El Buchanan

If you have not heard yet, this year in Ms. Landis’ Global Cities: Power and Creativity and her Latin 3 classes she is doing a “gamified” version of the class. Basically, “gamified” means the class is in a “game” setting instead of the regular curriculum. The game is based on role playing where every student chooses a character to play throughout the whole year.

Last year, Ms Landis was a new teacher at Latin and decided to try out gamification class on her Latin 3 class, not on her Global Cities class. She said that the Latin 3 students loved the game, so she is using it on her Global Cities class.

Freshmen Lauren Salzman, who is in Landis’ Global Cities class, says, “My favorite part of the gamification would have to be all of the unique and creative aspects like our future personas and the creative assessments. It brings history to life and is so much more than just a lectures.” Eleanor Pontikes, student in Latin 3 class, says, “My favorite part of the class is understanding the actions of ancient romans and why they do what they did.”

However, not all students have such a positive view. An anonymous student says, “The game is really interesting sometimes, but sometimes I wish it was just a normal class because the game makes it a little confusing.”

While the concept of the game is the same in the Latin 3 and Global Cities classes, they do differ slightly. In the Latin 3 class the students go through day by day simulation as their characters starting from 69 CE in ancient Rome. As their personas, they try to win the game by becoming emperor of the colony. On the other hand, the Global Cities students are “living” on a futuristic space ship and going back learning each of the countries in their golden age in order to figure out the best way to run their ship.

Ms. Landis’ innovative style of learning allows students to work at their own pace by letting them submit assignments whenever they like. They can also embark on “side quests” to earn extra credit.