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Thursday, February 2, 2012

Gamification - Professional Development

This week's tasks made me think a lot.

The general idea of the reading tasks (Play the Game, The School, Play the Game Because You Can,  Has the Gamification of Reality Already Begun?, Connectivism, Professional Development, The Educators' PLN) and the video that we watched was that gaming will help to change the world and also that it gives teachers a possibility to develop professionally.

It is understandable that gamification has already started (having had a look at all the games throughout weeks 1-3, that much became clear) but what remained unclear for me was the concern that if we increase the play-time to save the world some time in the future, as Jane McGonigal says in her TED presentation, we might just never return to real life. So what is going to happen to the real world in the future? I might be wrong, but at the moment I just don't see people wanting to apply the skills that they gain through games to real-situations. I will have to explore this notion further, as it interested me a lot.

In his blog posts Paul Braddock talks about The School Game that he is developing at the moment. The game is designed mainly for school teachers and is supposed to help them in their professional development. The idea is fantastic, in my opinion. I felt a bit sad that a similar game is not being developed for Teachers of Adult Learners. However, Paul said that some of the rooms in The School will be useful for us too! :)

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