gaming situations, often to motivate or influence behavior.”

Gamification is a great method to use when asking people to essentially do a scavenger hunt, with no possible way they can find everything. I like that in this plant find example, there are rare plants worth more points, and bonus points for ones found in bloom. Points are also given for correct identification, along with other metadata.

The Metadata Games that was created at Darmouth College reminds me of the Google Image Labeler game that came out in Nov. 2006 where you and another anonymous person on the internet tried to come up with the same term for an image that randomly appeared. You got more points for more descriptive and longer words, and also got scored for how many total images you were able to label within the time frame. Did anyone else play it when it first came out? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Image_Labeler 

This article also had a terrific list of pros and cons of gamification, such as "rewards or the spirit of competition will spur students’

concentration and interest and lead to more effective learning."
One con I kind of agree with is that gamification could reveal student's difficulties in understanding the content to the rest of the class. Therefore, you might need to keep the badgers/progress private, but then that eliminates the competitive aspect of gamification.

I like that they mentioned that with badges, "You know exactly what they’ve learned along the way, unlike a certificate, that doesn’t itemize all the skills included with that credential."
I'm glad they addressed the potential con of "intrinsic motivation being depleted by using badges as a controlling form of extrinsic motivation", and said you "can negate this by making the badges form a meaningful connection to course material."

Going along with another con of gamification, Accelerated Reader kind of reminds me of the gamification process, as you get points for the books you've read after you pass a knowledge quiz. But a teacher I really respect from reading her blog (Pernille Ripp - https://pernillesripp.com/2017/10/29/on-accelerated-reader-and-all-the-other-computer-programs/) detests Accelerated Reader, as for reading, she says, " Reading was never meant to be about points.  Or scores.  Or correct answers. It was never meant to be about levels or data or rewards for goals met. " Reading should be, " a complex process in which we discover parts of ourselves that we didn’t know before.  A process that brought us closer together as a community of learners, as we felt the growth we made not because a test told us but because the very book we just finished was an accomplishment in itself."

When you’re engaged, you’re more curious, determined, optimistic, we learn faster from our mistakes. More resilient in the face of failure. Need to bring these positive qualities to the classroom. Get some of the same positive emotions."

It was interesting to note that Quest to Learn (a charter school in NY City) is still around, but...has a 4/10 rating on Greatschools.org (https://www.greatschools.org/new-york/new-york/13275-Quest-To-Learn/), and only got a 2/10 on student progress from year to year, which I think is the most important measure. 

She's a big proponent that students can keep taking the test until they get the grade that they like. That's currently a big point of contention among our three math teachers at the high school...a lot of students will simply retake the test without doing any additional studying. Some teachers require a test retake ticket, that documents what they’ve done in the meantime, so their grade should improve on the retake.