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Will gamers trade DOOM for Dostoyevsky? World of Warcraft for Evelyn Waugh? Madden Football for Mary Shelly? Mikhail Zinshteyn writes about a partnership between Oxford University Press and an online gaming company designed to make youngsters excited about reading classic literature. The secret sauce: gamification. It’s called “50 Great Reads Before 15.” Zinshteyn writes on the Education Writer’s Association EdMedia Commons site:

SecretBuilders, the partnering website, already has seven million online gamers that could benefit from the literacy games, according to Pearson. Through a system of collecting points, badges, and awards, players are motivated to learn a book’s content and demonstrate their knowledge via periodic quizzes. Kids build their avatars, enter online dimensions like “The Bookworms Club” and find games to play. After selecting Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, for example, the student can view the novel one page at a time onscreen. Newer readers who may find the text too difficult can still participate by listening to a narrator (with a British accent) tell Alice’s tale. Though limited game play is available free, full access to the digital realm requires some payment.

In recent years, gaming communities such as SecretBuilders have taken off. According to Scott Traylor, CEO and founder of 360KID, a kid-focused content and technology company, there are nearly 400 gaming worlds available online. Just over 100 of those are directed at children.

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