Gaming and Gamification

      This blog is all about gaming and gamification. I chose this topic because I believe it is very important because a lot of our population spend most of their time playing games. It is even becoming a big part in our education systems because it motivates the students and allows them to have fun while they learn and it gives them a sense of optimism and responsibility.
     Gaming allows people to feel like they are being productive and saving the world within their virtual world and also gives an escape from real world suffering. Games teach people how to solve big problems with the optimism that they can in fact solve them. The thought behind gamification is to merge the feelings and urgency of a video game into the real world. People do amazing things on a global scale in their games and yet never think that they can change the world in reality. Jane Mcgonigal does this inspiring TED talk where she talks about the games that she has made that immerses the player into a real world type problem (The human race will go extinct or the world is running out of oil) and requires you, in real life, to change and document your habits in order to fix it. If we can somehow convince people that they can change the world, just like they do in a game setting, there won't be any type of problem that we won't be able to solve.
     I do also believe that there are some cons to this, as there is with everything. But, I do believe that this is an incredible idea and has the potential to create a better world. One of the cons might include not having appropriate games for the problems at hand. This entire operation is counting on people creating games for the issues we have and creating an environment that fosters productivity in that field.
     What do you think this technology could be used for in your classroom?