Gamification existed long before the term was actually coined [1].  Companies were using gamification techniques for marketing, corporations used them for employee training, and  educators have been using certain aspects for years already. To understand gamification  you need to know what a game is.  A game can be defined as "a system in which players engage in an abstract challenge, defined by rules, interactivity, and feedback, that results in a quantifiable outcome often eliciting an emotional reaction" [3]. Gamification is a lot more than just the process of adding experience points, badges, and a leader board to your classroom [2].  Those are a part of it but other aspects like storytelling, problem solving, iteration, and aesthetics are needed to make gamification a successful part of the classroom.  Without the game aspects of feedback, interactivity, and rules the points and scores mean very little.  Gamification does not mean playing a game on the computer to learn math but a combination of all game based aspects to make a valuable learning experience that should be both challenging and rewarding.

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In education we have used feedback, scores, collaboration on projects, and even storytelling which are all pieces of gamification. Educators have the skills and abilities needed to make gamification successful we just have to implement them [2].