Gamerriculum | Using gaming principles in your curriclum

Mastery later

May 26, 2013

I am watching my son play cut the rope. Just yesterday he was blasting through levels not giving a darn about earning stars. He was excited to pass a level and I pointed out to him that he didn’t get any stars. He enthusiastically told me how many levels he had passed though. He set his own goals and was impressed with his progress.

Today I caught him going back to those levels he blasted through and is doing the same level over and over and over again trying to earn those stars.

This helps me to think about the diverse motivations of students in my class. How can I help students make their own goals and encourage them rather than trying to impose my goals onto them. Once they make their goals might they create new goals? Might they go back and work for higher levels of mastery? Maybe.

Posted, by admin in AliceKeeler, gamification. Tags: Mastery

New High Score

I am watching my daughter (9) play some silly bouncing cupcake game on her phone. She was motivated by obtaining not necessarily a high score but a new high score.

In school we tend to have an end result of an “A” or other end in mind. Long term and end goals are good, but how can we work with students to make incremental progress? That they are a success when they have a new high score in their quest for the learning objective. The students have an obtainable goal that is a little beyond their ability. Allowing students to compete against themselves.

Instead of giving students a percentage on an assignment can we assess them a score and then encourage them to work on that objective to earn a new high score.

Posted, by admin in AliceKeeler, gamification. Tags: Games, Gamification

Progress Bar

May 7, 2013

What I really want is for each student to have a or multiple progress bars that report in real time where they are at in their mastery of the standards. However, I want it to be fun and gamified. I would like to have meaningful levels that demonstrate how far a student has come and how far they have to go. With each expression of mastery they are awarded XP points which build their level in the class. Students start at level 1 and build to say level 80.

Click Here for a chrome app that acts as a progress bar.

This app could be useful since I send out a mail merge to each student regularly with their level in the class. If students had access to the chrome browser they could manually increment their own progress bar, certainly not ideal and the app itself lacks pizazz, but it is a work around I could start with.

Posted, by admin in AliceKeeler.

Low risk of failure

May 5, 2013

I am watching my son play a video game. He learns through failure. Why does he not get frustrated? Because the risk of failure is low. He is able to just restart the level. The immediate feedback of him losing life points lets him know he is not going down the right path. The game gives him the option to restart.

I like how he does not have to wait until the level is over to realize he needs to restart, and that he is just able to start over with no penalty.

In school we ask a student to do 30 math problems and when the teacher goes over the answers or grades it and the student sees that they were doing them incorrectly… It is unlikely they are motivated to start over.

I am a fan of taking rote memorization and practice, and there is a place and necessity for that, and making it computerized. Apply gamification techniques: immediate feedback, low risk of failure and mastery.

Posted, by admin in AliceKeeler, gamification. Tags: Failure, Gamification

Levels of Mastery

April 13, 2013

Star Double clipart
from Clker.com

If you are into the idea of mastery learning, might you also consider awarding stars of mastery like in the game Angry Birds? When playing Angry Birds obviously I want to show mastery at the 3 star level instead of 1. 1 star means I can move on, 3 means I am really awesome. To replicate this in schools we set the level of mastery and then encourage students to exceed that through higher level thinking skills. Not through doing more problems, but by demonstrating they understand the material at a deeper level.

I have been wanting to visually represent the mastery learning rather than relying on a numerical score.

I figured out I can use a nested if statement or a vlookup table to visually represent the mastery level. I started by going to clikr.com and finding an image of a star and downloading it. I edited the image to have 2 and 3 stars in the same image. I uploaded all 3 images to photobucket.com.

In a page of the spreadsheet I created a table listing 1, 2, 3 and used the formula =image(“url”,1) for each of the 3 images.
Replace the word url with the image url from photobucket.

In a spreadsheet where I would list the students name and assignments I created a column for mastery level and for stars of mastery. Using a vlookup where I reference the table with the images
=if(F5=”",”",vlookup(F5,Sheet2!$A$2:$B$4,2))

The first part of the formula =if(F5=”",”" says if what is in cell F5 is blank put nothing. This keeps the stars of mastery image from showing up if the student has not mastered. I am contemplating having a default “not mastered” image instead of a blank.

The second part vlookup(F5,Sheet2!$A$2:$B$4,2)) says to look up the number in cell F5 and compare it to the table on Sheet2. Make sure you use absolute cell referencing with $A$2:$B$4 instead of A2:B4. The 2 means the image is in the 2nd column.

Fill down the formula down the sheet.

Click here for the spreadsheet sample

clkr.com

Posted, by admin in AliceKeeler, Grading.

Sticker Badges

February 18, 2013

Photo Credit: Steven-L-Johnson via Compfight cc

One low tech way to get started with badges is to the dollar store or office supply store and buy blank stickers. Students can design their own badge when awarded an achievement. This takes the burden off of you to organize and hand out specific badges.

Suggestion to have each student create something on an 8.5×11 piece of printer paper and hang it on the classroom wall. It could have their name on it or an avatar they drew or colored in, possibly a coat of arms or something else that represents them. Throughout the school year they would add stickers to their poster to signify their achievements. You would hand each student a physical sticker and let them add it themselves, this helps them to see some tangible execution of their achievement.

It is important to celebrate success and badging is one way to do this. By having the physical stickers there is public recognition of the students achievement, especially if they get to put the sticker on their poster during classtime.

Tracking badges can be tricky, try making a wall poster of a few badges the students can earn. Keep it simple, too many is too complicated and hard to track. Use them to celebrate success and also to challenge students to go outside of their comfort zone. ”Anyone who turns in their homework all this week earns the homework ninja badge.” This is in opposition to “Anyone who turns in 5 homework assignments in a row.” The 5 in a row is a great idea, but the tracking and management can be a bit of a pain, so unless you have a way to trigger the awarding of this badge it might be suggested to steer away from that achievement.

Make your achievement have fun names and provide a description of how they can earn that achievement.

Some suggested types of achievements for getting started. The second column descriptions do not fall under keeping it simple, build up to having a system to allow for more open ended badges. Initially make your badge something you will hand out on a specific day and can see which students made that achievement at that time. Looking at games, this is usually not the case for all achievements but if your system is not initially simple and manageable you will not keep up with it.

Badge Name	Suggested Description	Build up to achievements such as this
Glittery Unicorn Badge	Anyone who uses glitter in their project this week	Anyone who uses glitter in their projects ever
Unit 5 Ninja	Scored a 70% or better on the Unit 5 test the first time	Benchmark ninja on any unit
Rocket Scientist	Applies the x learning objective to an original project	Devises a unique application for a learning objective.
Green Spaghetti Hat	Uses a crazy prop during the x presentation	Brings in something fun that correlates with a lesson

Posted, by admin in AliceKeeler.

Gamification – Start Small

Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk via Compfight cc

I have been having a lot of interesting discussions with educators on gamification for the classroom. The million dollar question is where do you start? My advice… start small. Do not try to do everything, you’ll get overwhelmed.

Some gamification concepts

Low risk of failure
Choice
Leveling
Achievements/Badges

Achievements and Badges are probably the best way to get started. Check out http://classbadges.com or try doing it yourself. Whatever you do, try not to make it a lot of paperwork and data entry. Have an achievement for mastering each unit you have. If they pass the test they get the badge. Then find other challenges you can give them that you can award the next day or at the end of the week. ”Anyone who uses glitter on their project due on Friday will earn the glittery unicorn badge.”

Posted, by admin in AliceKeeler, gamification.

Play Games

August 19, 2012

Yesterday I attended EdCampSFBay. It was a great event, if you have never attended an unconference I would highly recommend EdCamp. http://edcamp.wikispaces.com

One of the sessions I attended was one on gamification. There were quite a few people in attendance, I was surprised how many teachers wanted to talk about gamification. I asked the group how many PLAY games such as farmville or World of Warcraft and only 2 people raised their hands.

I would highly recommend any teacher interested in gamifying their classroom to play games to see what elements of the game are motivating and how they might apply elements such as the progress bar to their classroom.

Note: World of Warcraft is FREE up to level 20. Lucas Gillespie and other gaming educators play on the sisters of elune realm. Come join us! My toon on that realm is alimo.

Posted, by admin in AliceKeeler.

QR Code Passport

July 24, 2012

10m

Kathy Schrock ‏@kathyschrock

At @RMortensonDSA QR code preso. Idea: make a student passport for learning. #densi2012 pic.twitter.com/v6ggi1Hr

Photobucket

I saw this idea for a QR code passport on Twitter this morning. (If you are interested in QR codes check out my project website: www.alicekeeler.com/qr).

One thing I struggle with in gamification is how to efficiently do badging. http://www.classbadges.com/ has potential, but it is still coming soon and I have no idea how it will function.

This QR passport gives me a thought that students could have a badges passport with the QR codes in the book that would link to the badge description as well as an image of the badge. Each student could then use the passport to keep track of their badges and which ones they still need to earn.

I like how this picture has each person with their own sticker that they can place on the passport. I am not at the event where this was used so I am not sure the context in how the stickers worked but I am thinking this might be something fun to create. If each student had their own avatar and were able to make sticker sheets to use with their avatar on them… these could be great ways to track student achievement and give students recognition in the classroom.

I’m also thinking I need to make mastery stickers. In angry birds and cut the rope type games each mastery item has one, two or 3 stars. Perhaps I need to make sticker icons in this vein that I can place on student passports.

If each student has their own blog to track their work and achievements, the front of the students passport could contain a QR code to that students blog.

I will keep pondering logistics on this, but this QR passport might be a good way for teachers to start using gamification in their classroom.

Posted, by admin in AliceKeeler, gamification. Tags: badges, qr

YouTube Choose Your Own Adventure

June 12, 2012

YouTube allows you to edit your videos to allow for a “choose your own adventure” style experience. One way to gamify your classroom is to put your lesson activities in the form of a story. It helps the students have context, have more fun and to feel a sense of purpose to their work.

I stumbled across this YouTube video where the teacher wrote out a kingdom adventure story to teach Order of Operations. What a great way to get students interested in learning.

Posted, by admin in Adventure, AliceKeeler, gamification. Tags: adventure, annotations, youtube

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