Sites To Get You Started
Weebly for Education Named one of TIME's 50 Best Websites, Weebly Education gives an easy and free way to create a classroom site. You are able to set up 40 free students' accounts. Although setting up class sites can be time consuming, they create great opportunities for students to connect and collaborate. Credly
Free resource suitable for high school and tertiary students. A great resource for awarding your students badges. Choose one of Credly's designs and edit to suit your requirements or create your own. Each student will need to sign in or create an account to claim their badges. Badges are one form of game mechanics that can motivate students, when done well. Kubbu
This free resource allows you to create up to 15 free activities that will help you gamify learning. Simply write your questions and let kubbu create games, quizzes or crosswords for your students. A fantastic resource for revision and skill building. Students can also use the resource to build and create activities for their peers. |
Zondle
Free resource suitable for primary through to high school. Remember playing Space Invaders? The team at Zondle do. Create your own questions and answers for any topic and leave the gamifying up to the Zondle team. Use this resource for pre-testing, revision or simply for the fun of it. PowerPoint Games
Free resource suitable for all students. Add your own questions and answers to level up in a game of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Jeopardy, Family Feud, Goin' Fishin' and many others. Piktochart
Another free resource. This allows you to create infographics easily. Creating these can use higher order thinking skills that allow students to connect concepts and knowledge. Google Docs
Google Docs is a great way to get students to collaborate using word process, presentations, spreadsheets or forms. Google apps for education have many excellent free apps to support learning. Google Hangouts in Google+ can be a connected learning resource that can bring experts into your class. You can share documents, screens, video and text chat to name a few features. |
Inspirational Videos
Interview with Game Designer Jane McGonigal
In this short video, Jane McGonigal - author of the book Reality is Broken - discusses the way games and gamified learning can help students develop resilience and learn not to fear failure. She also argues that assessment doesn’t need to be a ‘one shot’ experience, but rather that it should be designed as a way to help students learn through immediate feedback and that it should demonstrate the very best they are capable of. Do you think gamification can change assessments for the better? Share your opinion.
In this short video, Jane McGonigal - author of the book Reality is Broken - discusses the way games and gamified learning can help students develop resilience and learn not to fear failure. She also argues that assessment doesn’t need to be a ‘one shot’ experience, but rather that it should be designed as a way to help students learn through immediate feedback and that it should demonstrate the very best they are capable of. Do you think gamification can change assessments for the better? Share your opinion.
Gabe Zichermann on Gamification
Gabe Zichermann refers to the current generation of kids as ‘Generation G’; they play videogames as their main form of entertainment, and the future they build will be faster paced, more collaborative and global. He poses the notion that today’s world is just too slow for today’s children, and to keep them interested we need to adapt to their needs and expectations. What do you think of this idea? Share your thoughts in the discussion forums.
Gabe Zichermann refers to the current generation of kids as ‘Generation G’; they play videogames as their main form of entertainment, and the future they build will be faster paced, more collaborative and global. He poses the notion that today’s world is just too slow for today’s children, and to keep them interested we need to adapt to their needs and expectations. What do you think of this idea? Share your thoughts in the discussion forums.