One More Reason

As I look to next school year, I am trying to prepare to defend gamification. I feel like it is a somewhat unknown and misunderstood topic. As I continue to build up my arsenal of evidence, I continue to learn more. The YouTube clip below provides some great reasons for gamification and an awesome idea for a unit. It suggests that you give students two unrelated topic, they each have to find a series of links that connect the two. An award will be given for the student that connects the topics with the least number of links. I love this idea and many others found in the video below. Enjoy!

More Gamification Resources

Perhaps with some of my posts of gamification you might be considering trying it yourself and/or you still want to learn more. I am still a bit of a novice. I gamified one unit last year and I making plans to gamify an entire semester next year. There are several teachers that have more experience than myself. I'm attaching a few podcasts here that have three middle school teachers discussing gamification in their science and history courses.


Introduction to Gamification: What it is, what are some good resources to get started/learn more, how it works and how you can get started
Podcast Link

Gamification Part II: Continues to discuss examples of how to gamify especially focusing on XP and rewards/items
Podcast Link

And if you don't have quite that much time to invest, here's a powerful, quick explanation of WHY you should use game elements in education.

listen to ‘GBL into Gamification and changing the world’ on Audioboo

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

A huge part of a teacher's job description is to motivate students to learn. This is not a very easy task, but educators take it on year after year. I feel lucky to work with students that are generally very motivated, but some of them care more about their grade than they do about trying and learning new things. This can be another frustration of a teacher. As a school we are planing to move toward Standard-Based grading to help shift the focus from the grade to the learning. In my own classroom I want to implement gamifcation as means to increase both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

I found the above image on Pinterest and its source is acknowledged in the picture. It  appears to offer a criticism of gamification as only inspiring extrinsic motivation through points and leaderboards, represented by all of extra greens on top. But the real motivation (the carrot) is very small. I agree that points and leaderboards will only motivate you for so long. Certainly, I would not invest so much time in this if were only to add some bells and whistles to my classroom. What really excites me about gamification is the way it allows me to feed that intrinsic motivation that is deep and significant. Video game elements within the classroom naturally lend itself to a mastery based system. If you don't meet the clearly stated standard the first time, you receive feedback and are challenged to try again. Each quest is tied to a standard so students know why they are doing the activity and what learning should come out of it.

I think gamification does provide both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Students may start off with enthusiasm for the game elements and language but will eventually come to appreciate the process and challenge of learning.

Just Say "no" to Gamification

In my last post I talked about all the reasons I wanted to gamify my classroom in the upcoming school year. But perhaps I should be skeptical of this "trend" in education. Later this summer, I plan to present to the Education Committee about why I would like to add a course fee for a Learning Management System (LMS) that helps manage gamification in the classroom. I have a feeling they are going to be skeptical about this idea (the course fee and gamification).

Please help!
  -If you have experience with gamification, what were some of the questions/concerns people had when you tried to implement it?
  -Play the devil's advocate, why are you skeptical about gamification?
  -If you don't like the idea, what are some reasons I should just say "no" to gamification?

I very much appreciate your input.

Five Reasons to Gamify your Classroom

First, what is gamification? It brings video game elements (leaderboards, levels, missions, badges) into a non-video game atmosphere (classroom, fundraiser, campaign) in order to increase participation and motivation. If you want to dig deeper into this concept, I would recommend Tom Driscoll's gamification series (scroll to the bottom of this link).

This ideas was very intriguing to me. I jumped in quickly with Tom's resources and then ordered Lee Sheldon's book, The Multiplayer Classroom. Inspired, I designed a gamified unit on Imperialism, complete with an alien invasion. It was successful and taught me some things I would change for next time. My current plan is to work on planning an entire semester of gamified US History. This may be a crazy, but here are five reasons I am planning to do it.

Reasons I want to Gamify:

1. Student Engagement. Games motivate us. Even as adults we get a thrill from advancing through a progress bar. Countless apps for teens and adults use awards and leaderboards to keep us coming back for more. Don’t we want that for our class content?
2. Allows you to fail. In a video game it is very common to not make it through a level on your first try. Its not a big deal, you learn from your mistakes and try again. As much as we want our classrooms to be this way, teachers and students have a difficult time living in this culture at school. 
3. Helps build student confidence. Games are designed to intermix easy and difficult levels at just the right time. Missions (assignments) start out easy, building student confidence so they feel equipped when they advance to a more difficult level.
4. Holds students to a high standard. Unfortunately many students are playing the game of school, just collecting points and going through the motions. They often turn work in that is “good enough.” Gamification requires that they meet a minimum standard before they move on, if they don’t they must re-do it (see #2). When I tried it out this year students would try to rush through, but as their papers were returned with only one star, they learned to slow down and do it right.
1. Allows me to work toward Standards-Based learning/grading. Each mission demonstrates a particular standard, throughout the year the student builds a body of evidence that they meet the standards.
5. Builds community. Students are placed in guilds. While they may complain at first of some members bringing their spot on the guild leaderboard down, eventually they learn to encourage and help each other. Furthermore, individuals don’t want to disappoint their guild so they make sure they are caught up. In my one attempt this year, I noticed student grades were up and I feel that this and other factors contributed to it.

What do you think? Are these good reasons? What would you add to the list?

Undecided or opposed, check out my next post where I try to get you to talk me out of it.

Is all this technology good for us?

One of my main motivations for starting the EdTech program at Boise State is to attempt to get a firm handle on how and why to use technology effectively. I enjoy technology and I like incorporating it into my classroom. But is it helping students learn? Are the "old-fashioned" ways better for them overall and are they losing important life skills by being plugged in all the time? The articles we read this week for EdTech 537 don't exactly give me clarity on the subject. I look forward to hearing the thoughts of my classmates, especially those that are further along in the program that I am.

In Marc Prenskey's article he defines digital natives and digital immigrants. I personally find myself to be somewhere in between these two. He generalizes that most teachers are digital immigrants and that students are digital natives. This is a broad stroke, but I see what he means. He says that digital native students learn differently, they multitask, they like to receive info quickly, they like random access, networking, and instant rewards/feedback. I definitely have seen this with my students, especially the random access. As a teacher, I give directions step by step before they get started. More often then not I end up frustrated when I have to answer the same question several times because that direction was not really relevant to them until they actually got to that point.

Prensky says that games (like a video game) are the answer for meeting the educational needs of digital natives. When I read that I was completely on board. I have recently delved into the idea of gamifying my courses. I tried it with my Imperialism unit this year and it was great, I saw it meeting the needs of my digital native students. After reading Prensky's article I was giving myself a pat on the back. But then I read Jamie McKenzie's critique and I wasn't feeling so confident. McKenzie criticizes Prensky's lack of research to back up his finding as well as the broad strokes he uses to the portray digital immigrants, like claiming they don't think learning should be fun. He also pointed out that we assume to much about digital natives, they really are not as tech savvy as we think. I totally agree with this, I find that many students can use technology to entertain themselves and communicate but they don't know how to use their devices for learning. Oddly enough this criticism of Prensky is what compels me to incorporate technology. Students need to know how to leverage technology for more sophisticated purposes. Relating to that, McKenzie also points to the fact that most researchers agree that too much screen time is not good for us. Students are connecting with their devices more than actual human beings.

The final article referenced research about the generational differences and tried to reach a conclusion about if we need to take them into account in our instruction design. The article seemed to reach the conclusion that it certainly does not hurt to account for generational differences. And many studies referenced gave high praise to gamifying the classroom. Perhaps this is the conclusion I wanted to reach, but I do plan to continue to question the use of technology in my classroom and strive to help students balance their use of technology with the face-to-face interactions needed for a fulfilling life.

Greetings, EdTech 537!

Welcome to my blog! I have been working at this for about a year. I must admit, that I am not very good at updating it. I started it to document and reflect on my ventures into inquiry and  flipped learning in my history courses. I chose to use the Blogger platform because I love all things Google, but in my own classroom I am having the students use KidBlog.

I have just started the Boise State University EdTech program. I have always enjoyed educational technology so I look forward to learning more about it. I'm also pleased that I can take classes from the comfort of my home in Seattle, WA where I live with my husband. I am currently two weeks away from finishing my eighth year of teaching JH and HS Social Studies as well as advising the yearbook staff and student council.

Twitter is my favorite tool for professional development, you can find me @kaelynbullock. My PLN (Professional Learning Network) has inspired me to try flipped learning (#flipclass) and inquiry-based learning (#inquirychat). More recently, I have been looking into Standards-Based Learning (#sblchat) and gamification (#leveluped). These topics will be my summer projects and I hope to use this blog to reflect on my learning and progress.