Engaging Learners 

Team Teaching with Gamification via Genially

It is important for educators today to be able to integrate many different tools into their teaching to meet the goals of all students. While exploring a specific technology tool, allowed me as an educator to try out different scenarios. This also created the chance to see a product in action, while also being able to create and experiment with colleagues.

Genially is an online tool that allows for a multitude of creations to be explored. Through the free platform, both teachers and students, can engage in meaningful activities and create engaging presentations and projects. Specifically, Genially allowed for the incorporation of gamification, which "provides an effective approach for creating exciting, active learning experiences" (O’Brien & Pitera, 2019, p. 192). These tools allowed for many options to create lessons incorporated with play, such as escape rooms. 

Technology is an important resource that has become so prominent in today's society. However like many things, it isn't perfect, and constraints are present. Though Genially provided such a wide range of ideas to use within the classroom, while testing and producing an actual subject, things became more difficult, especially in the free version. A paywall created many constraints, for example, it was not possible to collaborate on one document at a time. Also, simple tech bugs, like lagging and loading, were a big issue on the site. Overall the idea of gamification is fantastic, but as O'Brien & Pitera state in their article "Gamifying Instruction and Engaging Students With Breakout EDU," the ability to incorporate gamification within the classroom "requires time and effort on the part of instructors" (O’Brien & Pitera, 2019, p. 196). For example, time was spent creating an engaging escape room but then ended up not working in a teaching format. Genially has great potential to allow for engagement in classrooms with technology, while also incorporating the aspect of gamification. However, with the new technology that it provides, it was discovered that the constraints at this time outweigh the affordances.