Week 8 Reflection

I was part of the group which presented on ClassCraft this week. It was wonderful to have Sara in our group, as she has used ClassCraft quite a bit and has a good understanding of how to set it up and run it. She was a wonderful leader as we were putting our presentation together, helping to guide us toward content and organizational ideas.

Overall, I am still a bit underwhelmed with using ClassCraft as a behavioristic classroom management tool. For the record, I am also not a fan of Class Dojo as well for this exact reason. I see both of these platforms as an advanced star chart system, which I do not feel help develop intrinsically motivated students.

I do see the potential for ClassCraft to be used beyond behavior management, as I mentioned during the presentation. While this would require more work on the part of the teacher, I can see how creating a wonderful story and implementing different game mechanics through ClassCraft could really create a fabulous gamified learning environment.

Creating a gamified classroom with all the right elements to meet the varied needs of all the different students in a room is a challenge that would need to addressed with great care. Even starting small, plenty of thought needs to be given to what player types we have, what drives our students, and what outcomes we are hoping to achieve. If we aren’t creating the experience to bring out the best in our students, then we may just be throwing one more thing at them which isn’t going to help them in the end. Create, but create with care.

This week, I read several blogs and saw common themes among many. I wrote on Larissa’s and Heather’s blogs.

On Larissa’s blog, I wrote:

We have a theme in my classroom. It is, “Fair is not always equal.” It is something we’ve been working on the entire year and I think my kids are really starting to understand it at this point. While I don’t think it would make a great starting point for gamification, I do believe that it has its place, such as the example Matera provided of Mario Cart and Leveling Up. Not all students come to a classroom with the same gifts, but they all need to be challenged, and gamification seems like a great way to help facilitate this!

My students (5th grade) also pick their own groups and they have become quite good at choosing appropriate learning partners. Like you, I’ve heard from them that they should work with a friend because there will be too much talking. It is so amazing when they start to realize both their strengths and their weaknesses.

I love Scrat, and I’m not sure there is a character out there who better exemplifies growth-mindset than he does!

On Heather’s blog, I left the following reply:

Heather,

Time management is always a tricky topic to address. Gamification might be just the way to bring a sense of urgency and fun to the matter. I like how you process as you go, adding or subtracting where you see fit. I honestly believe that your ability to be fluid and flexible makes for great learning experiences or your students!

Kate

EDET 679 – Week 8

Essential Question: Which aspects of story and game mechanics will be useful in your class and how might you use them?

When it comes to building a gamified classroom, knowing and understanding the needs and motivators of your students is critical. Gamification is certainly not a one-size-fits-all form of improving class participation and engagement, so addressing the needs of the individual students through careful selection of game mechanics and aspects of story can make or break the experience. As John McCarthy (2016) points out, “Gamification can create this opportunity—and can allow for differentiation as students choose which of the additional elements they will take on. The key is to gamify learning experiences with the right combination of game mechanics.”

Social studies is the content area in which I would most likely use gamification. As a class, we could be time travelers, accidentally stuck in a time that did not belong to us, stopping at a random points in history, and setting off on quests to discover as much as we could about what was happening at that point in time, hoping to get clues that would lead us back to our present time. A certain number of class points could mean another trip in the time machine to another destination, possibly our own.

In order to gamify my classroom, I know that I will need to appeal to some very different player types. I can see all the different player types, as defined by Bartle (n.d.), in my classroom, so engaging them all would take some doing. For my achievers, I see micro challenges and mini-games as strong possibilities to foster curiosity and further learning. For my killers, player-vs-player would allow these students an opportunity to engage in the learning process while fulfilling the need to destroy or conquer. Guilds seem like a nice fit for my socializers, and a great way for them to interact with the other player types. Achievement might be an option for my explorers, as this would allow them an opportunity to earn rewards for exploring and discovering more in-depth concepts. I like the idea Matera presented (pg 97) of having certain paths that can only be unlocked with certain badges that need to be earned by completing certain tasks. This motivational tool could prove to be helpful for those students who prefer not to focus on the task as much as figuring out what is behind the next turn.

Resources

Bartle, R.A. (n.d.). Hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades: Players who suit MUDs. Retrieved from http://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm

Matera, M. (2015). Explore like a pirate: Engage, enrich, and elevate your learners with gamification and game-inspired course design. Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc. San Diego, CA.

McCarthy, J. (2016, October 20). Gamifying your class to meet the needs of all learners. Edutopia. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/article/gamifying-your-class-john-mccarthy

Week 7 Reflection

Building relationships. Creating bonds. Establishing and keeping trust. These are the things that I think about when I reflect on the language I use in my classroom. To me, students won’t learn unless they feel safe, respected, and loved. That is the environment I aim to provide in order to maximize learning and bring out the best in my students. When I know that students’ basic needs are met, I let them know that I believe in them like no one has believed in them before. I tell them I know they will make mistakes, probably too many for us to count, but that is where learning takes place, so that’s perfectly okay. I remind them that no one is perfect. I share stories of my mishaps growing up (they love these!). We become a team, a tough, tight team. We deal with choices, good and bad, every day. We encourage and build each other up. Much of that is done through my choice of language and the way I teach my students to use their language. We work toward using “Growth-Mindset” vocabulary and phrases.

This week’s presentation on VR was great! I really enjoyed discovering more resources to use with my class. I will admit that I was not motivated at all to earn a badge during the White House tour activity. This surprised me a bit, as I fall into the Achiever category, but I am also hugely intrinsically motivated, so I might be a student in a classroom who would not be engaged in this type of reward system even though my player type indicates that I should.

This week, I commented on Theresa’s and Heather’s blogs. On Theresa’s blog, I wrote:

Theresa,

I loved your post. I think the best part was the part about confidence: “As students get older, encouraging them to take risks. Their confidence will grow as they take chances. Let them know that they will sometimes not succeed the first time but to keep trying.” This is something that I feel most people get wrong. There is a major misconception that students gain confidence when they achieve, so the bar is often lowered so low that our students never fail and their confidence suffers as a result. Risk-taking comes in many forms, from reciting a poem in front of the class to trying out for a team to inviting the new student to sit with you at lunch. While each of these actions might result in failure initially, that just means there is room for growth! It might also mean that a student discovers something new about themselves and tries something they wouldn’t have tried before.

Kate

On Heather’s blog, I left the following comment:

Heather,

I am fully on board with the fact that we CAN make an impact on our students’ lives with the language that we use. I’ve heard firsthand from more than one student how the demeaning words of a teacher have turned them off of education completely, some even at very young ages (speaking to high schoolers reflecting on 1st and 2nd grade experiences). Conversely, I know so many students who find that one teacher, the who believes, who creates a lasting positive relationship, who shows the student what they are truly capable of, and the student is able to reach back and grab hold of that feeling and draw strength from it, even when the teacher is no longer in the classroom.

I can related to Gerald’s comment above. I use a similar strategy with my fifth graders during math. Giving them a certain number of problems to choose from, but letting them have the power to pick the ones they want to tackle gives them ownership of the assignment, furthering their engagement in the lesson.

Dream Big!

Kate

In reply to my blog post, Gerald commented:

“I want to believe that a software program that has students do math in this new mindset of “do it til you get it right”, is a proper technique to help kids. It’s okay to fail cause you will eventually “get it” and succeed after multiple tries. We just need kids to feel that it’s okay too. Just like a game!”

I couldn’t agree more! The big question is, how do we keep them engaged and motivated to continue striving to achieve the correct answer, and as Gerald stated, perhaps the answer does lie in teaching them through interactive software.

EDET 679 – Week 7

Essential Question: How do you or might you use language to change the way that your students think about learning in the classroom?

This is the value of the teacher, who looks at a face and says there’s something behind that and I want to reach that person, I want to influence that person, I want to encourage that person, I want to enrich, I want to call out that person who is behind that face, behind that color, behind that language, behind that tradition, behind that culture. I believe you can do it. I know what was done for me.

—Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou’s words embody why I am a teacher. I am always striving to find out what else is hidden, what talents are waiting to be unlocked, what great insights lie beneath. I believe in the hidden talents and greatness of my students. As Michael Matera writes in Explore Like a Pirate (2015), “The purpose of school is not simply to get good grades. The purpose needs to be learning and helping the children become life-long learners.” The language that we, as educators, use in our classrooms is critically important in helping students develop a sense of self, as well as building their desire to discover new things, regardless of the outcome.

Having a makerspace in my classroom has helped me put physical meaning behind the “Keys of Purpose-Driven Learning (Adam Moreno, 2014).” These are confidence, creativity, enthusiasm, effort, focus, resilience, initiative, curiosity, dependability, and empathy. In less than two months, my students have gone from wanting step-by-step directions on all projects to begging for makerspace time so that they can try out a sketch they put together at the dinner table the night before. They work together to solve problems. They don’t worry if something doesn’t work the first time. In fact, they worry more if it does. They are more than eager to share stories of failure with one another in a positive manner.

As their teacher, I strive to NOT give my students the answers, but rather lead them to deeper thinking through questioning. I work hard to show them how failures are actually successes because they teach us something. I notice teamwork and make sure it is commented on. For those students who seem apathetic to all things covered during the academic day, I try to find some type of connection that I can use to create a bond. In the Edutopia article Embracing Failure: Building a Growth Mindset Through the Arts, the author writes, “You can connect risk taking — and helping your students build comfort around it — to their interests outside of school.”

Resources:

Embracing failure: Building growth mindset through arts. (2016, October 4). Edutopia. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/practice/embracing-failure-building-growth-mindset-through-arts

Matera, M. (2015). Explore like a pirate: Engage, enrich, and elevate your learners with gamification and game-inspired course design. Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc. San Diego, CA.

Moreno, A. (2014, September 7). Keys of purpose driven learning. Adam Moreno. Retrieved from http://www.mrmoreno.com/blog/keys-of-pdl

 

Week 6 Reflection

Gamer types and OERs

This week’s research confirmed that, as a gamer, I am far less altruistic than I believed myself to be. I was firmly labeled Achiever, not only by one of the quizzes I took, but also by each and every family member and friend I surveyed. Someone even used the term ruthless when describing my game-playing strategies. Huh.

I enjoyed reading through the posts of others and the responses to my blog post. It was very interesting to see the differences in our gaming personalities and how that reflects in our daily lives. I loved that Genevieve pointed out that she was labeled an Explorer and she loves to go out in the wilderness and explore with her husband.

I replied to Sarah and Anthony’s blogs this week. I really enjoyed what Sarah had to say about grouping students according to player type. I left the following reply on her post:

Sarah,

I hadn’t thought of grouping students by their gamer type for activities. In the research I found, the breakdown in player types was as follows: achievers (10%), explorers (10%), socializers (80%), killers (>1%). In a classroom of 40 kids broken into groups of 4 students, this looks like one group of goal-driven, rewards- and badge-loving achievers, one group of knowledge-seeking explorers who don’t really care about any type of reward system, and eight groups of chatty socializers eager to spend their time finding out what the latest and greatest information (likely not related to the task at hand) is, with the potential addition of one lone killer thrown in the mix somewhere, looking to wreak havoc on whatever anyone else is doing.

Whether dividing and conquering is the best way to make groups or grouping by gamer type, I totally agree with you when you say that the gamification experience could be completely different for two classes of students, even if they are learning the same content, based on the needs of the class.

Anthony wrote about how he uses Class Craft in his room and has an equal division of player types. I am very curious to see how Class Craft is used beyond the behavioristic role that is seen at my school. On Anthony’s blog post, I wrote:

I am very interested to hear how you are using Class Craft beyond the scope of behavior modification. I have tried to be a fly on the wall at my school and listen to teachers talk about how they are using these types of gamification activities in their own rooms without adding my two cents. So far, I haven’t heard anything beyond behavior, which seems to be the most basic use this type of gamification. I’m not a “Star Chart” type of teacher, so in order for me to implement something additional in my room, I would need it to broaden and deepen learning for my students. Please tell me what you are doing!

This week’s class was pretty eye-opening for me. I was aware of OERs, but seeing the extent of them in different contexts was pretty amazing. I have used resources such as TeachersPayTeachers, but because that site has a built in rewards system for leaving positive feedback, it is difficult to tell if a resource is worthwhile or not. Having free, high-quality resources available to use as reteaching, enrichment, and general educational tools is amazing. Now I just need to figure out how to get 1:1 tech for my students and we’ll be set!

EDET 679 – Week 6

Essential Question: What is the implication of player type on game design? 

(image source: http://edtechteacher.org/use-the-four-gamer-types-to-help-your-students-collaborate-from-douglas-kiang-on-edudemic/)

The focus of Week 6 is to see what the implications of player types are on game design. In the spirit of discovery, I took two player type quizzes to see if my results would be the same. On the first quiz (https://www.helloquizzy.com/tests/the-four-player-types-test), my result was Ace, which equates to the Achiever of Bartle’s taxonomy. On the second quiz (http://givercraft.wikispaces.com/What+Type+of+Gamer+Are+You%3F), I ended up with Explorer.

Given the results of these two quizzes, I surveyed my friends and family to see which definition they felt best fit my gaming style. There was plenty of laughter (at my expense) as I was told there must have been some type of error with the second quiz. A friend of over twenty years, Justine*, said, “I’ve never played a game against you where I couldn’t feel your intense desire to dominate the game; to be the best. It’s like it has its own presence in the room.” Maybe I should work on toning it down a bit!

*Some names have been changed to protect the innocent.

(image source: Janaki Kumar and Mario Herger. Copyright: CC-Att-ND (Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported))

What are the four player types defined by Bartle and how, or do they, relate to gamifying our classrooms?  Kyatric (2013) provides the following breakdown of player types:

• Killers like to provoke and cause drama and/or impose them over other players in the scope provided by the virtual world. Trolls, hackers, cheaters, and attention farmers belong in this category, along with the most ferocious and skillful PvP (player versus player) opponents.
• Achievers are competitive and enjoy beating difficult challenges whether they are set by the game or by themselves. The more challenging the goal, the most rewarded they tend to feel.
• Explorers like to explore the world – not just its geography but also the finer details of the game mechanics. These players may end up knowing how the game works and behave better than the game creators themselves. They know all the mechanics, short-cuts, tricks, and glitches that there are to know in the game and thrive on discovering more.
• Socializers are often more interested in having relations with the other players than playing the game itself. They help to spread knowledge and a human feel, and are often involved in the community aspect of the game (by means of managing guilds or role-playing, for instance).

In a talk with students at the London Business School, Richard Bartle (2012) discusses how the player types apply to games but are frequently misused in gamification. He uses examples of the extrinsic rewards systems of badges in gamification being applied equally across the board to all types of players, when the only player type that would be truly motivated by this type of reward would be the achievers. The other player types are looking for motivation, but they find their motivation through other avenues specific to their interests (e.g. killing zombies, chatting with their peers, or finding an unmapped cave). Therefore, unless the rewards systems are modified to be intrinsic and meet the needs of the individual player groups, gamification will lose its appeal for a large percentage of the students in a classroom.

Resources:

Gamification and its shortcomings with Dr Richard Bartle (video file). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEBAh6CnLVg

http://givercraft.wikispaces.com/What+Type+of+Gamer+Are+You%3F

https://www.helloquizzy.com/tests/the-four-player-types-test

Kiang, D. (2016). Use the four gamer types to help your students collaborate. EdTechTeacher. Retrieved from http://edtechteacher.org/use-the-four-gamer-types-to-help-your-students-collaborate-from-douglas-kiang-on-edudemic/

Kyatric. (2013, February 18). Bartle’s taxonomy of player types (and why it doesn’t apply to everything). Retrieved from https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/bartles-taxonomy-of-player-types-and-why-it-doesnt-apply-to-everything–gamedev-4173

 

Week 5 Reflection

I did an unofficial poll with my 5th graders this week. I asked them the following question: How many of you like to play games, including board games or video games? Of the 19 students polled in my room, 13 of them said they liked to play games. This is a good number. Slightly higher than the 50% I’ve seen for the national average. Yet, if I were to introduce gamification into my classroom, I would still have six students who, according to the information I read about this week, would be far less likely that my other students to be engaged in the process. That’s 32% of my class. While we might be teaching a generation of digital natives, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this automatically makes them all gamers.

After reading several other blog posts, I don’t think I was convinced that there is enough evidence to support the fact the gamification the end-all, be-all answer to this generations’ learning needs. I do think that it could be one of many tools to be used for some students to motivated them, although there are those who feel that students will then only complete tasks in order to get the reward rather than the task-completion itself, but that is a topic for another post entirely.

This week I left comments on Ali’s and Mariah’s blogs.

On Ali’s blog, I wrote:

I find it very interesting, from what I’ve read in our course blogs and around the web, how gamification is most appealing as a motivational tool for those who like games already. In several articles I read (not studies, so I didn’t include them in my blog post), when gamification was tried at the college level, students who already identified themselves as gamers found the platform to be exciting, while those who did not reported that they did not gain much from gamification of the classroom. Like everything we do in our classrooms, it is my opinion that there will be students who are engaged because that is where their natural interests lie, and there will always be those students who fail to engage due to different interests.

Thanks for the research you were able to find on the matter!

On Mariah’s blog, I wrote:

Thanks for your post, Mariah.

After reading your post, I also read the comments. I tend to agree with Gerald when it comes to the number of studies that have been done to support gamification in the classroom. As a scientist, I want to see results replicated, with hard data, before I drop everything and try another “fad.” When I do something in my room, especially something I put a lot of time into as Matera did with his gamification process, my view of the outcomes might be slightly skewed compared to an unbiased view of an outsider.

There was a recent article which looked at FitBits and their impact on weight loss. Unless the FitBits were tied to monetary rewards, just wearing the device actually resulted in the least amount of weight loss among three different groups in the study. Here’s a link if you want to read the article. It is actually quite intriguing.

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/09/20/494631423/weight-loss-on-your-wrist-fitness-trackers-may-not-help

EDET 679 -Week 5

Essential Question: What research can support or refute Matera’s claims?

In Chapter 3 of his book, Explore Like a Pirate, Michael Matera explains how he sees the changing world of education, a world which is moving from using “traditional, fossilized ways of teaching” to one that is finding “new and innovative ways to connect and inspire students (p. 26).” Matera claims that, “the educational structures built on the needs and desires of our great grandparents’ generation are fundamentally different from those of students today…yet, many schools are still practicing two-hundred-year-old traditions.”

According to Matera (p. 26), modern education should create a sense of freedom and flexibility, produce risk takers, provide a sense of exploration and discovery, create confidence, allow for the development of independent artistic thinkers, and create a sense of wanderlust, spirit, and passion. Matera is able to do this through the gamification of his classroom.

Because of its effectiveness, businesses use gamification to motivate employees or bring in new business. According to Brigg Patten of 360Training.com, “The best gamification programs take advantage of skills and parameters often ingrained during childhood, such as motivation through reward, engaging choices, and spirited competition.” John Boitnott, a contributor for Entrepreneur, writes, “In some industries, gamification has begun replacing long-standing marketing and educational techniques that have lost effectiveness in areas like organizational performance, social change, brand relationships and talent development. This is turning gamification itself into a massive industry expected to grow to $2.8 billion by 2016, according to experts.”

I agree with the end goals that Matera is aiming for in a modern educational world. While I do not use gamification in my classroom, I do many S.T.E.M. and S.T.E.A.M. challenges and have a Makerspace. The challenges and the Makerspace allow my students to step outside the boundaries of traditional education and they are beginning to develop many of the characteristics Matera has described above.

Resources:

Boitnott, J. (2015, September 1). How gamification is engaging customers and employees alike. Entrepreneur. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/250093

Matera, M. (2015). Explore like a pirate: Engage, enrich, and elevate your learners with gamification and game-inspired course design. Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc. San Diego, CA.

Patten, B. (2016, April 5). Does gamification actually improve engagement? 360Training.com. Retrieved from http://www.360training.com/authoring-program/author-blog/does-gamification-improve-engagement

Week 4 Reflection

Virtual Reality can be a valuable tool in the modern classroom, but there a several obstacles which would need to be overcome. I was talking to my 5th grade class about some of the things I was learning in this class and I shared with them what I learned about the VR experiences in Kate Hodges’ classroom. While they thought the idea of Google Cardboards was cool, what seemed to amaze them the most was that the kids were able to use their phones during the school day. This led us into a deeper conversation about different policies in different schools, even within the same district, and we further explored how bringing our own tech into the classroom could help or hinder the educational experience. Let me just say, 5th graders are an insightful and brutally honest group of people.

The closest I’ve been to a VR experience with a large group of students is assisting in Starlab, a portable planetarium, for two weeks last year. When I read Matt’s blog, it made me think about how few of my kids have technology that could support VR apps. I added to his posting by sharing my experience with the planetarium and the number of students who suffered from motion sickness in that environment.

On Matt’s blog, I wrote the following:

You have made some great points in your post. I am teaching 5th grade this year, so many of my students won’t have phones capable of handling these apps. In my classroom, we would need to explore VR on an individual basis, not as a whole group, which might bring up the issue of kids feeling weird about being looked at while taking their turn. In addition, there is the amount of time it would take for everyone to share the same experience to consider. I could be built in as a rotation, but that seems to negate the benefit of VR helping to build Flow.

I have two additional concerns. The first is motion sickness. After spending two weeks in a portable planetarium last week, I saw many kids needing to leave because of this issue. My second concern is content. Yes, we can direct students to the VR content we want them to be viewing, but after doing some searching of my own, there is plenty out there that is not appropriate. Add a pair of glasses which provide complete privacy and the sky’s the limit for students whose curiosity reaches beyond the outlined curriculum.

Sara’s blog post reminded me that elementary-aged students might have a harder time separating the VR experience from actual reality. Due to the development of their brains, this would mean more supports would need to be in place to help them monitor their responses. In addition, the choice of VR experiences would need to be carefully selected for the viewing audience.

On Sara’s blog, I left the following comment:

Thanks for sharing the research on how elementary-aged children can have a difficult time separating VR experiences from actual reality. I can see this being a big issue for some students, and needing to do a lot of preteaching as well as providing support along the way to help ensure that students do not become overwhelmed by the experience.

With the remoteness of Alaska, the cost of travel, the extremes of weather, and all the other constraints, I do feel that there are some amazing opportunities for our students to explore, experience, and enjoy places and things through VR that would otherwise be inaccessible to them.

Genevieve wrote about being inspired by Kate Hodges. I, too, loved the work she was doing. Being certified in both secondary and elementary education, I can see the processes she uses working much better at the middle or secondary level where one experience can be created and then used with multiple classes. I actually made an involuntary groan when Kate was asked how long it took to put together an experience, and she replied that she spent 2 hours prepping for a 50 minute learning experience. Bring it on if this experience can then be used five more times during the day. Mathematically that makes sense. If, on the other hand, that two hours of prep will be used only once for 50 minutes, and then I am looking at two more hours for the next 50 minute lesson, I will be experience burnout before the first week is over.

On Genevieve’s blog, I wrote the following:

I was also inspired by the work that Kate Hodges is doing in her classroom. I guess the part that concerns me just a bit is the amount of time she puts into creating the experiences for her students. Obviously, she is quite literate when it comes to the use of technology and the one lesson she highlighted (a 50 minute lesson) took 2 hours to create. This might work in a middle or high school setting where you are teaching the same lesson multiple times a day, but in a self-contained classroom, I can’t spend more than twice the time prepping for each hour that I am going to be teaching. There just aren’t enough hours in the day. I am also no where near as literate with technology as she is, so turn that two hours in to four hours easily. All that said, it seems like the use of VR could be an amazing addition to the curriculum of our Alaskan students, who are often lacking the experiences of their lower 48 peers.

I am going to order a few pairs of Google Cardboards. I think that experience, even one or two students at a time, would be worth it.