My Thoughts On Gamification And Education

Humans have been playing games as a recreational activity since a long time. Video games have enabled us to involve ourselves in virtual worlds where we can do things that normally wouldn't have been able to. Video games have brought magical mystery worlds within our reach and have made it possibly to live in a different reality altogether. They have also enabled us to learn in many ways. I remember people saying that Assassin's Creed series have helped them learn about history in a way better manner than history books ever could have. Video games intrigue us and involve all of our senses to engross ourselves in them. In recent times there is a concept that has evolved which is now merging games into real life situations thereby making the world a better place. This concept is known as: Gamification.

If you take a look at our life closely then you will find that although this concept is recently been recognised, gamification has been present since ages. Not convinced? Let's take a simple example. Video games keep track of our scores to help us understand how better we scored in the game and some of them also have leaderboards that rank players against each other. Doesn't this sound familiar with the concept of exams? Students write an exam and get a certain score. They then have to wait for results which is nothing but a leaderboard system that ranks students against each other. Similarly if you observe gamification is present in almost all aspect of our lives. Salary, distance to reach from point A to point B, number of likes on your Facebook post and all such factors are basically just scores to keep track of your progress.

This concept has so much merit that it can be skill-fully used to educate our coming generation understand basic concepts of school in a better way. Recently we at GameEon took our first step in this direction with our client Numerofriendly. We developed a game based on their proprietary patented concept of Snakes & Ladders game. Their idea was to help students become friends with numbers and understand squares and primes in a better way. Since it's quite a difficult challenge to excite students about numbers, Pratima Borkar the founder of 25th February Enterprise owned Numerofriendly, came up with a unique idea to merge this concept into a Snakes & Ladders game titled Squares N Primes.

Play Squares N Primes, a one of it's kind Snakes And Ladders game with a unique twist. In a traditional snakes and ladders game you start from the bottom right of the screen but in this unique game you start from the center and move spirally.

This game helps kids learn mathematics visually in a fun and appealing way. Square numbers are snakes and prime numbers are ladders. If you land on a square number you get gulped by the snake to it's square root whereas if you land on a prime number you get a ladder to a higher prime number.

Squares N Primes helps student familiarise with prime numbers, perfect squares and their square roots.

This is just one step into the future of gamification in field of education and such initiatives by teachers worldwide will fuel a movement that will help the future generation of kids learn in a fun way. We need to push beyond the traditional schooling system and start thinking in innovative ways like this in order to boost knowledge transfer to students in a way that is both effective and fun to learn. We need to make education exciting and imbibe knowledge into students such that they are enabled to tackle on real-world problems and start innovating their approaches.

Gamification of existing learning processes has a huge potential in the future. We, at GameEon, as a game development company are excited for opportunities ahead and would love to collaborate with more such people in this space to take education to the next level. I'm sure that with our development expertise we can come up with some groundbreaking innovative ideas that will enhance education for students. Gaming does not have to be only destructive, as has been concerned in recent times. Gaming, if approached correctly has tremendous untapped advantages for which kids, parents and teachers of this generation need to work hand-in-hand to get out most potential.

Would love to hear your thoughts on gaming industry and the concept of gamification. Also, our client is currently looking to showcase this game in multiple education conferences so in case you have any leads on that front send me a line at [email protected] and let's get in touch regarding the same.

Hoping for a bright future in education and gaming ahead! I'll end this post with a quote from Nelson Mandela

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world