Gamification and #GTAV

On Tuesday, 17-Sep-2013, a highly anticipated video game will be release. If you deal with teenagers, I’m sure that you know what I am talking about. The good people from Rock Star Games will be releasing their next installment of the controversial game Grand Theft Auto 5 (#GTAV). It is no secret that this game has it’s share of negativity in it. However as 21st century educators, we must learn to adapt, modify and flip our lessons to what interests our students to make instruction engaging, relevant and meaningful. For example, now is a great time to have students debate about the violence in video games as the media will discuss in the next few weeks.

Anyway, GTAV is nothing but a open, virtual world or sandbox game just like Second Life, Assassin’s Creed, Sky Rim, or Little Big Planet. My friend David Hutchison has a chapter in his book, Playing to Learn discusses how to make GTA “kid-friendly”. Yes, that deserves a chuckle, or two. He expresses if a teacher wishes to use this game as an educational tool, one must modify the game play and content. David share a great point of view of many game play tasks and other ways to use GTA and other video games for instruction. I highly recommend this book for your teaching pedagogy library.

Gamification is the future of education. I will definitely continue my research and share my finding on this topic. 🙂