Teaching with Technology

Using educational technology to enhance the learning environment and increase student engagement!

Classroom Reflections ~ Year 10 ~ 2017-2018

by Leave a Comment

Hello, friends! I’m coming to you today from my couch, four cups of coffee into my Sunday. Our last day of school was Friday and summer school begins on Wednesday. SO … I’m enjoying a few days of much-needed R&R that includes going to bed without setting an alarm, drinking my first cup of coffee in my jammies (probably the second and third cups, as well!), watching the Today Show in my recliner, getting to work out during the day instead of after work, and probably catching a mid-afternoon nap. Before I dive into the various summer classes that I teach I thought this weekend would be a great time to share with you my classroom reflections from the 2017-2018 school year. Reflection is key to growth!

My Flipped Classroom
A few years ago when my building went 1:1 with Chromebooks, I jumped off the deep end (more like cannon-balled) of the educational technology pool and decided to flip my classroom. This was one of the best decisions I made as a teacher. Yes, it required a lot of legwork on my part, and yes, it required a huge shift in my classroom, for both me and my students. But it has been sooooo worth it! This year, I switched up my in-class flip again and decided to loosen my death grip on the reins just a bit more by designing lessons and units so that students could work a bit more at their own pace. I started each unit by assigning a unit HyperDoc that I made with a Google Site. This included all of the information, requirements, projects, etc., for the unit. For the first unit, I set a due date for the entire HyperDoc – this didn’t work well for many of my students who needed frequent, specific due dates to stay on track.

After gathering feedback from my students about the unit, we made adjustments for the next unit. Students asked for specific due dates and Kahoots, Quizizz, or Quizlet Live activities after each video to make sure they were on the right track. This allowed for whole class or individual re-teaching throughout the unit. It was fabulous – these suggestions were carried on throughout the year and modified as needed to meet the learning needs of my students.

Mission: American Government – Gamified Government 
We also continued “Mission: American Government” this year in which students earned XP for completing missions and leveled up to received “weapons of wisdom” they could use on their tests. Last year, I awarded badges for students who earned at least an 80% on their test on the first attempt. This year, I didn’t include the badge element because, to be honest,  I forgot to print them out for the first assessment, and students didn’t seem phased. They did, however, ask how much XP badges would be worth – maybe I’ll incorporate that into the game next year!

Another component of Mission: American Government and the unit HyperDocs is the “Extend” feature that encourages students to go above and beyond in applying what they’ve learned. Each unit offered students a Hashtags through History extend opportunity, plus at least one other activity that was directly related to the content of the unit. By completing this, students could earn XP – XP not only helped them level up but also helped them earn bonus points at the end of each semester.

The only complaint about the XP system came from my dual credit students who had American Government last year – “why don’t you do XP in our classes, too?!”

The 2017-2018 school year marked the end of my first decade of teaching, the publication of my book, Illuminate, and another year that I feel like I’ve grown as an educator. I’m excited to continue growing to become the best educator I can be for my students.

Coming soon – preliminary thoughts on what to add/change for the 2018-2019 school year.

Thanks for reading 🙂

My Gamification Experience – Mission: American Government

by 2 Comments

As my first full year in the wonderful world of gamification comes to a close, it’s time to reflect upon what worked, what didn’t, and where to go next year.gamification

Things that were GREAT!

–>> BADGES — >> Awarding badges to students for earning at least an 80% on the unit assessments was a HUGE hit! I originally gave students badges which represented a specific level they had reached. After a conversation with my PLN on Twitter last summer, I realized that giving students badges, and then making them essentially “pay” for tools to use on the test wasn’t exactly what I wanted to accomplish. I thought back to my days as a Girl Scout – I didn’t turn in my badges in exchange for anything – the badges represented something that I had achieved. THIS is what I wanted in my classroom! I was also interested to learn that students during this digital age were so adamant in receiving physical badges … I responded to that mandate!

–>>TOOLS FOR THE TEST –>> Students LOVED earning bonus points, peppermints, and candy bars for use on test days. Leveling up eventually became extremely important, which was so awesome to see! Then again, who wouldn’t be excited about candy and bonus points? 🙂

Things that could be BETTER!

–>> KEEPING UP WITH XP –>> Holy moly, I need to do better with this. For each unit, students could earn XP for viewing/interacting with instructional videos, completing unit modules, participating in online discussion boards, landing a spot in the top 5 during review games, and more. Next year, I’ll make a habit of updating XP at least weekly – more on this goal later!

–>>XP OPTIONS –>> Students were offered EXTREMELY LIMITED options for earning XP – basically, do what you’re supposed to do and you get XP. While my original goal when implementing this concept of gamification was to encourage students to not only complete assignments/activities, but to go above and beyond those classroom expectations – and reward them when they do. I’ll definitely be “leveling up” my XP options in the future 😉

Next year…

–>>Reworking Levels –>> As I’ve shared in the past, I am a complete gaming novice … unless we’re talking about Super Mario Brothers of the 90s … in that case, I’m awesome. Therefore, I really have NO CLUE about levels (other than warping-wow, I’m dating myself!), specifically which colors or precious gems are “higher.” With the help of my students, I’ll be reworking my levels to be sure that Ruby and Emerald are higher than Silver. Apparently, that’s a big deal?!

–>>Quests –>> This summer, I’ll HOPEFULLY be able to dive more into EXPlore Like a Pirate (and will probably reread Teach Like a Pirate) to learn more about creating meaningful and exciting quests for my students. Maybe it’s just me, but completing a unit module is probably not extremely exciting for my students 🙂

–>>Side Missions–>> I dabbled in Side Missions this year, specifically with my end of the year meme activity – holy moly, this was so much fun! A correlation, at least in my mind, can be easily made between Side Missions and bonus opportunities in a “traditional” classroom. I will DEFINITELY “level up” my Side Missions game next year – so many puns – ha!

Thanks for reading 🙂
Signature

Gamification: How I Make My Badges

by Leave a Comment

badges imageWhen I began my gamification experiment this year, I asked the students in my classes a simple question: would you rather have digital or physical badges?

I was ABSOLUTELY surprised when my students overwhelmingly demanded physical badges. Even after I said that these badges would be simply be printed on card stock, they were adamant!

I originally thought that these students, who are digital natives, learning in a 1:1 classroom environment would be in favor of digital badges. I thought that they might see physical badges as too elementary or kiddish for their learning.

Whoa, was I wrong!

When the time came to create the badges, I was at an absolute loss. I had researched various tools to create digital badges but didn’t have the slightest clue about designing badges. I’m not the artsy type 🙂 Seriously, stick figures are a real struggle for me.

Thank goodness for Google Drawings!

Google Drawings is definitely one of the lesser-known Google tools, but it is rightfully gaining more attention.

Here’s a quick rundown of how I create my badges:

–>Create a new folder in Google Drive – title it “gamification” or something relevant

badges google drive

–>Select “New” and hover over “More” – then, choose “Google Drawings”

badges google drawings

–>RENAME your Google Drawing

Rename badge

–>Insert a circle – choose your background and border color – make the border pixel between 8 and 12 px to emulate a “real” badge

badge shape

–>Insert text and/or images using Google search

badge image

When you’re happy with your badge, you’re ready to print! There are many ways to print from Google Drawings, but I choose to use the “Web Clipboard” feature of Google Drawings.

–>Select “Edit” and hover over “Web Clipboard”

–>Next, select “Copy shape to web clipboard”

badge web clipboard

–>Next, open a Google Doc – RENAME THE GOOGLE DOC!

badge doc

–> Select “Edit” – hover over “Web Clipboard” – select your drawing

badge for print web

–>Now, resize your badge to the desired size, copy your drawing and print!

I LOVE creating badges for my students. In fact, I most likely have WAY too much fun doing so. I love coming up with unique titles and designs … and the puns are just fantastic!

If you’d like to view a quick video tutorial, check out the YouTube video below!


How do you make badges for your students?

Thanks for reading 🙂
Signature

 

Gamification: My Plan for the Badges

by Leave a Comment

As a gamification novice, I will be the first to admit that I walked into Mission: American Government (the name of our “game”), I really wasn’t sure how it would work out.gamification - the badges

After establishing how students would earn XP and what tools they would be able to use at the various levels I’d created, I then turned to my PLN on Twitter to learn about badges in the world of gamification.

Thank goodness for my PLN! Through about 15 minute conversation in the twitter-verse, I began to revise my thinking on what the badges were and how they should be earned. In my first gamification experiment, I awarded badges to my students for reaching a certain XP level, and then they traded in those badges for a specific reward. However, I thought back to my younger days when I was a Girl Scout. We earned badges after completing a task … showing that we had grasped a concept. These badges were then displayed. We didn’t trade in badges for any specific tool. These were proof of our success in a given area.

Let’s call this my first “ah-ha” moment of my gamification journey. If you’d like to learn more about my gamification process, please check out my first semester reflections.

Back to the badges. When I introduced the “game,” I surveyed my students, asking whether or not they would appreciate physical badges or digital badges.

The result was overwhelming in favor of physical badges. This really surprised me … we are talking about students who live in the digital age, after all!

As the tests were administrated and badges awarded (for scoring at least 80% on the first attempt), more and more students asked what they were supposed to do with the badges. Would they be worth something at the end of the year?

“It’ll be a surprise!” I responded.

Honestly, I had no idea … until Monday of this week 😀

Here’s my plan:

Each badge a student earned throughout the course of the year will be worth 75 XP. This will level up many of my students.

At the end of April, when XP has been updated, I plan to create a “hall of fame” to display on one of the bulletin boards in my classroom. Students with the highest XP (maybe the top 10?) will have their gamer tags and total XP displayed in this hall of fame.

Then, I will award 5% of each student’s total XP as bonus points for the semester.

In my mind, students will have “won” if they pass the class.

How do you end your “game” in your gamified classroom?

Thanks for reading 🙂
Signature

 

 

Thoughts on EXPlore Like a Pirate and Gamification in the Classroom

by Leave a Comment

Toward the beginning of last week, I was FINALLY able to start reading EXPlore Like a Pirate in the hopes of vamping up my gamification … well … game in my classroom.

First impressions?

Do you ever open a book, novel or other, and think, “wow, this is going to be great!”

This was 100% my reaction to the first few pages of EXPlore Like a Pirate.

The world of gamification has always been slightly terrifying to me…if you’ve read my posts on gamification, like this one, you know that my experience with gaming is limited to Super Mario on the Nintendo gaming system of the 90’s.

Ahh, the good ole days 🙂

And I think, my lack of knowledge has actually played a part in student buy-in. “Finally, gamification provides us the avenue to support the expertise that both teachers and students bring to the classroom.” When I introduced the Mission American Government to my students, I prefaced the conversation with two main points:

  1. I’m creating this as an incentive and motivation for you in my classroom
  2. I am not a gamer, so if this doesn’t make sense, TELL ME, and we can fix it!

I think by admitting my lack of gaming experience, and by encouraging my kids to give me their input on my experiment, it showed that I value their opinion and expertise. That can be huge in the classroom!

In addition to my lack of gaming experience, the idea of being motivated by something other than grades and a personal desire to score well is quite foreign to me.

In the first chapter, Michael Matera says, “like many kids, I wasn’t very inspired by the idea of college (which seemed so far away) or by threats about what would happen if I didn’t achieve high letter grades and test scores.”

These ideas, as well as a personal disgust of failure or being less than what I could achieve (yes, I’m a type A personality gal!) were EXTREMELY motivating to me!

My parents had high expectations for my grades, and I wanted to meet those expectations, partly to keep my cell phone and car keys, but also to prove that I could meet their expectations. And I am incredibly thankful for their expectations!

Gamification
Thoughts on EXPlore Like a Pirate and gamification in the classroom!

Wow, this post is quickly turning into something besides a review of the first part of EXPlore Like a Pirate!!

I learned in my early days of teaching a very simple lesson: every student doesn’t learn the way I did. Every student isn’t motivated the in the same way I was…and that’s ok! Branching out to try new instructional and motivational strategies to help students succeed is part of what makes teaching fun, and EXTREMELY challenging.

I can’t wait to dive deeper into this awesome book!

Be sure to join the #XPLAP Twitter chat on Wednesdays at 7:00 PM CST to share your thoughts and learn more about the wonderful world of gamification. Or, if you’re like me and can’t jump in on Twitter, check out the Twitter chat feature over at Participate Learning to catch up on the discussion!

Seriously, if you haven’t checked out this new feature at Participate Learning, read this post and check it out!

I’ll be sharing my thoughts on Chapter 2 soon!

Thanks for reading 🙂

 

Share Teaching with Technology!