Ubiquitous Learning and Instructional Technologies MOOC’s Updates
What educators can learn from games
As I said in another post, students look forward to games more than they do to class lectures/discussions, but the level has to be challenging enough without discouraging them from ever playing again, from giving up and deciding that the subject is not something they will ever master or care about. There's something even more damaging, I think, to feeling alienated from a game you're not up to playing than just sitting in a class and phasing out because you don't understand. The second scenario doesn't purport itself to be "fun," unlike a game.
Update: Fun Factory grammar game https://www.abcya.com/games/fun-factory-punctuation-capitalization
It's pretty engaging for younger learners, with bright colors, fun music, and the chance to build your own virtual toy (a chose a sports car. I like that you have options so it's sort of customized for lots of kids whatever their gender, abilities). You can choose a level, so you can start out slowly and build your way up, creating a narrative of progress for yourself. You drag little icons to the separate words in a sentence to show which need to be capitalized, where commas are necessary, quotation marks, etc. Moving the little icons was actually kind of fun and a kid would have zero problem jumping right in - to a digital native, this is very intuitive design.
ABCya is an excellent site I've used in the past too. It's great when games are not just elaborate reward systems but actually actively based on the content itself. For example, recycling games that simulate sorting trash or maze games that engage use of learning navigational commands.