Educationary – A Gamification Tool for Educators

Bringing game elements to the classroom? Gamifying your lessons?

Yes, please! But how?!

You need ideas

Ideas that fit your classroom demands. What will be the learning content? Do you want to integrate digital technology? Do you teach at a school or at university? And anyway, which game elements are suitable for you ?

While participating in TeacherQuest, I created Educationary. This activity/game can be used by 1-4 educators to come up with ideas for game-like & gamified learning experiences during the educational design process.

How to play: You collect cards from different categories…
… and develop rough ideas for learning activities.

Educationary is based on Nanofictionarya great story-telling game for 3-6 players, created by Looney Labs. In this game players try to collect suitable cards from four categories (setting, character, problem, resolution), so each player can tell a convincing story. You can find a detailed description and a review of Nanofictionary on GeekDad.

Educationary takes the rules of Nanofictionary and applies them to the educational design process. With permission from Looney Labs, you can download the instructions and playing cards here:


Download Educationary

© 2018 Daniel Behnke – This activity (Educationary) uses Andrew Looney’s game design engine Nanofictionary (© 2002-2017 by Looney Labs) which is used here with permission from Looney Labs.

Additional Information

„Gamification“ is a term used for a variety of approaches that use game elements in non-game contexts. This means when gamifying educational content, you add game elements to lessons or lectures, teaching units or other learning activities. Very often, the purpose of gamification is to motivate and activate learners.

But how do you proceed? Usually it is not the best idea to „cover“ the learning contents with badges, experience points or other random elements. Instead, you have to match a number of „educational puzzle pieces“ and bring them together in a meaningful way.

Educationary can help you gather your first ideas and set you on the right track.

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