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Sacred Symbols+, Episode 216 | The Quest to Gamify Schools (Video) (Patreon)

Published:
2022-08-16 16:01:07
Imported:
2026-06
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The Quest to Gamify Schools | Sacred Symbols+, Episode 216

Please welcome Adam Hinton to the show. Adam is a Canadian teacher and consultant, and he's obsessed with the intersection of video games and education. After all, as our children become increasingly bombarded with a litany of technologies, it's important to be able to effectively leverage them to improve their lives. For years and years, young people around the world go to school. Video games are looked at as one of many respites from the grind, a quaint pastime at best and a waste of time at worst. But what if games and school could be successfully fused, with titles mined for their value beyond mere entertainment? We've come a long way from MECC, Carmen Sandiego, and Flash and Java. As argued within, gamifying the classroom may be the single best thing we can do for future generations. As it turns out, it may be time to go where the kids are, and not vice-versa.

Comments

DrKen

Cant wait to listen to this one. Sounds cool.

Christopher Roman

Good listen, as a network engineer for a school district it been fun the past few years seeing how much more open teachers are to games in the classroom. And asking us non teachers all kinds of stuff

Anonymous

Awesome episode Colin! Adam has a really soothing voice lol.

Cousin Ram

This guy suffers from an endemic issue in education: falsely equating fun with educational effectiveness. The fact that this dude taught in a high-performing country like South Korea and can’t see the key differences between it and North American countries is frustrating. Hell, he mentioned one of said differences outright when he talked about South Korea’s respect for educators, but somehow he managed to ignore that in favor of shifting back to his consultant-speak about how teaching more like Fortnite would be a panacea for our educational woes. I’d pay to see how this dude’s theories—that some gullible administrator is likely shelling out untold amounts for—would pan out in a Title 1 school here in the U.S. The simple truth is that the well-to-do kids with invested parents he no doubt taught in Canada will ultimately do well in school regardless of whatever hogwash some consulting firm sold them by virtue of said parents’ investment in their children’s education. Sound too pessimistic? Well, I dare this guy or anyone else to toss a kid who picks chilies 50 hours a week a copy of FF6 and expect him to be a master of the four domains of language by the end of it. I say all this as someone who loves video games probably more than he should and regularly attempts to connect what he teaches to video games his students may have played. I don’t fault Colin at all for inviting this guy on—it’s definitely an interesting subject—but I spose’ I’m a little butt-hurt after listening with the hope of leaving with some quality classroom ideas instead of some good-idea-fairy's mumbo jumbo.

OTTAPPS

Excellent watch and listen 👍

Robert

This is a great topic to get more insight into, thank you for making this one happen Colin!

dharmapolice
>>89748953

I don’t know if I fully agree with this assessment. I am not about ignoring fundamentals or mastery of content at all. I just think certain models of curriculum delivery can be iterated upon so as to provide more engagement. We still work hard to have environments with high standards and expectations and work to ensure mastery of literacy and mathematics outcomes. Just to note, when we tracked cohorts of my and colleagues students who experienced 4 years of gamified environments, those students on average performed higher on provincial standardized assessments than non-gamified cohorts. Furthermore, on graduation exit surveys a majority of students explicitly cited examples of gamified learning environments as a key factor in their success as learners. I didn’t really take the time to go into the weeds on some of the specific teaching practices and planning procedures or resources as I was aiming for more of an overview of concepts in the discussion, but if you’d like more comprehensive materials I’m happy to provide/dialogue 🙏 thank you for listening

Anonymous

This was a great listen! I am an Ed-tech at a school in Maine and I have tried to gamify some of the lessons my students are given. It works quite well, especially for students with ADHD. I even got my principle to give me the go ahead on using some older JRPGs to help boost a students reading scores. It worked like a charm. Kids are just more excited to play through a game, he even did a report on it. Another great tool is project based learning. We have the students make games on scratch collaboratively or sometimes they make movies on Imovie. Last year we all built catapults for a competition. Fun, collaborative learning is a powerful motivator.

bradyvm

I earned my master's degree with a dissertation connecting game design to educational design. As an English teacher, there aren't quite as many opportunities to apply gamification to my classes, but I consult for others and spread the good news at conferences. I also run an esports program at my school and serve on the advisory board of the MHSEL (Michigan High School Esports League). If you'd like a deeper dive into the academic literature, the philosophical reasoning behind why games are so engaging/insightful, and practical examples of how educators are applying game theory, I'd be happy to contribute to this ongoing conversation :) PS - I went to college with friend-of-the-show Jimmy Champane! We were editors of the school newspaper together. While he went on to live our dreams of making gaming content, I went on to become a teacher. Always pumped to hear his name come up on the show. He's a good dude, and we've been reconnecting through our shared love of Sacred Symbols <3

Pace

I'm surprised Assassins Creed Origin and Odyssey weren't brought up. Both those games had an educational type edition called Discovery Tour. You could walk through ancient Egypt and Greece while learing about the different aspects of those cultures. In my brief walk through in Origins I learned how the Egyptians made beer, bread, harvested crops, the average family meal, and how the embalmed people. The Assassins Creed Discovery Tour modes came with the console versions and were sold separately with the PC version.

Cousin Ram
>>89748953

I know this is coming way late, but I've been meaning to apologize for the unnecessarily personal wording of my comment. I would've done well to abide by the "wait 24 hours before you post" rule, but I had a particularly bad day of classes that day which had some connections to this episode's subject matter—not that that's an excuse of course. That said, I have no qualms with iterating education, it's just that I feel like we have deeper cultural and societal issues that play a far larger role in our students' success that go overlooked in favor of "fun" or novel classroom additions. However, I'd love to at least look over any materials you're willing to share. Since there's no way I can see to PM non-creators on Patreon, you can email me at cousinram@gmail.com, and apologies again for my lack of decorum.