Quest to Learn is a public Middle and High school based in New York City where students interact with in-class topics by playing and creating games. The school implements the fundamentals of gamification in the way it educates, and describes itself as “a school that uses the underlying design principles of games to create highly immersive, game-like learning experiences.”
It’s official. Games have educational value.
For most, this is old news. Games like Carmen Sandiego and Oregon Trail have been around for years and most of Generation Y has been playing these games as early as the third grade. So what happened to these games and why weren’t there more iconic educational tools like these in school?
David Hunter teaches a class that is primarily project based, functioning similar to the way a game works including explicit tasks, consistent feedback, and a single theme: zombies. The curriculum, titled “Zombie-Based Learning: Geography Lessons Set in a Zombie Apocalypse”, replaces the standard textbook with a zombie-based graphic novel and implements aspects of gamification into its lessons.
A new digital production company, Amplify, is developing software that may very well revolutionize the way students, teachers, and classrooms interact. Amplify has designed a learning platform for tablet devices that effectively empowers students to take a more active role in their education.
