Game based learning support post

We had a lot of fun on Saturday exploring all the facets of Game Based Learning, but as always, when you are having fun, you always run out of time! So this is the first thing that you have to bear in mind when planning a game-based lesson -make sure you allocate enough time for fun!!

Games is a great way to do revision seeing that it is almost the end of the school year. Research (goo.gl/1y34Ny) is showing us that playing educational games, as a way of learning, is incredibly effective! Games also provide a safe place to "loose" and act a a great motivator! The following 2 articles will inspire you to get going:

• What is GBL (Game-Based Learning)?
• GBL Checklist for educators

So what do you need to do to get the Game Based Learning Badge?? 

You need to create a lesson where you will use educational game(s)  for your learners to play and achieve your learning outcomes. The place to start is as always with: "What do I want my learners to learn?"  (your lesson outcomes). You can then go and investigate what educational apps and tools are available that can be used in your lesson to achieve the learning outcomes.

As our "lesson" session topic was "Copyright", we used a quiz to make sure that  all the learning is centred around that topic. Dividing the learners into groups, where each member has to research a section of the work, also resulted in every group member taking responsibility for their learning and contribution to the communal group's quiz knowledge.

You can make use of the Quiz slideshow template in your resource folder to create your own class quiz (goo.gl/gdtQCC ) by replacing the markers with your own questions and answers. You can use the online Quiz maker called Flipquiz (Flipquiz.me) to create your quiz as it keeps track of the teams, categories and scoring for your.

You can create flashcards and use the app Quizlet (see previous blogpost) to re-enforce the gaming topics and to create an automated drag and drop time based game! Remember, any quizlet, flipquiz or slideshow quiz you create for your students can count towards your Content creator badge as long as it is a "freestanding" learning object. In other words, it covers a curriculum subject topic that can be used by another teacher anywhere!

There are many gaming apps for almost any educational topic. As long as it support or extend your learning outcomes, you are welcome to use it.

Here are the criteria for getting your Game Based Learning Badge:

Remember to upload your lesson plan and your learner photos to our shared Google drive folder. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Maggie or leave a message below.