Fun Learning. Gamification in Education – “Young Bits” – Chapter 7

Gamification in education means that educators apply game design elements to an educational setting. The goal is usually to make learning more engaging.

Games can help youngsters learn and develop important skills while they are having fun. Games can be used in any kind of context to help with learning. Some games are educational, while others are just for fun, but even those are helping youngsters in developing their soft-skills. There are many different types of games that can be used to help with learning, from board games and team-building games to video games, role-playing games, and more.

In today’s world, digitalisation provides more and more opportunities to make learning fun. There are apps for everything, including learning new languages, practicing math skills, and improving your reading comprehension. If you prefer a more personal approach, the internet is full of resources and tools that will help you to adapt your learning process to a more fun environment.

• • The Fun of Learning: Gamification in Education – provides a short introduction about the idea of using games in education. Here you will find the answer to what is gamification in education, how you can adopt an approach of gamifying learning and some examples of tools that will help you start.
  • Gamification in Education: What is It & How can You Use It? – a guide that explains the benefits of gamification in learning and how youth workers can use it to increase students’ concentration and knowledge.
  • The impact of gamification on students’ learning, engagement and behavior based on their personality traits – this is a study that found evidence that gamification affected users in distinct ways based on their personality traits. As youth workers, it’s important to adapt every educational method to the youngsters’ needs so this may help you in approaching gamification more efficiently.
  • Gamification in Education – this is a short introduction to the theory of gamification in education that will help you to move forward to that more personal approach we were mentioning above. They start from the idea that usually educators mistakenly think that if they give out a badge or slap points on it, it’s gamified and fun, but this is not enough anymore. So, here you will find some useful information about game mechanics and the gamer psychology that will make you succeed in the process of gamifying education.
  • Digital Escape Rooms to Make Learning Fun – Escape rooms can be an amazing tool to make learning fun and here you will find a comprehensive guide, full of resources, that will help you design interesting games – STRONGLY RECOMMENDED.
  • Ed Tech Tools That Make Learning Fun – here you will find a list of fun tools that will make your activities more fun-filled and engaging. They are not new, so there is a chance to probably know most of them, but they are worth mentioning.

Finally, lets mention also some specific tools:

• • Social Scavenger – an app that can be used to create different challenges where teams have to take photos, make videos, add stickers, answer trivia, type text, or use QR codes. It saves the progress of each team in real-time. You could make this as simple or elaborate as you’d like, from a scavenger hunt in the yard to explore a new city or school building. Social Scavenger is available on the Web and as an app. Pricing depends on the size of the group.
  • Geoaching – an outdoor treasure hunt using GPS-enabled devices. The youngsters look for certain GPS coordinates to find a geocache container hidden at a particular location. Several websites and apps are available, including a free trial version, Geocaching Intro. The players will get really excited when they find a hidden cache!
  • Genially is a media creation platform focused on designing and sharing media creations and presentations of all kinds. From the dashboard, students can start from blank or predesigned templates organized into 12 types, including videos, infographics, interactive images, quizzes, and more.
  • Actionbound is an app for playing digitally interactive scavenger hunts to lead the learner on a path of discovery. Players are invited to accomplish tasks, which can be defined through the so-called Bound-Creator on the website actionbound.com, in order to playfully discover their environment by learning more about its history, politics and culture.
  • Google Forms – even though it might sound crazy, Google Forms can be an amazing and very easy tool you can use for creating educational puzzles and games. It’s advantage is that it is very easy to create as long as you have your creativity with you. Here is an example of using Google Forms for creating an escape room. 

The content for this post is part of our online campaign called “Young Bits” which aims to increase the quality of Digital Youth Work by providing the interested parties with knowledge and tools that exist on the internet, but are not structured in a handy manner. The campaign represents the main result of the project „DIgital Technology as a TOol”, a training course that was financed with the support of the European Commission through Erasmus+ Programme. This blog reflects only the author’s views, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.