#critical skills and knowledge

[shamita-deshmukh211]

The Importance And Benefits Of Gamification In STEM Education

The concept of Gamification is gaining a lot of momentum in the educational technology space. For STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education especially, this type of pedagogy is perfectly suited to create a conducive learning environment, thus transforming it into a space that encourages student engagement, interaction, exploration, and retention. 

A powerful technique that takes several elements from games and applies them to non-game contexts such as education, Gamification allows STEM educators to make learning more interactive and captivating for students. 

In this post, we will explore the world of Gamification in learning and highlight different ways the technique can be used to encourage learners' motivation, foster engagement, and cultivate an interest in developing critical skills and knowledge among students. 

What is Gamification?

As the name suggests, Gamification is the use of various game design elements and principles in non-game contexts, such as education, to increase learner participation and motivation.

The technique can include elements such as badges, leaderboards, points, levels, rewards, challenges, feedback, and more.

Likewise, Gamification can also involve applying various game mechanics in educational settings, such as goals, competition, rules, and interactivity, to create a more immersive and fun learning experience for students.

Examples of Gamification in Stem Learning

Below are some of the example of gamified STEM education-

Creating a specific theme or narrative that connects the concepts to either a real-world issue or a fictional scenario

Setting up a leaderboard or progress bar to display student progress

Designing quests that reward students with points, badges, or other similar incentives

Incorporating various elements of competition and offering feedback and recognition. 

These are a few of the interesting gamification strategies that can help STEM educators motivate their students to keep trying and improving while also enjoying as well as celebrating their achievements.

How Does Gamification Help Stem Education?

There are several advantages of integrating Gamification in STEM education. Some of these are listed below-

1. Higher Engagement

Gamification is a technique that introduces several game elements such as levels, points, badges, and rewards, thus creating in learners a sense of achievement and progress. This, in turn, fosters motivation and makes learning much more fun. Students not only show increased engagement but also become more invested in their learning journey and achieve higher levels of mastery.

2. Enhanced Problem-Solving Skills

Another advantage of Gamification for STEM education is a holistic approach to learning that often presents students with complex challenges that require them to display problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. 

By participating in such tasks, students develop great analytical skills along with the ability to approach problems from different angles, something that mirrors real-world STEM scenarios.

3. Growth Mindset

When it comes to creating successful learning outcomes, the most important thing is to help cultivate a growth mindset in students where they believe that their intelligence and ability can be developed. 

Since games encourage learners to compete both against each other and themselves, there is always an incentive present to improve. In this context, learners who might be uninterested in STEM subjects can develop a liking for the game played and start developing a growth mindset. 

4. Active Learning

The inclusion of gamified activities in STEM education involves a lot of interactive experiences, simulations, or problem-solving real-life scenarios. This shifts the focus of the learning from passive listening to active participation, where students are consistently encouraged to explore, experiment, and apply the knowledge they have acquired in practical situations.

How to Gamify STEM Learning?

To get maximum out of gamification techniques in the STEM education context, here are some of the ways you can employ to gamify learning successfully-

1. Incorporate Time-bound tasks 

One of the key elements of games is that they have a specific period allotted to finish a particular task. Giving children a time limit to complete a given task is therefore important to gamify the learning. 

When there is a timer put on, the students are more likely to be focused on the activity given and complete it on time. This fosters a sense of urgency and accomplishment in them of having completed the task in time.

2. Use Role-Playing Scenarios

Create scenarios where students play the roles of scientists, engineers, or tech experts solving real-world problems. This helps them understand the practical applications of STEM and develops problem-solving skills.

3. Introduce Leaderboard

 Another interesting way to gamify STEM subjects is by placing visually designed leaderboards either in the classroom or integrated into the app. It will display the progress students make as individuals or as teams in the tasks or activities given to them. You could include leaderboards for behavior, timeliness, learning speed, and so on.

4. Present Challenges

Regardless of age, children love games that challenge them. Encouraging them to apply their learning to finish a given task, even if it appears tough in the beginning, is a great way to push them.

However, it's crucial to strike a balance in challenge design. Challenges should be simple and manageable, as finding the right level of difficulty is key to sustaining a child's interest and fostering continuous engagement.

Conclusion

Gamification holds great potential in the STEM education space. Educators and schools willing to embrace Gamification in their classrooms can get numerous benefits out of it as discussed above. 

By implementing Gamification in STEM education, educators can ensure to generate confident learners who are better able to navigate technological advancements and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers to help build a better future for everyone. 

[devllishy]

ok but. this is was a subtle hint that jinx might be alive right????? cause caitlyn's holding one of her toys and she's showing the place where jinx fell and there are air vents???? where she could've easily jumped to and saved herself from the fall??????? RIGHT??!?!?!????

[yui-hibari]

So...

While reading SVSSS it was easy to (mostly) ignore Shen Yuan's behaviour, since he has an excuse for everything. But once I took a couple of steps back, all I could think was Hey, what the fuck

[he13na]

When I was in college, there were actually critical thinking literary courses that were mandatory for an English degree. I guess they don't offer those anymore, because society seems to have abandoned any capability of critical thinking. Courses like that used to be a cornerstone of education, helping people learn to engage with literature and media on a deeper level, ask hard questions, and unpack complex themes. Critical thinking in literature isn’t just about analyzing a text; it’s about learning to see nuance, to interpret context, and to understand that stories are often full of layers, contradictions, and uncomfortable truths. Those courses taught people how to read, not just for plot but for meaning, intention, and emotional depth.

Sadly, it feels like there’s less emphasis on that kind of analysis these days. With so much information coming at us so quickly on social media, people seem more inclined to skim and react than to actually dig in and reflect. Instead of learning to interpret and engage thoughtfully, it’s as if we’re in a culture of snap judgments where something is either “good” or “bad,” “safe” or “dangerous.”

The loss of those critical thinking skills has led to a world where complex stories are simplified, controversial themes are sanitized, and characters’ motives are flattened out because there’s this fear of misinterpretation or offense. Without critical thinking, people often miss the richness of a story like Summer of My German Soldier, overlooking the layers of trauma, love, resilience, and humanity because they’re too focused on surface-level judgments.

And let’s be real—these courses weren’t just about reading books. They were about life skills, teaching people to think beyond binary perspectives, to ask why and how instead of just what. When we lose that, we lose the ability to appreciate the complicated, messy nature of being human. We start avoiding stories that challenge us, and that’s exactly what leads to a society uncomfortable with any portrayal of emotions or relationships that don’t fit into a neat, comfortable box.

So, yeah, it’s a shame. Critical thinking courses in literature were a gift. They encouraged people to sit with discomfort, to explore moral ambiguity, and to understand that art reflects the full spectrum of human experience—including the parts that aren’t easy to define. It’s exactly those skills that help us see stories for what they are: messy, meaningful, and, ultimately, true to life.

[benkaben]

"But Whyyyy do we have to learn [redacted] at school"

Apart from all the arguments and development based theories this could be answered with, I bring you simply, why not?

Why are you against knowledge?

[adragonsfriend]

I think one of the reasons lit crit gets such a bad wrap is that in school kids are usually introduced to it long before they’re introduced to craft-based writing (especially craft-based creative writing). My first real creative writing classes wildly changed the way I thought about analysing other people’s writing.

“The curtains are blue probably cuz the author liked blue”

Cool maybe but have you ever thought about how the author chose to mention the curtains were a color in the first place when they could’ve said a texture or a fabric type instead? Or that there were curtains at all? Or that mentioning curtains implies the room has big windows? And what big windows implies about the general architecture of the larger building? And what the architecture of the building and the curtains vs blinds choice implies about the class and culture of the people in the room? Or the way access to dyes has affected people’s perceptions of colors in different periods of history and how readers in the authors time might’ve had perceptions you don’t?

Understanding authorial agency is the lynch pin in understanding why lit crit is the way it is, and it’s really hard to get that when you’re a kid who’s writing boring essays because adults tell you to, or even an adult whose main writing activity is work emails.

[lesbianlenas]

i had an in person final today & omg so i was sitting in the back row & the row all the way in the back is smaller so it’s only 3 seats. so of course this guy has to come sit in the seat on the other end there was a WHOLE classroom why tf do u have to sit right next to me. there was a seat between us but still. anyway he had a giant fucking keyboard w him for no reason like you are on a laptop w a keyboard on it there is NO reason u need to be clacking away next to me on that thing. like they should NOT allow those keyboards wtf????? and then ok we were not allowed to use internet for our exam but we could do smth to get internet access but we were only allowed to do it to access our textbook. & i saw him googling things during the exam i’m like i should report him for violating the honor code just as payback for clacking next to me for 3 hrs 😑 he’s lucky i go into hyper focus during exams and i tuned it out bc normally if i had to deal w that i would not be able to focus. legit sooooo rude idc. and like wtf are you even googling that u can’t find in ur notes 🙄 i took the same exam and never felt the need to google smth i did not even use the textbook. but maybe i’m built different!!!!!!!

[cosmicredcadet]

Y'all listen just because you learned something in school doesn't mean everyone else did. idk how y'all got this idea in ur heads that we all learned the same shit when literal book bans are happening in schools across the united states and certain subjects are being banned from ever being talked about. (do not even get me started on the fact different countries have different curriculum too) Like you cannot say "You guys obviously just didn't pay attention in school and are stupid because we all learned this" like you are ignoring like 50 other options as to why people may not have learned this ranging from poorly funded school to disabled kid getting shoved into special ed classes which are often notorious for mistreating their disabled students. I'm begging you all to understand the nuance of why certain skills and abilities aren't as widely spread as you assume they should be.

[asinglesock]

just realized my fatal flaw and the great struggle of possibly the rest of my life. while watching a cdrama.

[ifuckingloveryoshu]

Hi I saw ur tags on my posts lol 🔥😭😭 thank you so much for liking my ryoshu and oc arts, but can I ask where did the name of yuzuki for ryoshu's daughter came from? I don't think hell screen mentioned her name?

Thank you for helping me get up this morning. Very short tldr but vauge answer: Hell Screen has been translated and adapted enough you could have read the a translation that keeps called Yoshihide's daughter, "Yoshihide's daughter"

If you read the Little Penguins Books Publishing, they did not use Yuzuki as the name from what I can see, but Yuzuki exist somewhere.

Lazily doing a half-baked investigation under read more.

I will never claim to know anything about translation and I had too little sleep to do things today. I'm also broke so I can't go cross refrence evey translation and adaptation of Hell Screen. I hope someone better than I can could look into this or help out. Ill come back to this maybe

This is absolutly not how you do research or go off of things but Penguin Publishing version reviews don't use the Yuzuki name so I'm thinking they don't use her name there. The Jay Rubin Translation doesn't use Yuzuki. I say that because I'm re-listening to this while cross refrencing a pdf I found. Im guessing their one in the same.

This archeologist/writer named matthewrettino uses Yuzuki when talking about Hell Screen

Haunted Places Ghost Stories did a reading on this and unrelated but they pronounce Monkehide how an american would so its, "MONKEY HIDE." But anyway, they use it. They just spell it liker Uzuki

Portrait of Hell or Jingokuhen make Yoshihide Korean, apparently. I wanted to put that here, it''s not really important, just an example of an adaptation changing something. You have a story for so long and things get changed.

It's part of human history and how we tell stories, we like adapting things and giving thigs new meaning just like Ryoshu. She's not named Yoshihide but we're all thinking, "Yeah, she's Yoshihide, she likes art, she has fire, shes sadistic, that's Yoshihide." But she's not an old man, Yoshihide never spoke in acronyms, Yoshihide's not a woman. Jesus Christ was never white. He was born in Jerusulm in a dessert, it would be strange if he was white. Most people living in the middle east and closer to the sun normally have darker skin because they have more melanin in their skin to protect from the sun. The image has been passed around so much that, at least in our Eurocentric culture, I can't find the word for it, Jesus is commonly depicted as white. Yuzuki could have never had the name in the original language, or the inverse, she could have had a name but time let it go through the skin of its fingers and it was lost to oblivion. We just need to rediscover where it's orgin came from.

Meme - A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another

The name Yuzuki might as well be a meme. If it wasn't in the orginal version of Hell Screen, it just exist now. That's why people are like, "Yuzuki, that's the name of Yoshihide's daughter. That sounds right!" Because idea's spread from text, imagry, music notes, whatever you have come to life like a spark of flame from a lighter and drift off from its starting point. The co2 particles relase into the air and up to the clouds, and when enough people emmit co2 at a rate thats unsustantable for our planet, big things happen. Really big things happen. Or you just scream so loud that no one hears you and much like the effects of smoking, damage your lungs.

I hope it doesn't feel like I'm pulling stuff out of my ass. I'll come back to this and when I have a solid answer, i'll tell you or reblog this. No worries.

[sad--tree]

keep saying i don't want 2 work another retail xmas but canNOT 4 the life of me make myself finish my goddamn fucking job applications !!!!!! death & dying & despair etc. etc.

[light-of-laurelin]

I wrote a research paper last semester on the impact of AI in education and when it was time for peer reviews they were all like this. “I only use it for…” and I’m like dude you shouldn’t be using it at all.

My best friend is unfortunately dating a tech bro and is super into it and I cannot get her to understand that it is not a thinking machine and is only as good as the input it’s trained on and could never tell you something new.

[celepeace]

as someone who has shown unusual aptitude with nearly all artistic activities I've tried, sometimes I get people asking me how I got this way, and I've found my only real advice is very simple and often disappointing to the asker:

Read/watch/listen to/etc art that you like and pay attention to what makes it good.

That's it.

[veal-exe]

EDIT

This has gotten a lot of traction so I’m gonna be rude and say that if anyone here has the means, that my spouse and I need help to not be homeless and hungry.

my paypal is Lahoreling@Gmail.com

END EDIT

———

I was discussing the incident mentioned later in this piece with my wife yesterday and I saw another post by someone earlier doing something mentioned in here and I'm finally going to say something about it.

There is a serious problem in leftist spaces, especially online, especially on Tumblr, when it comes to language.

The way people are expected to speak just to even enter these spaces is incredibly complex, to the point of being outright hostile to those who haven’t already spent time in them. And it’s not just newcomers; people who have important things to say, people speaking from lived experiences, people who don’t have English as a first language but still deserve to be heard, are constantly talked down to or even pushed out entirely for not using the "right" words.

This gets even worse when you factor in how often new terms are coined in English, and then people are shamed for not immediately knowing or using them.

I saw someone reblog their own post saying something like, "I know for a fact more than half of y’all didn’t understand a fucking word I said here."

And honestly? That stuck with me, because yeah, I’ve felt that before. Not because I don’t value critical thinking! because I absolutely do! I just made a post on that too! but because so many of these posts are written in a way that makes them Functionally Inaccessible to anyone who doesn’t already have the right background knowledge. And at a certain point, if you actually want your words to have an impact, if you actually want to create meaningful change, then you’re going to have to accept some things:

People will not always use perfect language.

2. People will not always know the exact terminology you personally prefer they use when engaging in discourse.

3. Dismissing or attacking people for how they say something, instead of engaging with what they’re saying, is actively harmful.

And more than that, if you genuinely want people to understand and engage with the things you’re talking about, especially people who don’t speak English as a first language, especially people without access to higher education, especially people who don’t even know where to begin when it comes to self-education (because yes, that is a skill that has to be taught) then you are going to have to be the one to adjust sometimes. You are going to have to let people say things imperfectly. You are going to have to take a step back and engage with the message rather than just the words being used to express it.

One of the experiences that made me realize that I, as a non-native English speaker, was not welcome in Tumblr leftist spaces was when I spoke about real-life oppression I had experienced. I left one word out of my post, a word which honestly, was not even important when talking about an incident that had Happened To Me, not theory, not hypotheticals or any what-ifs of oppression, a story, a story about something that happened to me.

And because of that, people sat in a Discord server, picking apart my words, accusing me of awful things, and then came into my askbox throwing jargon and buzzwords I’d never even heard before, then got mad at me for being frustrated that this was happening.

Think about that. People who are directly impacted by oppression are being pushed out of spaces meant to discuss it because the way they speak doesn’t conform to certain expectations. That is not justice. That is not solidarity. That is not progress.

There is a fundamental disconnect here between theory and praxis. Ironically so many of you do not know what praxis is, because most of you engage with a lot of theory, and not a lot of praxis, you use the word praxis a lot, but, ironically, you have no idea what it means.

{to put my money where my mouth is, it means Doing Something, in the simplest possible terms}

In theory, leftist spaces should be accessible. They should be places where people can speak openly about their experiences, learn from each other, and work toward meaningful change. But in practice? There’s a gatekeeping of language so intense that many people, particularly those who are marginalized in ways beyond just their political beliefs, are outright excluded.

And this is something I need people to sit with: The assumption that the "right" language is easy to learn, or that anyone who doesn’t use it is being willfully ignorant, is an inherently privileged stance. Knowing where to find information, how to process it, and how to integrate new terminology into your vocabulary is a skill that is largely tied to education. Having the time to engage with leftist literature and theory, to stay up-to-date on every new term that gets introduced, is also a privilege. And the fact that so many people refuse to acknowledge this, that they expect perfect articulation from everyone, regardless of background, and punish those who don’t measure up, is a huge problem.

Worse still, the same people who act as gatekeepers of this language often fail to communicate their ideas in a way that is accessible at all.

This doesn’t mean that complex ideas should never be discussed. It doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t strive for accuracy in their language. But it does mean that if your goal is to educate, if your goal is to spread awareness, if your goal is to help people understand and join the movement, if your goal is to engage with fellow oppressed people, then you have a responsibility to meet people where they are. You have a responsibility to make your language understandable.

Because if people can’t even process what you’re saying, then what’s the fucking point?

And before anyone says, "Well, people should put in the effort to learn!" Let me make something very clear: They do.

People who are new to leftist spaces, or who are coming in from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, are often trying their best to engage. They are listening, they are learning, they are processing. But if the response to every mistake, every slightly off phrasing, every unfamiliarity with a new term, is immediate hostility,

or even if it's just 'hey I see you're sharing a personal moment, but can you change your language to make me, personally, more comfortable with you discussing your oppression?' then you’re not teaching.

You’re just making sure only the people who already think and speak exactly like you get to stay in the room.

Your language, your terminology, your theory? none of it means anything if you can’t make it accessible to the people who actually need it. And it means nothing if you use it to Exclude rather than Include.

[excellenthomevlasses]

The Importance of IB Theory of Knowledge (TOK) Tutoring

The IB Theory of Knowledge (TOK) is a unique component of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program, challenging students to think critically about how knowledge is constructed, shared, and evaluated. TOK encourages deep reflection on diverse perspectives and the underlying assumptions that shape our understanding of the world. However, TOK’s abstract and interdisciplinary nature often…

[excellenthomeclasses1]

The Importance of IB Theory of Knowledge (TOK) Tutoring

The IB Theory of Knowledge (TOK) is a unique component of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program, challenging students to think critically about how knowledge is constructed, shared, and evaluated. TOK encourages deep reflection on diverse perspectives and the underlying assumptions that shape our understanding of the world. However, TOK’s abstract and interdisciplinary nature often…