Gamify Your Classroom: A Field Guide to Game-Based Learning – Revised edition (New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies)

I'm giving this a harsh review. I rarely write reviews yet literally purchase scores of books from amazon on a regular basis. There is some very useful information in this book if you are trying to educate yourself about the game design world. Hence the 2 stars. However, this is a very expensive book and yet the author seems to have not bothered to hire an editor. There are not just a couple typos here and there but this edition is rife with them. It becomes so distracting that I've actually given up and am not going to even try finishing the last two chapters. Moreover, the resources links listed at the end of each section are frequently broken. Despite this edition being relatively new, many of the organizations listed are now defunct in some way. Finally, the author's style is surprisingly juvenile for someone who teaches at a collegiate level. Throughout the book, he uses the same trope over and again e.g., "As so and so told me when I talked/interviewed him back in _____ [insert year/event/whatever]..." It's like grading middle school journalism assignments over and over again. If this book had been priced at $7.99, I would've still been irked but would not have bothered with this review. But at the price 40 some odd dollars it is just absurd and I'm angry that I was suckered into purchasing such publication of low quality.

Graduate student of education here and let me tell you: this book was a worth it for learning what NOT to do. I've taught for a number of years and I've read my share of "new trends in education" books. this is not one I will ever recommend.The first few chapters are interesting about the history and theory of games. However, the vast majority of the book is advertisements to games (mostly digital) that have very little connections and ties to curricular educational goals (Never mind the the appropriate grade levels.) A quick search on Pinterest got me just as many results and I didn't have to pay through the nose.Also, there is no quantitative or qualitative data to support his 300+ pages of claims. Do his theories work? Maybe, but with no evidence and not even a literature review, you can't be sure.TL;DR: don't bother with it, unless you want to be continually frustrated.

If you purchase one book about game-inspired learning, make it this one! Matthew Farber covers nearly every aspect of it in this densely (in a good way!) informative book! I'm extremely active in game-based learning, but I learned an incredible amount in this book, from new games I didn't know about to new approaches to integrating games into the classroom. At the end of every chapter, Farber includes a wealth of resources about games, lesson plans, and websites; I found myself stopping at the end of every chapter and opening my laptop to check out resources. I'll be spending the last few days of this school year having students play with some of these games and give me feedback for using them in class next year.

I've read many books on gamification and this one is unlike all of them...in a good way. The book is filled with practical and immediately applicable tips and lessons from some of the world's premiere minds on utilizing gamification in education. The variety of topics included in this book are amazing: Minecraft, GameLabs, Puzzles, Gamification and more. At the end of each chapter there are lesson plan ideas which are fantastic! This is a must have for anyone considering or currently using any type of games in the classroom.

Excellent, thorough resource.