Reading the class blog posts and thinking about the week's reading, I find my self circling back around to what is the purpose of engaging students in games. Obviously for those selling games for the market the purpose is to sell more games or game-time or game associated stuff. But for education games, I am wondering if maybe differing types of engagement work best or lead to different types of outcomes related to the materials. Maybe some types of engagement work not only best with with certain ages or personalities, but also with different types of material and different types of outcomes. Maybe memorized materials or skills work best with certain types of engagement, say the sensory or audio-visual engagement mentioned by Emir and Mayra, while learning from materials about the why's of history might require a different type or method of engagement. Or in my own field it might take a different type of engagement to teach skills of handwashing while different type of engagement might be needed to learn about types of bacteria and their positive, negative or indifferent impact on humans, and yet a different type of engagement to learn about how tobacco (or soda or...) advertising works to increase your desire to buy the product and how to think about the other consequences of buying the product. For the last one, I am not sure how Flow would work, or if might actually block one getting to the learning of the game, if one 'leaves' the real world for the game, how does one then figure out to use any skills the game may teach in the real world. On the other hand, maybe being in the Flow of the game world may buy the learner enough space to learn without real world obstacles. But the gamer would still have to deal with the real world obstacles outside the game to have learned skills and ideas that could be of use out in the real world. So back to the beginning of this post, I find myself circling around, and around, a bit like a dog trying to settle down. We will see where I settle.

What Common Characteristics do engaging games have? The simple answer seems to be, an engaging game takes you away into another place where your skills are tested, but you can sense you can master the skill or situation. Chen speaks of 'flow' or the 'zone' where focus is so much on the game situation that the gamer looses track of the non-game world, and is so engaged by feedback and immediacy of obtainable goals that awareness is narrowed to that goal and the environment of the goal. Chen goes on to note that Flow can happen in many things other than games, for instance sports or music. Flow in this context seems to be synonymous with immersion, which Emri and Mayra develop noting multiple types of immersion that interact to yield the gameplay experience. More intriguingly, they also note that many factors of the game and the player also interact and it is the whole set of interactions that makes the gameplay experience, not just the three types of immersion they found in their gamers. They parse immersion in three realms – senses, imagination and challenge, noting that while the sensory immersion is most visible to others outside of the gamer such as parents, it may be the least engaging, while the challenge may be most engaging. All useful information when building or vetting games for education, more intriguing to me though is how the traits or skills built in gaming largely based on those immersion characteristics might be used to solve world size problems and build skills outside of the game that are applicable to things like social entrepreneurship which is part of McGonigal's point. Her research finds that gamers share a set of characteristics that could be useful in solving real world problems. Gamers have an urgent optimism, actively build social fabric, have a sense of blissful productivity and have epic meaning. Looking at the trait building within the contextual model that Emri and Mayra find that puts gameplay immersion in the context of the game and the gamer, would seem to lead to considering whether part of immersion and engagement in gaming is also affected by the social structures and societal issues that surround the gameplay, thus linking back to how can the traits developed in engagement in gaming be used to inform and develop social structures in the real world.

Chen, J. (2007). Flow in Games (and Everything Else). Communications of the ACM, 50(4), 31–34. Ermi, L., & Mayra, F. (2005). Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experrience: Analysing Immersion. In Proceesing of DiGRA 2005 Conference: Changing Views - Worlds in Play. McGonigal, J. (n.d.). Gaming can make a better world. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world Diagram from http://www.texample.net/tikz/(examples/venn-diagram-blended/ accessed September 06, 2018. (Tagged free to share, use and change, noncommercial)

Many things are accredited to gamification or using games in education. For instance learning interpersonal skills and patience, or evening out the competitiveness in a group (I have to admit my inner Spock wonders at the logic of evening out competitiveness among a group of students by using a competitive game, which sounds a bit like requiring the one game to increase the competitiveness of some students and decrease the competitiveness of other students, which my inner Spock declares is illogical, at least on its face value.) I suspect as gamification of education is studied we will find like many things, you need the right tool (method or type of game), the right materials (lessons to be learned and student learning style) and the right technique (style of gamification) to get to the outcome desired.

Like when I make lace, I need the right tool, material and desired outcome. Each lace uses a different tool (lace hook, knitting needles, tatting shuttle) with a different material (fine lace thread, crochet cotton, or a mixed bamboo/merino wool/cashmere yarn) to make a different item (lace jabbot, baclava, lace insert). Many the time I have wound up with unusable messes when I have mixed and matched the wrong material, tool and desired outcome. But also many the time have I come out with something new, useful and very cool by mixing and matching in new ways.

This weeks blog post is to be about 'why games in education'. I have to admit given I am not a school teacher, this question is easier for me, if I twist it around a bit, and answer why am I, a public health, nurse interested in finding about gamification in education. As this class is about gamification and K-12 education, I will focus on that part of why a public health nurse wants to use games in education. I will note however, that games and ideas used in gaming could also be applied by public health nurses in other types of education we engage in, for instance working with communities, or other professionals, nursing students, or even other public health nurses. For gaming in K-12 education my interest as a public health nurse lies in public health nurses often being invited to teach about health in either schools or youth settings. As the topics are not chosen by the students, bringing a game or other activity to the teaching can help draw the kids in even to boring things like eating what's good for your health or exercising more, or hand hygiene, or any other of a number of topics that public health nurses get invited to deal with. On the other end of the spectrum public health nurses also get invited to deal with topics that others would prefer to leave outside the classroom learning experience – like puberty, or healthy relationships or substance misuse or... For either group of topics, games may provide a way to gain entry to the students and to gain attention for the boring or de-stigmatize and de-personalize the more risque topics to allow students to learn about health and how to be healthier. Also for both types of topics, games may be able to engage students and get them out of their chairs so-to-speak and involved in learning the how-to skills for health. Games may also allow them to practice the boring and the 'too' personal skills of health in a safe setting where boredom and scary situations are left outside the door, so those useful health skills can be learned and taken back outside the classroom to real life.