#002:Bring Joy Back to Teaching & Learning with a Gameful Classroom with katrin Becker

LevelUp Life

Katrin is an award winning, internationally known expert in the design and analysis of Serious Games and in gamification in the classroom. She holds two Computer Science degrees and a PhD in Educational Technology. She is a certified instructional designer with a graduate certificate in serious game design and research. She has over 35 years of teaching experience and has taught CS, video game design, DGBL, and technical writing. Her teaching innovations have been internationally recognized and she is widely published. She designs and develops e Learning in all sectors, including educational and advertising games. Her recent game, Gene Rummy is a physical card game to help people learn basic Mendelian genetics. She is also the author of three books; one on the technical aspects of simulations and games written for non-technical people (Wiley, 2011), now available on LeanPub, one on choosing and using digital games for the classroom (Springer, 2016), and a memoir called, "Reni". Her next book, "Gamification 101: A Practical Guide to Gameful Learning", is due out next year.
Finally, to counterbalance a very digital life, she runs a small farm where she has been raising rabbits, waterfowl, and other animals for over 30 years. This farm forms the basis for her “Ducks in the Classroom” program, which provided eggs for hatching in classrooms locally from 1988-2012, and information on school hatching projects globally since 2001. It also accounts for occasional bit of poo on her shoe.
In this interview, Katrin tells us more about her motivation to use gaming and games for teaching, and shares lifelong experiences and insights about how he see games can be used for learning, for motivation and for change.