WASHINGTON, D.C - Mar. 9, 2017 - The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), the premier source for books on education technology, is proud to announce its latest publication.

Packed with tips and inspiration, Gamify Literacy highlights how gamification and the motivational techniques built into games can boost literacy skills and encourage collaboration. In this book, literacy teacher Michele Haiken brings together top educators and gaming professionals to share strategies, tools and best practices for bringing gamification to the classroom.

With chapters devoted to topics such as badging and leaderboards for student motivation, role-playing and Minecraft for immersive content learning, and scavenger hunts and adventure quests for skill-building activities, the book shares a variety of ways classroom educators and edtech coaches can use gaming tools and activities to improve and enhance learning.

As Michael Matera, author of Explore Like a Pirate: Gamification and Game-Inspired Course Design to Engage, Enrich and Elevate Your Learners, writes in the foreword, “Thinking like game designers and applying game mechanics to our classroom can radically shift how our students perform, act and achieve.”

The book includes:

• Tips for implementing gaming techniques to engage and motivate students.
• Engaging design and easy-to-navigate sections to complement a game-based approach to learning.
• Examples that are mapped to the 2016 ISTE Standards for Students and easily modified for different grade levels.

Haiken is a literacy teacher at Rye Middle School and an adjunct professor at Manhattanville College, both in New York. She is also a frequent speaker and was a contributor to the ISTE book Teaching Literacy in the Digital Age.

In the introduction, she writes, “Effective games are customized to different learners and students are encouraged to take risks and seek alternative solutions to show what they know. In classrooms today, it’s not only about learning content material, students must experience and build the necessary skills to be creators, innovators and problem-solvers in order to develop critical thinking and improve academic achievement.”

The book will be released April 30 and is currently available for pre-order at iste.org/resources.

About ISTE
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) is the premier membership organization serving educators and education leaders committed to empowering connected learners in a connected world. ISTE serves more than 100,000 education stakeholders throughout the world.

Innovative offerings include the widely adopted ISTE Standards for learning, teaching and leading in the digital age - as well as the ISTE Conference & Expo -the world's most comprehensive edtech event. The organization's robust suite of professional learning resources feature online courses, consulting services for schools and districts, books, and peer-reviewed journals and publications. For more information, visit iste.org. Subscribe to ISTE's YouTube channel and connect with ISTE on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.