The Art of Gamification

I stumbled across an interesting website today that is dedicated to the gamification of education.  The website is gamification.org.  Gamification is currently just a buzz word or better put, it's being hyped (see hype diagram =>).

Gamification is the idea of adding game elements to educational experiences.  The focus has been on computer-based training but there are several examples that use card games and board games as well.  The idea is sound, but the execution has been lackluster.

The reason for this is probably due to the difficulty of adding game elements into your computer based training.  There aren't very many delivered gaming solution for training.  The best implementation of gamification of education that I have seen is Khan Academy.  You can earn points and badges as you progress through the online video and math learning map.