‘Gamification’ is a term that one comes across very often. Some of us love it, some of us might even hate it; but nobody can ignore it!

As gamification gradually finds its way into the realm of education, more and more educators are voicing their criticism or admiration for it. Despite the criticism, the gamification of education is here to stay.

This week, we take a closer look at ‘Gamification’ and what various L&D professionals think about it. Below are our top 5 GBL links from this week. Read them, share them or bookmark them.

Just over a week since we released UpsideLMS 5.0, and the interest it has generated in these few days is mindboggling! For those of you who still haven’t taken a look at this stunning, best value LMS, we suggest you do it now.

UpsideLMS version 5.0 is an outcome of the sweat and thoughts put in by our engineering and UI experts. Our designers have put themselves in the users’ shoes to understand the nuances of User Experience (UX).

This new version promises to bring a burst of freshness to the users’ desktops along with a slew of new features. To give you a taste of the new version, here’s a quick take on the 5 top features in the new UpsideLMS.

One of the prime forces that drove us to release a new version of the website (back in 2010) was enabling visitors make the most of their time spent on our website. And as such, our website has reflected information that is accurate and to the point. Little did we know that one day these efforts will put us on the chart of the best websites!

www.upsidelearning.com, our official website has made it to number 26 in the ‘Top 100 Highest Ranking Websites In Learning Technology’ chart.

Over the years, you have probably noticed that the typically linear eLearning development process has undergone some changes. One change that I’ve noticed are that customers are realizing that we aren’t just creating courseware or writing content and interactions, we are also developing software. This has led to an expectation that the eLearning industry adopt some development models and methodologies from the software industry.

The release of the new UpsideLMS version – 5.0, is generating a lot of excitement at Upside Learning. The Marketing team has been on their toes, getting the collaterals and other launch activities ready; the Sales team is now itching to show it off to prospects after laying their eyes on the new version.

Our stunning, best value Learning Management System, UpsideLMS v5.0, is built to include features that trainers and learners have always wanted in an LMS. It has the features, the performance, the user interface and experience, the awards and recognition, and your trust! Here is what you will find in the v5.0 of UpsideLMS.

One week into the New Year it’s the right time to look back on the year gone by. So we thought it would be interesting take a journey down our blog for some of the most popular and noteworthy posts of 2011. We have pulled these up based on social signals (views, comments, twitter and more).

So without much ado, here are Top 50 eLearning Posts of 2011 from our blog as determined by you, our readers. Read them. Reflect on them. Debate them. Enjoy them!

With our increasing focus on Game Based Learning, each week sees us sharing interesting articles and resources about Game Based Learning on varied social networking platforms. While many of you follow us on Twitter and Facebook, we do realize that keeping a track of all the tweets/ posts, given the high proliferation and dynamic nature of information, is difficult, to say the least.

Hence, to ensure that you do not miss out on all the great links we share and also with a view to building a knowledge repository, every week, we shall be publishing a quick summary post of our best shared material from the week before.

On the 15th of December 2011, the Android Developer Relations team at Google launched the beta version of Android Training — a collection of classes to help developers build better Android apps using best practices in a variety of framework topics.

This is a move in the right direction by Google, especially since many Smartphone users perceive Android apps to be inferior to Apple’s iOS. This initiative targeted at developers will help to raise the quality of Android apps developed in the public realm.

When Apple launched the iPhone 4S, one of the key differentiators to previous models was the inclusion of Siri. For those who haven’t been bombarded yet by the marketing campaigns, Siri is an intelligent software assistant and a knowledge navigator that essentially functions like a digital personal assistant. You can find out more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siri_(software).

There sure are lot of learning design community folks who love to play digital games.

It’s always interesting to hear gamers talk about why they play certain genres of games and what aspects of those games they love.

What is even more impressive is the passion and motivation that gets individuals to play these games.

After being hooked onto Angry Birds, I now find myself fascinated by a collection of games hosted on a website called http://www.physicsgames.net.

As you must have already guessed, this website showcases numerous physics-based online games developed in Flash.

I recently came across a blog-post by Susan Weinschenk which provides a quick overview of ideal user experience guidelines from a psychologist’s point of view.

The article addresses a diverse set of user experience guidelines and standards and consists of some really practical and useful tips which can and ought to be implemented right away.

Here’s a quick summary of the points which I found to be relevant to eLearning and Instructional Design.