orton-Gillingham/phonics-based games with a healthy dose of design thinking.  She meditated upon their purpose and asked herself, "What should they accomplish?"  After concluding that the games would best serve her students in proving their understanding of a given language concept, she sequenced these recreations to the end of her chapters.  For the rest of the process, we invite you to consult Paige herself:

My first game [focused on] the rule of short and long vowels. At first I had no idea on what I was going to do. Then I thought I could make "Chutes and Ladders." After putting all the words [in], Mr. Bisson and I decided to play, but he wasn’t being himself. He was acting like a elementary tutoring student. He was all over the place. He was really excited and he wanted to get up and act some of the words out. This really showed me what my students might be like in class.

The next game I made focused on soft-c. This one was a little harder to try to come up with. I first thought I was going to do a tic-tac-toe game, but I couldn’t [figure out] how to make it work. Then I came up with just putting the words up and down, moving around the board that way, rolling 1-6, and having to do something based on the number you got (such as if you rolled a 4, you had to name different types [of the word]). I played with Mr. Bisson again, and this time was a lot different. He was a student that just didn’t want to do anything. He was against playing the game or even reading the words. So, I had to be very patient and not force him to play the game. I also just needed to give him time. He started to warm up a little, but he was still hard to work with. This showed me that I don’t need to always stay on the lesson plan I have. I can get off it because some days they might just be having a bad day and just can’t work.

Paige not only designed games but also tested them and grasped the value of remaining flexible as a teacher.  Having facilitated these learning experiences for herself - and as a high school student no less - she has laid the groundwork for an insightful career in education.  We are proud of Paige's progress and maturation this year, and we invite you to celebrate her work with us by posting in the comments section below.

Description of 1st image:  A graphic rendering of gamification.  Picture found at gravity4.com.  Kildonan and its Edge / IP program claim no ownership over the photo above.

Description of 2nd and 3rd images:  Screenshots of Paige's games, taken by Paige and shared with the Edge / IP staff.