Positivity!

Awesome thing today. One of my students who is in grade 7 and always had trouble remembering to speak in French and not litter his French with English words, caught himself speaking English and switched immediately to French, re-saying what he had started saying in English. What was great about this was that I didn't remind him to switch back, his classmates didn't remind him, and he didn't switch because I was standing too near - he didn't glance in my direction to see if I could hear him or not, the way he often does. I was very proud of him! I know students are often made nervous when they are praised in front of the class, but that many of them they crave it all the same. This is where the awesomeness of gamification comes in! See, I'm the gamemaster, so I can do what I want. I can change the rules whenever I feel like it, as long as it suits the game and doesn't come off as unfair or break a player's connection to the game. So I awarded his team one Francais point. This got his teammates excited for him, and pleased for him, instead of resenting him as a goody goody. High fives were exchanged all around, and a new precedent was set - if you correct yourself when you catch yourself speaking English, you might just gain a point for your team!

My sources of Gamification

Sorry for the delay! I've been working on this draft for awhile now. I keep having things pop up in the middle, and there were a lot of links to add in. Hopefully it will all be worth it! As promised, these are the sources I have used to develop my concept of gamification.

Extra Credits: These guys were my main inspiration. Hosted on the Penny Arade website (one of the go-to places for video gaming information, especially on new games and little known games, and the founders of PAX, one of the biggest gaming conventions in North America, as well as the founders of the Child's Play charity), they explore many issues surrounding video games. They examine the good and the bad of games, but are entirely inspired by the potential of games and the gaming community, and the way this potential is being explored. They have two videos on gamification: Gamification, and Gamifying Education. They have a lot of amazing ideas and explain them really well, and very simply. Their video on Tangential Learning is also more than worth a peek.

Gamification.co: This blog is absolutely amazing! It focuses on gamification as a concept, but there are a LOT of excellent posts about gamification in education specifically. This is what fed my understanding of gamification and really helped me plan the different ideas I am currently using. In particular, check out his series on The Gamified Classroom (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.) and Gamification vs. Game Based Learning in Education. I haven't been keeping up, (shame on me!) but I'm really looking forward to checking out his TEDx talks.

Quest to Learn: This is a school that has been build on the underlying principles of gamification. Their website is being redesigned, so it is somewhat difficult to navigate right now, but the Overview and the Curriculum & Assessment pages helped me a lot. In particular, the way they organised the curriculum sparked a lot of ideas for me in setting up my schedule and pursuing my goals of having stronger integration in my classroom. From Quest to Learn, I have learned not to be afraid of letting my students tinker with the design of the classroom game - it is their tool, so they will be able to use it better if they have a part in building it. It also is a great learning opportunity for them.

Khan Academy: Khan Academy hosts videos and skills based interactions usable by anyone (in English.) They use the principles of gamification to create a progression model that really inspires students. Their badges are really something to brag about (as they describe them on the site) as they are not given out easily - they really have to be earned. Looking through the experiences on Khan Academy, I have really been inspired regarding the details of my classroom game and gathered a lot of ideas on how to motivate and encourage my students to continue pushing forward.

3 Reasons NOT to Gamify Education: This inclusion may come as a surprise, but it is an incredibly good, insightful blog post on the pitfalls of gamification. It reminds me that gamification is not a catch-all solution. It comes laced with serious pitfalls, like the reliance on external motivation that I have talked about before. This blog post helps me keep perspective and stops me from getting too swept up in the hype surrounding gamification. It helps me stay focused on what the benefits are and lets me see through the wrappings they come in.

Gamification of Education infographic: I love infographics. I am a visual person, and seeing information organised in a visual pattern helps me decode it more easily. This particular infographic presents some of the key elements of games I am trying to bring to my classroom through Silvercraft, and the reasons why they are important.

New year; new start!

Today was the first day of school with the whole class. I had a fun time dropping hints about the game for the grade 6 students... talked about it in small chunks with the 7s and 8s; had them explain it a little; told them about who would have received points if we had started. Stuff like that! By the time I got into the details near the end of the day, they were very interested. The 7s and 8s seem really on board to play it again. This is the first time I've ever announced that we are repeating an activity and had no complaints! I know there will be a student or two that don't especially care about the game, but none are disappointed that it's back. That alone is pretty cool.
  
I'm trying something new this year. In previous years, I've divided the class into groups based solely on where they are sitting at the start of the year. I've used those groups on rare occasions when we have played games in class. This year, I had them form their own groups, called them guilds, and gave them a table "base" to start off the year with. I did this at the end of the day, after ice breaker activities and after the new grade 6 students were less intimidated. The groups are mostly balances between the three grades, bit having only 5 grade 8s made it hard. I had to choose between having the groups fully balanced or splitting up friends. I chose to allow the friends to stay together because I know my grade 8 girls have difficulty in making new friends, but I don't think that would be my usual approach. With the guilds, they will be able to exchange for prizes as a guild and earn points for speaking French as a guild. This will make it a lot easier to get the good group prizes, as there were always one or two students who would spoil the chances for the entire class. The students who are most often caught speaking English have group themselves together in their guild, so I think it will be a stronger motivator for them to see the other guilds succeeding as a team and want to encourage each other to do the same. They are competitive and gamers, so hopefully this will encourage them more.

EXTRA: Current research

There is a really wide, unfocused pool of research on gamification. No one seems to use the term the same way twice. I define gamification as the incorporation of game elements (typically video game or table top role playing game) elements into every day life. For me, this does NOT mean playing games often or using games in my practice. To me, games are a good tool for teaching in general and aren't tied in to gamification. In other words, if you use games to teach, that's fantastic, but it's not gamification. True gamification, or game immersion, happens when the participants/players start to see everything they do as having a value that is tangible and is helping them to improve. In gamification, this tangible value is entirely artificial, but representative of real value. For example, if a student receives 50 xp (experience points) on their paragraph, they see themselves as having gained experience points that will help them get to the next level of the game. In reality, they learned and practiced writing skills that will help them craft their thoughts and ideas and improve their communication skills. The real value is never hidden, but the xp gives them something tangible that they can appreciate now, rather than in some uncertain future.

But I digress. My point in making this post was to talk about how difficult it is to find good research to support the concept of gamification on the classroom. I know I've linked Extra Credits before; they were my inspiration and biggest ideas source. But there are a few others who have influence my view of gamification.

Since I'm posting this from my phone, I'm going to go ahead and publish this post now, and I'll cone back and link my other gamification sources later on a real computer. Ta!

The next plan.

So, with the new year starting up soon, I've been reviewing my plans for Silvercraft. I will continue to use Edmodo to keep track of points, but I want to see if there is a better way to incorporate all the elements of Edmodo. For instance, awarding points as the "mark" for each assignment, then only when all the assignments are marked will I add the points to the running total. I think that would help me stay organised. I really need to check out ClassDojo and see if their scheme is the same.

[Oh! I forgot to mention... I bought an iPad! I don't know yet if there is anything in particular that will affect Silvercraft, but I hope so.]

One idea I had at the end of the year last year is to make check-in slips for students. They can have two official check-ins before the due date (have a check-in cut off date?) when they can get feedback and points.  They can also redo meetings on their own time as long as it's not before the cut-off date/next due date. I like this idea, but I don't know if it is making things too complicated or not. I'll need to think on it a bit more.

Roll out! What happens when we start?



My trial account with Edmodo points

So, the game is now officially named Silvercraft! The French name is Artgent. I will probably keep the name even when Minecraft's popularity wears down. I like how it is a pun on my name and art/craft. Creativity and creation is important in my class and I love how the name reflects that.

I decided to keep track of points on Edmodo for the trial run of the game. I chose Edmodo partly because my class and I are already familiar with it, but also because it is fairly simple to do. I wish ClassDojo was more flexible with the amount of points it gives for each action the student takes because that would be perfect - just a simple click on the computer or smartphone and it will add it to the student's running total. Their website says they are planning to implement this feature, but until then, I will use Edmodo. The way I have it set up on Edmodo is with a new group specifically for the game and an assignment due on the last day of the school year. Each student needs to "submit the assignment" with just their name, or anything at all in the assignment section. I can then change their grade from my computer or Android app. This works really well to adjust individual student points on-the-go, but it's a slight hassle when I want to award points to multiple students.

So after a few days of running the game, there are a few things I've noticed. The first is that the students each react completely differently to the game. (Not surprisingly.) Some got really into it and started changing their prize tokens in right away; some have been hoarding their tokens for the right moment; some seem pretty disinterested, while others are constantly checking their points. I am really happy I put in the bonus rule about getting points for doing nice things for others. It has encouraged the students to do small polite things for others (like holding the door open) and rewarded those who are always doing little kindnesses - bit more than that, it encourages them to notice when someone does something nice for them, and gives them something more they can do to thank the person by reporting the kindness.

I have also been thinking about my feedback methods in view of the game. I tend to give feedback very informally over the course of a project, with my students only getting formally marked at the end. I spoke in an earlier post about the rubric system I currently have in place and also about how I want the gamification of my classroom to give smaller amounts of feedback more often. These two seem to be somewhat inconsistent... unless I give out rubrics over the course of a project. I am thinking I could schedule "check ins" periodically and give points and rubrics then. This fits with the model I already have - when students are working on long-term project, we set up mini-due dates and have one-on-one or group-on-one meetings to happen on those due dates.

Finally, I think I need to promote the game more - mention it aloud when someone receives points; make it known when someone redeems a token for a reward; toss out more reward eggs... that kind of thing. I think I need to keep it at the front of everyone's mind until it gets settled there.

EDIT: June 11
I have started giving intermediate rubric points during our check-in meetings for our inquiry projects. I'm not comfortable about the scores in view of how I feel about grades (in that they are not helpful, give a false view of the work, and distract from what the student needs to do by giving it a sense of finality instead of continuity... but that is a huge topic all on its own) but I am willing to see this through and see how it goes. My concern about grades is that by using a rubric score as a multiplier, the meaning behind that score is completely lost. I need a way to make it more clear; to tie it into the game without losing the meaning behind the mark. Maybe change the way I break it down on the score card? I'll have to do some more tweaking on the next project... next year.

EXTRA: Current thoughts

I'm getting everything set up for the launch of the game on Friday this week. Not sure how it's going to work yet. I still want a smartphone app type of thing to keep track of the students' points, but I haven't found anything yet. Grr. I'm anxious to see how the students react to the game itself, and I'm not sure if I've done everything I want to have done. I want their points cards to be laminated, and the reward tokens too, and I want a way to mark the tokens so I will know that I gave it to them and it wasn't taken from my bin - but not permanently, because I will want to re-use them. I think I might be asking for too much, but that is why this is a trial run, right?

I hope it works out... I'm off to write some report cards!

Problems yet to be solved

This should be a very short post... since I have no solutions yet, pretty much all I can do here is brainstorm. My two biggest concerns now are how to keep track of the points, and how to address penalties (late work, incomplete work, missing work.)
My class has been using Edmodo this year with excellent results. Having all calendar dates, due dates, homework submission bin, and communications all linked together online has helped me organise myself and helped a lot of my students organise themselves too. I am thinking to use badges as one alternative for keeping track of points. I am also considering index cards as the simplest way to keep track, but I have a feeling they will go missing. ClassDojo looked very interesting, but it ended up being restrictive for what I wanted to do, which involved giving a variable amount of points for an action. (That said, I would still like to incorporate ClassDojo in some way.) So far, it looks like it will be Edmodo, although I think it would be a LOT easier if I could award badges from the app.
As for penalties, I'm not sure if I want them to be an explicit part of the game. One of the things that attracted me to the idea of gamification was that it is merit-based, not deficit-based - you start at zero and GAIN points through your positive actions, instead of starting at 100% and then losing points for your failures. I am really attracted to the idea of rewarding merit instead of punishing deficit. Current psychology and educational theory seem to be pointing in that direction as well. So, I think I will continue to leave consequences aside from the game, at least for now. What I am considering maybe implementing later is a percentage-based penalty - you lose 5% of your final score for each day it is late. We shall see.

Next time: Roll out! What happens when we start?

How I wrote my game

I am fortunate enough to work in a school that, up until the province mandated report cards, did not have grades. We used an anecdotal reporting system, co-written by the student and the teacher. Although we have to report percentage grades for grade 7 and 8 students, we still maintain the mentality of using co-constructed criteria to create rubrics specific to the class and students, and anecdotal comments for all types of assessment. So when writing my classroom game, I am able to completely ignore the question of how to connect the game to a final grade. While a lot of other sites suggested making the grades and levels correspond directly, I didn't see the need to do that. This is really good for me, because I am not the kind of person that has a series of assignments and assessments set up for the entire term in advance.
So after doing all my research, my biggest stumbling block was how to make the levelling system and how many points should each "encounter" (assignment) be worth? Fortunately, I am a Dungeons and Dragons player. I shamelessly pilfered my levelling system from there. It goes up to level 30 and has a set progression so that each subsequent level requires more experience points to gain. 30 levels may seem like a lot, but I am a 3-year multi-age teacher, so I am still toying with the idea of having the students retain their experience as they move through the years. I'm also no sure how quickly the students will find themselves moving through the levels at this point, so I thought I would keep my options open.

My next question to answer was how was I going to award points in such a way that the highest quality assignments would get the most points, and the most important sections of each project would grant the most points? The co-constructed rubrics we use gave me the answer. I decided to assign a point value to each objective we chose for the project, and use the rubric score as a multiplier. We would continue to co-construct the criteria to meet each objective, and a point score would be given for each objective as well as the final score. Students could also be given a re-do time frame, during which time they could go back and change anything, hoping to max out their score.

Finally, I had to deal with the issue of levelling bonuses. I was very frustrated with this section for the longest time. In video games, when you level up, your stats improve (you get stronger, faster, more resistant) and you gain abilities (now you can fly, cast more magic spells, gain access to higher levels of magic). In the real world, they do gain knowledge and abilities, which is very valuable intrinsically, but doesn't work especially well with my idea to have some extrinsic rewards associated with the game - it is a big part of gaming. Eventually, I went to the internet to consult with my fellow educators. After a quick search for "classroom rewards," I came up with a list that I felt my students would respond well to, as well as adding a few of my own. I organised them into A, B, and C-level rewards, and tied them into the levelling system. On the advice of those good folks at Extra Credits again, I also added some bonuses for individuals for behaviours I would like to see more of (+50 bonus XP for helping a classmate) and group bonuses to encourage the students to cheer each other on (+250 bonus XP to everyone when three students reach level 3). This was all right around Easter, so I also bought some plastic hollow eggs so I could put some of the rewards in there and toss them out randomly to students who are participating in class or groups discussions, or who are dedicated to the work at hand.

At this point, I was feeling pretty good about my plan, and presented it to the class. I posted the rewards and bonuses, as well as the levelling system, and asked for their input, suggestions, and a name for the game. The name of this blog comes from one of their suggestions. Although we haven't yet named the game, Realm of the Mad Silver is my favourite so far of all the suggestions.

So, with the Beta test ready to roll out June first, there are a few problems I am still facing, but I will save those for the next entry.

Next time: Problems yet to be solved.
(How to keep track of the points;
Penalties: late work, incomplete work, missing work.)

Starting out

So, I first heard about gamification through the fine folks at Extra Credits who also dedicated an entire episode to the concept of gamifying education. As a gamer, with many other gamers in my classroom, I was immediately fascinated with this idea. I looked into the research behind it, and there was a lot there that I liked.

I have always wondered about the students I have who are so willing to keep trying a repetitive task over and over and over again, until they succeeded - as long as it was in a video game. But try to get them to do the same thing for a science experiment, or a writing piece, or ANYTHING in school, and it's like pulling teeth. The concept of gaming being a "low-risk, immediate reward" scenario, while the tasks we are asking them to do at school are "high-risk, distant-reward" tasks caught my attention and really held it. Why should the tasks we ask them to do be so high risk? Well, we have them do SO much preparation before they get to the point of trial that they feel they are risking starting all over again if they fail. It's why video games have save points right before the final boss - if you fail, you can just start over again from the point at which you failed. You don't have to do all that prep work over again. However, when we ask our students to go back and review a piece, it has all that preparation work attached to it again. I noticed that when we did a science experiment in which students were asked to keep making modifications to a model aircraft they built until it glided, they were constantly in and out of the room, making modification after modification. They had to document their changes, but just by jotting down what they were. They weren't required to analyse each step; they did the analysis only of the final design - what worked, what didn't, and why. Even the students who never got their glider to meet the criteria for a successful glide were satisfied with their work. Each time they made a change, they could immediately see the results - immediate reward.

So, to sum up:

• If students are required to wait until an entire project is complete before receiving feedback, they won't be sure where to go or really be interested in the results by the time they get them; if students can see immediately what they have done successfully and what they have to improve upon, they can better make the connection between what they did and the results thereof, and they will care about it more. this ties into basic behavioural psychology.
• If students have a lot invested in each trial, they don't want to risk failure; if they fail without losing much other than time, they will be more willing to fail. This also ties into their sense of agency - control over their lives.

My concern with gamification is that it relies quite heavily on extrinsic rewards, rather than intrinsic. However, promoting intrinsic rewards is a big part of how I assess and I don't intend to change my assessment practises; just adapt them to a new system. I am hoping this will give students who connect with extrinsic rewards a way to relate more with their work. It is a concern I will keep in mind, and I hope to address it in a later post.

Another a big part of gamification was a sense of accomplishment and a sense of where to go next. This isn't any different from what we do as teachers every day; just the way we do it can be more transparent and relatable to the gaming student if we couch it in gaming terms. So, grades become levels. Marks become experience points. Rewards become random drops.

Next time: How I wrote my game.
(Hopefully it works easily - fingers crossed!)