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Showing posts from February, 2015

Gamification and Education

Duolingo Anyone who has used Duolingo  for any amount of time will tell you - it's wonderful. Why is it wonderful? Well, it teaches you a foreign language and you can tell its working because you progress. There comes a point where you're typing (or swiping) whole sentences and you just get it. It starts to come together. Suddenly you can say "Our cat does not eat cheese" and then "His trousers are red" in another language. Your pronunciation is probably awful but so what? The thing with Duolingo is this; it doesn't just  teach you, it gamifies the teaching. Each lesson is packaged into little chunks and for each chunk you have 3 hearts, or lives. You can fail but you can't fail too many times. It's a bit like R-Type in that sense, and you can buy power-ups and extras (though I can't find the heart refill anymore, sadly). There's even a timed practice that really puts the pressure on. So as you can tell, if you've ever thought