One of the simplest yet most effective shifts that we made this year was a change to classroom terminology. As I mentioned before, I am not a “gamer” in the modern sense, so I was a bit out of the loop with this to start. I first learned quite a bit while reading Sheldon’s Multiplayer Classroom, but I actually picked up the most by simply asking the students. Many of them are avid gamers and were very eager to help me out with this, although they were quick to point on that I was quite the "noob."
We have also made it a point to incorporate more ACTION WORDS. This applies particularly to our missions. In a way, teachers have been doing this with their bloom’s style objectives for a long time. However, instead of bombarding students with cryptic and teacher-ish terminology, we tried to weave the ACTION associated with the learning objectives into the narrative of each mission (more on this later.)
Here are some of the main gaming terms that we have substituted into our course with the “old” term in parenthesis if applicable:
Level (Unit)
Mission (Objective)
XP (Average)
Guild (Groups)
House (Class)
Badge
Achievement
Level Up!
There is much more terminology to use, but I suggest starting with some of these until you and your students are comfortable progressing further down the gamification path. You may also discover other terms that fit aspects of your class such as Quest, Epoch, etc.
NEXT POST: LEVELING
Complete Gamification Series
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