Ok, so we had to update our logo for Copyright purposes.
Here it is, hope you like it… đ
We alseo changed our slogan. We believe it represents our goals a lot better and we invite you to share it and use it.
#gamification #education
As a new school year draws near in Mexico, we were required to finish up all details and make sure a full set of tutorials are up but also make sure no bugs were around in our new version.
Some of the new features actually come from inspiration received during Gamification Europe and needs from Foro Vidanta.
I’ll be covering each of the new features in a separate post but let me list them here:
Hope you like them.
#gamification of #education for the win!
Alright.Â
So it’s been a while since I posted something. Between life, the universe and everything, it all came out to over 42 things I had to finish.
So for those who think I’m being just “funny”, here is the complete list of what we’ve been woriking on for the past 4 months…Â
Yeah… not even July by the end of those 42 items… so well… as you can see we are running with many things… so the blog had to wait a bit.
However. We are back in business!! đ
I’m changing the theme in the website to match new things but for the meantime, I’ll update the DOCS and then we will do the theme thingy…
#gamification for the win!! đ
I was just asked to design a Workshop for the upcoming Gamification Europe Master Class.
Here are the details of the workshop I will be teaching đ
Part 1 (30 minutes)
Part 2 (45 minutes)
Part 3 (45 minutes)
Part 4 (4~5 hours of practical working)
Part 5 (1 hour)
M.B.O. (Mind Behind the Operation)
6th position in the Gamification Gurus Power 100!
Gamification Keynote Speaker & the mind behind the operation @bluerabbit, a gamification platform for education.
Developed three frameworks to teach/learn how to create gamification systems and build gamified content
Declared a world wide war on grades.
So far you can check the documentation for the following sections:
Now, the LEVELS part of it is HARD, so if you have questions or suggestions let me know. PLEASE.
Anyhow, #gamificaition systems aren’t easy to build if you really want successful environments. Check the table for progression following the LINEAR INCREMENT model from Michael Wu. I will publish a new post exclusively explaining this in the “Teachings from Gamification Europe” series.
M.B.O. (Mind Behind the Operation)
6th position in the Gamification Gurus Power 100!
Gamification Keynote Speaker & the mind behind the operation @bluerabbit, a gamification platform for education.
Developed three frameworks to teach/learn how to create gamification systems and build gamified content
Declared a world wide war on grades.
Before you move forward: Make sure you understand what RAMP is. That is your compass and it will be the best guide for any decision you make in the future. That is what Slide 19 refers to.
Active cancels are when you are choosing a game-mechanic that ACTIVELY cancels one of the four RAMP elements. You choose to negate autonomy in the classroom, for example.
Passive omissions (left outs) are when you aren’t using them all and forget to include one of the elements. Really easy to forget about RELATEDNESS in the classroom since it’s all designed to negate it.
Rewarding with grades is the first mistake I made. A grade is NOT one thing players should care for. They should be in the class for the learning.
Every class is different, every player is different, so we should reward them differently.
One of the best things you’ll ever do. You need to become an NPC (non-player character) for the players. You are recognized as one who know the way but don’t have the answers to the questions players MUST be asking themselves.
Ever heard of “No one likes a know-it-all”. It applies perfectly to a traditional class and teacher. You are the lore keeper.
Learning only happens when you get a question answered.
Content must be out there for players to find it. Don’t expect them to be active if you are keeping it all for yourself. Lose control already. Thinking that as a teacher you can control the rhythm of players’ learning is how you kill creativity. Let them BE curious. You can always add more content to anything and THAT should be a happy problem.
Players stay together! This concept goes both ways. For those who are willing to do EVERY quest and for those who won’t do any.
If you balance your system correctly, you’ll make sure RELATEDNESS becomes the glue that put players in the same ship. Some may be at the front of it and some in the back but, still, on the same journey and all working together.
Reward players the right way. SAPS comes in handy. Ask @Gabe Zichermann about it or read it here.
Rewarding with grades, is the worst, however, having players that only care for the rewards is the absolute worst. They should be in your class for the learning, the growth. Rewards WILL be there but, they MUST be extra. Make the class experience so rewarding they forget about those candies in the end. Grades will turn out perfect, I guarantee that.
For those who would like to use a Virtual Currency, you need to know this:
Make your players WASTE money. Teach them the value of their effort the hard way. Offer really stupid rewards after a couple of valuable expenses have been bought. Then, right when they feel that earning money is easy, make it harder to get. Not too much, just enough so they learn the lesson.
Defeat your fears by facing them. Make your players fail so much they won’t think it’s a bad thing anymore. The fear of failure is the reason there are so few entrepreneurs out there.
Let them try a challenge that is a bit too high for their current level without worry. They must learn on every attempt WHY they weren’t able to overcome it and THAT is the idea.
Failure isn’t a bad thing. It’s the best teacher.
It’s not that we aim too high and fail but the opposite. We aim to low and succeed – Michelangelo
This is the reason the #education system is broken. One of our most powerful tools in #gamification is #narrative. An easy way to hold this together is with a theme. That way you’ll connect all content together. Remember this can be the best reward of the class, ironically, even content is the most boring part, it is the most important.
The content is KING.
Design, colors, production level, magic powder. All means nothing if the content isn’t relevant to your players.
My favorite technique.
Treat your players as professionals. They will behave professionally.
Treat them like Pros. Level 1 Pros.
The most important slide on my keynote. This is the reason we are gamifying a class. In life, we can grow all the way to infinity. Why will a school, the industry of “releasing student potential” would limit the players?
Allow ALWAYS place to grow. Make players pull each other to greater heights. Remember the principles of the collective journey.
No one wakes up wanting to learn LESS than the day before. No one wants to feel stupid. Everyone wants to become better. The difference is HOW much better you want to be today than that you of yesterday.
M.B.O. (Mind Behind the Operation)
6th position in the Gamification Gurus Power 100!
Gamification Keynote Speaker & the mind behind the operation @bluerabbit, a gamification platform for education.
Developed three frameworks to teach/learn how to create gamification systems and build gamified content
Declared a world wide war on grades.
One hour into the conference and we got a well deserved networking coffee break.
I finally had the chance to talk with Dr. Marigo Raftopoulos. I had one of the most rewarding 20 minutes of the event by talking to her about the experience she had with a teacher of her son around 15 years ago.
In Australia, one of the most “progressive” countries in the planet, a teacher, told Marigo: “Not every kid lives up to their potential”.
For me, a #gamification expert specialized in #education this was one thing I hadn’t heard before.
A professional in the field of bringing up the potential of people, was telling me this.
Fortunately, this is the kind of thoughts that drive us forward. This is the kind of world we as #gamification experts are trying to fix.
11:30 am.
Right after our coffee break was over, Joris Beerda presented his keynote on How the Octalysis group empowered the sales team of Procter & Gamble showing outstanding results. As a case study, not much we could’ve drawn out as new techniques, however the results of the project were absolutely outstanding as all Octalysis projects.
11:50
Melinda Jacobs’ flight was cancelled as she was flying from New York and we were unfortunately unable to see her keynote that day. Thanks to that we had extra minutes with all the speakers from that block, so:
12:10
Toby Beresford came up with a keynote that left most of us breathless when learning how much impact a leaderboard that started with a list of experts from his own perspective in 2012.
@tobyberesford #gamification #GamificationEurope
Vanity metrics are extrinsic while clarity will be intrinsic— Bernardo Letayf (@bletayf) November 28, 2017
For a full list of my insights, check this link đ
Fast forward, he became a UN consultant and is active in SKY News as a social media expert. Skills he has transferred into Rise.Global a Social media success tracking platform that serves today as the host of the Gamification Gurus Power Top 100. Yes, it’s the same list from 5 years ago, just that now it works on itself and measures our participation on the #gamification industry through social media.
12: 30
Jan Storgards from REACTOR started his keynote on the struggles from a #gamification solution provider on how to tackle an emerging market of startups that most of the time are focused on deploying their software and leave key features out of the scope where #gamification could actually be well exploited.
@storgards #GamificationEurope #gamification
The demand of gamification starts from the very basics like a reward system all the way to leveling up and engaging— Bernardo Letayf (@bletayf) November 28, 2017
One of my favorite takes from the keynote came up as a beautiful phrase that sums up what REACTOR will do for your company and simply put, a phrase we all should use to deploy great solutions and avoid bad clients:
We will add cinnamon to your coffee but we won’t make coffee for you.
Time for lunch. Yep, still Tuesday guys… stay with me đ
M.B.O. (Mind Behind the Operation)
6th position in the Gamification Gurus Power 100!
Gamification Keynote Speaker & the mind behind the operation @bluerabbit, a gamification platform for education.
Developed three frameworks to teach/learn how to create gamification systems and build gamified content
Declared a world wide war on grades.
The conference gathering started around 9 am with many familiar faces all around the place. Glad to see Sylvester Arnab, An Coppens, Michael Wu (finally!) and Alex Chalkias (whom I had only met by facebook).
So after a late arrival we all got setup and receive a great welcome from our very own Pete Jenkins! After a couple of short explanations around where the bathrooms were and how to use the conference app Pete left the floor for someone who was, until then, a mystery to me.
It’s really awesome when you are met with ideas that have been around your head for some time. That’s how the #gamification community feels when we all meet up. At least those were the words from most of the experts in the conference.
Jeff Gomez
The opening keynote was one of the most amazing concepts we all have agreed on. Jeff Gomez presented us with an idea we all must work together to accomplish. The hero’s journey is no longer serving us. Opening concept for all. Great present for “The hero’s journey” theme of the conference.
The collective journey is what we must be working towards to. It’s not a matter of one person saving everybody else but, everyone working together to accomplish and overcome any challenge.
It matches with every problem the world is going through. We keep believing that one great person should come and save us all when in reality we must save ourselves.
No need for terrible.trauma
Narrative can follow a cause@jeff_gomez#gamification #GamificationEurope— Bernardo Letayf (@bletayf) November 28, 2017
You can follow my tweets on the talk in this link
I asked a question to Jeff: “What happens when everyone is special? Then no one is special?”
His answer was even better: We are all special but, it’s no longer about ONE individual but what we can accomplish all together.
My teachings from this talk is simple: The more people that work together, the greater and better the outcome will always be.
My thoughts on my own question are that when we are all special, unless we clear our idea of being the hero and the protagonist of the story, we will keep thinking that one person must be “better” than the rest and we must separate is from the crowd somehow, when, in reality, we should be working on making the WHOLE crowd special.
Oh… it’s not even 11 am at this point.
M.B.O. (Mind Behind the Operation)
6th position in the Gamification Gurus Power 100!
Gamification Keynote Speaker & the mind behind the operation @bluerabbit, a gamification platform for education.
Developed three frameworks to teach/learn how to create gamification systems and build gamified content
Declared a world wide war on grades.
During Gamification Europe many, MANY, things happened.
This series will try to sum up some of the highlights from the event in an attempt to do justice to all speakers, organizers and participants.
Where to start?
On Monday night, all gamification geeks went out to have dinner at an amazing place I can’t name since our guides got a bit lost on the way and we were jet lagged, tired and confused. However we had an amazing night, I was able to meet almost all #gamification experts I hadn’t already met in person (only missing Dr. Michael Wu) and was a truly inspiring evening.
Credits from the image go to @robalvarezb whose cellphone did all the hardwork đ
From left to right: Roberto Alvarez (professor game), Vasilis Gkogkidis (Gamification Plus), Me, Ahmed Hossam (GamFed Ambassador Egypt), Pete Jenkins (Gamification Plus), Toby Beresford (Rise.Global), Jasmin Karatas (Accenture(, Jeroen van der Schenk(Performance Solutions), Michiel van Eunen (Escape Room Designer) & Aysu Erensoy (Gamification Turkey). Later that night we met with Sabrina Bruehwiler (Octalysis) and Jeff Gomez (Keynote speaker of the conference and founder of  Starlight Runner Entertainment)
Fantastic night that fortunately ended up early and gave us time to prepare for Day 1.
M.B.O. (Mind Behind the Operation)
6th position in the Gamification Gurus Power 100!
Gamification Keynote Speaker & the mind behind the operation @bluerabbit, a gamification platform for education.
Developed three frameworks to teach/learn how to create gamification systems and build gamified content
Declared a world wide war on grades.
Continuing from this post… so many to mention but I will pull this off.
Toby Beresford taught me many things in one night. What we are doing MATTERS. Not that I didn’t believe in it, but he showed us numbers that show the size of the impact we are achieving. He can easily steer the world of social media with so much expertise we all have lots to learn.
Melinda Jacobs kicked my ass in inspiration talks. She put my brain back in place with one phrase on the last day which I’m grateful for, but her straight-forwardness is something we all need to learn to have when facing clients. Don’t let your guard down, and keep fighting no matter what comes forth. Believe in it with all your might. At least that’s how it sounds in my head.
Andrzej Marczewski has to be one of the experts with most experience in the industry, plus he knows Dave, another expert with even a book published, whose stories made us all cry tears of laughter but, overall, learn from our own mistakes and failures and keep moving forward even if we can’t design a game and save the world. He can definitely design #gamification systems with ease and simplicity.
Michael Wu should teach us how to keep track of the #gamification data and how to analyze it. He is truly an expert at putting everything into numbers, just like most stakeholders like it. His formula on the linear increment progression for accurate (near optimal) level design will solve the system-design side of the problem instantly.
Roberto Alvarez most definitely should keep track of all of us making sure we answer to what the community wants to know. His Podcast Professor Game is helping all of us learn who is doing what and how each of us are impacting the industry. Still a long way to go, he only has interviewed the top 10 gamification experts already.
This list should continue as I meet more experts. If I didn’t mention you, don’t worry, I’ll keep posting on this subject. You keep doing what you are doing.
M.B.O. (Mind Behind the Operation)
6th position in the Gamification Gurus Power 100!
Gamification Keynote Speaker & the mind behind the operation @bluerabbit, a gamification platform for education.
Developed three frameworks to teach/learn how to create gamification systems and build gamified content
Declared a world wide war on grades.
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