Integrate game-based learning for 21st Century skills success!
Kids today live in a digitally connected world. Prepare your students for the new global economy by leveraging the technology they love and understand best. This straightforward, easy-to-follow guide helps you build essential 21st Century skills using digital video games. Ryan Schaaf and Nicky Mohan provide a cutting-edge, research-based approach - built around time-honored instructional practices. Step-by-step strategies help you easily find, evaluate, and integrate digital games into your existing lesson plans or completely redesign your classroom.
This practical guide helps teachers use well-designed game elements to:
- Promote meaningful student buy-in
- Create student-centered, collaborative learning spaces
- Teach and assess 21st Century Fluencies aligned to Common Core State Standards
- Address multiple intelligences using research-based strategies
Includes a detailed implementation outline, a revised Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy oriented to game content, summarized notes, and a reading list for engaged, adventure-filled learning!
"This book is easy to read, offers strategies that are easy to implement, and inspires a sense of urgency for educators to modify our teaching techniques to include more gaming in our classrooms. It is useful for teachers of all experience levels."
―Carrie Trudden, Educational Technology Teacher
Howard County Public School System, Clarksville, MD
"Schaaf and Mohan present gamification as a powerful tool for engaging learners and for the development of 21st-century fluencies, organized in levels as in the games it describes. This book is rich in resources for finding, evaluating, implementing, and designing classroom games."
―Danea A. Farley, Associate Professor and Coordinator of Technology
Notre Dame of MD University
Ryan Schaaf is the Assistant Professor of Educational Technology at Notre Dame of Maryland University, and a faculty associate for the Johns Hopkins University School of Education Graduate Program, with over 15 years in the education field. Before higher education, Ryan was a 3rd-grade public school teacher, instructional leader, curriculum designer, and a technology integration specialist in Howard County, Maryland. In 2007, he was nominated for Howard county and Maryland Teacher of the Year.
In the past, Ryan has published several research articles in the New Horizons for Learning and the Canadian Journal of Action Research related to the use of digital games as an effective instructional strategy in the classroom.
Currently, he is overseeing and constructing peer-reviewed K-12 lesson units for the 21st Fluency Project, where he is also a featured contributor for the renowned Committed Sardine blog. He enjoys presenting sessions and keynotes about the potential for gaming in the classroom, the characteristics of 21st-century learning, and emerging technologies and trends in education.
Ryan is happily married to his beautiful wife Rachel and has two little boys that are his pride and joy. In his free time he enjoys fishing, exercising, gardening, and volunteering in local schools.
Dr. Nicky Mohan is a global citizen by choice. Born and raised in South Africa, she now shares her time between New Zealand and Canada. Nicky has been a classroom teacher, a school administrator, a university leader, a business sector manager, a co-operate trainer, an international speaker, and a global consultant and acknowledged expert in the field of instructional design. Dr. Mohan also worked as the Director of Curriculum for the 21st Century Fluency Group (Canada). She is currently the Managing Partner of the InfoSavvy Group (Canada), and Director and co-founder of SpringBoard21 (USA), international educational consulting firms. Nicky has co-written five books including the award-winning Reinventing Learning for the Always-on Generation; and is a member of the Teacher Task Force - UNESCO core working group on ‘The Role of AI in Education’. To contact her and get to know more about her work and her team, follow @nickymohan on Twitter, visit their websites - https://infosavvy21.com/ and https://www.springboard21.com/ and subscribe to their YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/TheCommittedSardines.
