The more I think about the idea of gamification and the apparent focus of the gamifying world. I have to admit to being bothered on two levels. First, I personally have always loved to learn, school in general has always been something I like – witness back in class, despite having enough academic credentials to owe Miss Sallie Mae the equivalent of a house. :) So much of the focus in gamifying seems to be on the mechanics and coolness of competition, and not one the actual learning or learning that learning can in and of itself be interesting and fun. A certain practical side of me says well it does matter that the students learn the materials and even if they don't learn about learning, at least they get the knowledge they need for the class or test, but still if life-long learning is an appropriate goal for education (and I very much think it is), then maybe the focus of gamifiying on the mechanics and competition is off-kilter. More seriously in many ways, I worry about the Nevilles of the gamified class. (Yes, I was reading and thinking while listening to my movie music soundtrack which includes a lot of Harry Potter music, can you tell.) But there are a lot of Nevilles in the world, we all have met them, or maybe are them. Never the smart one, or the point earner, or the cool kid, but a good kid muddling along fairly decently, and always being made fun of for not being good enough or being harangued for not doing the job and getting points, grades, catching the ball. Two of the examples of gamification (Dominquez et al and Matera) explicitly talked about how to make sure every student could see every other students contribution in points to the game as a way to increase engagement and competition, but from the Nevilles of the world perspective, I suspect it those systems are one more way to point out they are not enough and should just leave, especially if those systems allow other students to blame, shame and bully them. I know that is not what the theory is competition mechanisms like those should do, but when they are setup explicitly like both of those were to allow students to track other individual students contribution to the competition seems like they might very well lead there. Interestingly, the Harry Potter story has at least two ways that might combat that – one of which probably not so easy to deal with in electronic gamification, so leaving that aside (for those curious, I am thinking of revealing that low point players points last so they make an obvious and real contribution, not buried in the middle (Sorcerer's Stone, Neville gets the last five points for courage in confronting friends that breaks the tie between Gryffindor and Slytherin). The other one is very easy and actually part of the game mechanics advocated for competition, LeaderBoards, but only by group. Through out individual students get and loose points for their House, but only the full house points are posted for other students to see. Yes, folks will remember to some extent who won and lost points, but the schools teachers are not publicly blaming and shaming students by posting that information for all to pour over repeatedly, increasing its negative effects. Rather the focus is on posting the group steering students back to another positive effect touted for gamification, team building. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iGTlfmjtQU (YouTube link - Neville Longbottom winning House cup points, hope it is legit, I am not sure how to tell that on YouTube.)