Gamification and Serious Games
Thank you for teaching us the "Psychology of Light"
and directing us to Gamification.
The word did not exist when you said "Play is the highest form of research".
Thanks to the following incredible people and good fellows
Dr. Ulrich Möllenstedt, Lothar Grün, Dr. Jeff Ertzberger, Prof. Mark Overmars, Dr. Jörg Niesenhaus,
Roman Rackwitz, Prof. Harald Lesch, Dr. Michael Sailer, Prof. Wolf Singer, Prof. Thomas Kraupe, Dr. John David Sinclair
and a lot more
for sharing their comprehensive knowledge with us.
What is Gamification?
You can find a complete explanation on Wikipedia.
We try to give a short explanation in conjunction with a dart game.
Why people are throwing darts?
Nola Bushnell has said:
“All the best games are easy to learn and difficult to master.”
When somebody has perfectly thrown (after a lot of tries) a dart towards the target he gets a reward from his mesolimbic pathway.
Thus he wants to get the next reward. And he continues until he is a master.
Now imagine that you can place a message onto the flying dart, like
a banner that is towed or dragged behind an aircraft.
Since everybody (the player and the audience) looks at the flying dart they see the message.
And since they are concentrated, the message directly enters their brains.
You can use such messages for advertising, but you can use them also
seriously for education, motivation, team playing or being friendly, etc. etc.
So you can use games for "Teamification", "Friendlyfication" or simply for
"SelfConfidencification". Got it?
No? Look at Wikipedia and search for the above names of incredible people.
Then you understand.
We are one of the few manufacturers of education technology who care about the practical usefulness in schools!
So before selling EdTech one should learn how better education should be done.
And this we learned from teachers around the world (mainly UK, USA and Australia) because they were tortured by
useless Interactive Whiteboards since 2003, 2005 and 2006. And also non yet tortured german teachers said:
What is the use of an interactive whiteboard? To start a video by clicking with my finger? A remote control can do the same.
There must be more: Interactivity (for all students simultaneously) and a lot of contents.
And it must be simple for teachers to use that e-Learning content without having to study
animation design, electrical engineering and informatics beforehand.
Our system automatically starts with the PC like a mouse.
But where does the content come from?
There are solutions to create content:
Unity 3D for complex 2D/3D e-Learning games needing some programming skills.
Godot Engine for 2D/3D e-Learning games needing or not needing programming skills.
LibreOffice Impress for 2D/2.5D e-Learning games needing no programming skills.
Who creates the contents?
Normally the teachers which created the well thought out schoolbooks.
But do they really have the time?
We know schools where 10-12 year old pupils create games by their own.
Dear Teachers: Let the pupils and students make the animations and the team interaction
and help them to do it in a well thought out manner.
A well thought out manner?
We want to explain what we also learned in a small joke:
Celsius has said:
Contagione per ludere initiat systema mesolimbica
(Gamification triggers the mesolimbic pathway)But Paracelsius answered:
Dosis sola facit venenum
(Only the dose makes the poison)
Too much Gamification is poison!
Johanna (Dr. med, MD) as part of our team understands the sentences above and has helped teachers with burn out syndrome and
young grown-ups having difficulties in family or school.
She knows a pathway to a better school, for teachers as well as for our children.
We first changed "Yes, we can" into "Yes, we do!"
But she changed "Yes, we do!" into "Yes, we do it in a responsible manner!"
And Johanna can explain how teachers are freed from learning technology
and therefore can concentrate on educational/pedagogical tasks
and free children from wiping the blackboard.
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