You may not believe it, but your professor loves video games. Educators are becoming passionate about gaming and The Humanities and Technology Camp: Games, put that passion to work.

THATCamp Games, taking place January 19 to 22, was an un-conference focused on the the intersection of education and gaming. Attendees came from a number of different perspectives, there were educators looking to integrate games into the classroom, instructors in game design, game makers and more.

Over the four days, the attendees watched a film about gaming, participated in game design and development workshops, and attended self-generated sessions on a variety of topics.

Of the many sessions there were three strong threads: teaching through games, teaching game theory, and teaching game design.

Teaching through games.

Of the three strong threads at #THATCamp, using games as teaching tools was one of the strongest.

Alternate Reality Games were a significant part of the event, there were two ARG-focused workshops.

“Build your own practomimetic (ARG/RPG) course” was run by Roger Travis[http://livingepic.org], Kevin Ballestrini[http://kevinbal.blogspot.com/], Emily Lewis[http://twitter.com/#/blueathena14], Mark Pearsall, and Stephen Slota[http://practomime.com]. The goal of the presenters was to provide a framework for educators to build an “ARG wrapped around an RPG.” The work was based off of Operation LAPIS, the team’s ARG/RPG designed to teach Latin and Roman Culture[http://www.practomime.com/?page_id=122].

“Narrative Puzzles” was run by the creators of Arcane Gallery of Gadgetry[http://www.arcanegalleryofgadgetry.org/], an ARG focused on “playful historical thinking.” The session taught[http://db.tt/wEibKy3I] how to create puzzles incorporated into an underlying educational narrative for the classroom.

The interest of many of the educators was towards using games to make the classroom more engaging. Gamification was a popular method to discuss, with conversations about the pros and cons of badges and experience points systems in a number of sessions, most significantly “Badges Done Right[http://db.tt/70JFfu5Z].” The questions of what to reward, how to reward it and how to signify value outside of academia were of significant focus.

Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AR9QVMPecS9spvIUQnlbOxu692tKNass5-9g5_SblY4/edit