Gamify Your Classroom: A Field Guide to Game-Based Learning

by Matthew Farber, Michele Knobel (Editor), Colin Lankshear (Editor)

Overview

This book is a field guide on how to implement game-based learning and «gamification» techniques to the everyday teaching. It is a survey of best practices aggregated from interviews with experts in the field, including: James Paul Gee (Author, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy); Henry Jenkins (Provost Professor at University of Southern California); Katie Salen (Founder, Institute of Play); Bernie DeKoven (Author, A Playful Path); Richard Bartle (Bartle’s Player Type Theory); Kurt Squire (Games + Learning + Society Center); Jessica Millstone (Joan Ganz Cooney Center), Dan White (Filament Games); Erin Hoffman (GlassLab Games); Jesse Schell (Schell Games/Professor at Carnegie Mellon); Tracy Fullerton (University of Southern California Game Innovation Lab); Alan Gershenfeld (E-Line Media); Noah Falstein (Chief Game Designer, Google); Valerie Shute (Professor at Florida State University); Lee Sheldon (Author, The Multiplayer Classroom); Robert J. Torres (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), Asi Burak (President, Games for Change); Toby Rowland (MangaHigh); Jocelyn Leavitt (Hopscotch); Krishna Vedati (Tynker); and researchers at BrainPOP and designers from Electric Funstuff (Mission U.S. games). Each chapter concludes with practical lesson plan ideas, games to play (both digital and tabletop), and links to research further. Much of the book draws on the author’s experiences implementing games with his middle school students. Regardless of your teaching discipline or grade level, whether you are a pre-service teacher or veteran educator, this book will engage and reinvigorate the way you teach and how your students learn!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781433126703
Publisher:	Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
Publication date:	12/23/2014
Series:	New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies , #71
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	263
Sales rank:	676,550
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Matthew Farber teaches social studies at Valleyview Middle School in Denville, New Jersey. Mr. Farber holds a master’s degree in educational technology from New Jersey City University, where he is currently a doctoral candidate.

Table of Contents

Contents: Games for Learning – What Are Games? – Who Plays Games …and Why – Iterative Design – Play-Based Learning – Learning in Cooperative Mode – Gamification and Quest-Based Learning – Personalized Learning – University Game Labs – Video Games for Learning – Communities of Play – Creating Digital Games – Games to Change the World.

Editorial Reviews

«Walk into Matthew Farber’s middle school classroom and you’ll meet students who consider themselves beta testers of innovative learning experiences. You’ll see an inspired teacher who understands how to combine cutting-edge game mechanics with instructional strategies like project-based learning. I haven’t had the pleasure of that classroom visit just yet, but reading ‘Gamify Your Classroom’ is the next best thing. Farber, as author, shares his own journey into understanding the power of games for learning. He invites readers along as he interviews experts and learns from those on the frontiers of this exciting space. Then he brings us back to the magic circle of the classroom, where games create teachable moments for engaged, inspired learners.» (Suzie Boss, Author of ‘Bringing Innovation to School’; national faculty member, Buck Institute for Education)
«‘Gamify Your Classroom’ is a clear-headed dissection of the semantic muddle and self-serving hype surrounding game-based learning and gamification. Meticulously researched and featuring insights from a host of educators and game designers, as well as his own enthusiastic adventures in the classroom, Matthew Farber’s book is an impressive primer, revealing what works and what doesn’t out here on education’s exciting new frontier.» (Lee Sheldon, Author of ‘The Multiplayer Classroom’; Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

From the Publisher