Gaming and gamification all deal with bringing the positive aspect of games into teaching. So, if you take a step back and really take some liberties life is a big game. I mean I know we have all heard the antidote but, for real it is. After listening to the ted talks and the edutopia clips, I can see that I already do incorporate gaming into my methods for teaching. I have never called it that but that is what it is.
As far as actual games that I play in my class, I will play Kahoot (really all of it’s different versions) and we have a couple of Jeopardy game kits at my school. I also play online Jeopardy with different stories that we read. I try and use the reward of game playing in my classroom management. Actually, now that I think about it I use Class Dojo and that is a kind of gamification. Thinking back to my childhood I have always kind of had game or gamification incorporated into my life. I was in boy scouts, and I now am a cub scout leader. The whole scout reward system is based off of games. I mean you earn badges for different things you do and you also level up or receive a higher rank. Haha This has led me to think about how I am going to conduct my classes next year. So I have toyed (haha pun intended) with the idea of incorporating a more different model for my grading and homework. I was talking with a colleague that is actually retiring this year and he has an awesome approach to having the kids really buy into their own learning. He explains it like a job and money. And working overtime is like homework, so he gives the base grade of a C and when you do better than a C you of course earn extra just like if you work harder and you get opportunities to advance in the company. I was thinking about changing this a little and creating a game out of it. I like the idea of badges and levels (ranks). In order to fully earn top credit you need to do xy and z. I am still working on details but this is how I want to do it. Also, I think back about different things like I could earn certain achievements by reading or doing some sort of work and I think that setting up learning like that would be a positive change in the right direction.
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So with my research being based around the flipped classroom, I love this ICARE. Almost every lesson I try and have some aspect of it flipped. I teaching 8th grade have a very difficult time telling kids they have homework. That has been the issue from day one. I also know that there are different types of flipping that do not involve the total flipped model. I have pondered around the homework problem for months now. I have come to the conclusion that I am going to have to start preparing my students next year. I also have a teacher whose concept I may adapt for homework. He looks at homework as extra. If you don’t do your homework you are not penalized. If you want a better grade you do your homework and it helps you bc you are able to know more. You do A work you get an A. They become masters of their grades. I think I will set my class up like this next year. I will have the videos up for kids that want the A or B and they can learn and come with questions and I will have time built in the next day for those kids to review the lesson and do their work in class. Enough of my ranting about homework here is mine! Soundation Web-based audio recorder/mixer Soundation I choose that bc it is web based and it is an add on to google chrome so I would be able to be used with my students. What worked and what didn’t? It does function well if all you want to do is make music with it. To actually record live audio you have to pay for it. So that does not work too well for my needs as a teacher. This is a limited DAW with built in audio loops. How did you apply the tools to your practice? I was not really able to apply this to my practice as I was not able to record anything. What are barriers to your use, or student use? No live recording. Now that is not to say that you couldn't record something and import it in, but there is also limited data usage with the free version. Really you could have Audacity and use that and it has better filters and effects and it is all free. How can video be used as an assessment tool? It really can’t be used as an assessment tool. Audacity Mac & Windows audio recording & editings (intermediate to advanced) Audacity why? Audacity is a free DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). What is a DAW? This is software that you can import audio and mix and manipulate it to your liking. What worked and what didn’t? It all works great but it is only for audio. So no video editing. This works great for podcast and other vocal things. There is a lot of actual editing tools in this dashboard. This works well with GarageBand for mac. How did you apply the tools to your practice? Make a podcast or have students make podcast. Used the effects that are not available in other products. What are barriers to your use, or student use? Very advanced to use. If you have a student that wants or can learn it it is a very useful tool. There are YouTube videos. How can video be used as an assessment tool? This does not work well as an assessment tool for videos. This does work for recording audio and also voiceovers. EdPuzzle Web-based creation tool. Why? EdPuzzle is good to use for videos that already exist and you want to modify them to your particular needs. There are a lot of videos already connected to EdPuzzle that you can freely edit and add questions or quotes and audio notes. It also gives students the opportunity to respond and take an active role in the video watching. What worked and what didn’t? It took maybe 5 mins to find a video add questions and send it out to my students for them to respond to. It also links up to Google Classroom so I didn’t have to create classes they were already listed in the program. I think it is free as well(?). I am not sure if I have limitations to my account or if I have a full version. I looked to see if I had to pay something and I could not find anything telling me either way. How did you apply the tools to your practice? We just started reading The Diary of Anne Frank. As a way to share with them the living situation that The Franks had I found a virtual tour of their house when they were in hiding. I included some questions from the text. I will have them take this tour and answer the questions. What are barriers to your use, or student use? No real barriers yet. It seems to work well I am still not sure about limited usage because of type of account I have. How can video be used as an assessment tool? You can totally use this as an assessment tool. You can assess your student’s knowledge very easily with this program. You can pop a question in at any point of the video and have kids answer them. It also gives feedback to what student has done or not and you can export the grades. This will be used in the future for sure! I have been using google forms for a while now. But, I have never really actually used them for what I think I should. Really, I use them as a workaround for not paying for newsela. I will take the articles that I want read and convert them from PDF’s to a google doc and I will take the quiz from the readings and use them to insert them into a graded google form. I will then have it posted on Google Classroom for my students to take. I really like using the add-on flubaroo. I used Goobric with Doctopus to grade any papers that I have my students write. I have created some quizzes for vocabulary and had my students take them on a Google form. One thing that I think I would like to try is to make a survey so I could get feedback for different things I do in my classes.
For my action research/ capstone project I have a particular job for Google Forms. So, to understand how I want this to work I need to give an example. So, I have been obsessed with building things out of Raspberry pis. For a few months I have been trying to build what is called a Gameboy zero (basically a pi zero inside of an original gameboy case). Well, they make this special pcb board for the buttons. In order to buy one you have to sign up and all there is two questions asking your name and email on a form. On the back end it creates a Google Sheet with all the names and emails of people interested in buying a board. That could be cool to incorporate into something and having a form set up on my capstone site and when a teacher needs a certain video made they could request them in something like that. Another way I could use a form is by sending out surveys. I chose to get my feet wet with a couple of chats and I’ll tell you they are pretty cool. Honestly, I was a little hesitant at first. I’ve never been a fan of Twitter but I can now see the benefit for my class and a little for some personal use. Group norms...Well I liked how they answer questions during #engchat and I happened to catch some of #TOSAchat. It was just how it was explained with one or two people asking questions to try and further the discussion along and then people would respond with A2 or some variant of that. I found it interesting as well that there is an almost esoteric acronymn usage that goes on in people's responses. A couple of times I had to go look up what they were talking about. I guess I’m not cool enough for some of them. Haha I picked up this gem from the #engchat I will use this in my class. I also have picked up ^^^^ two books because of the one chat. Here are the covers of the two gems. I hope these chats don’t make me too much of a mouse potato. I will say that I have had a hard time looking for something that pertains to my driving question. I looked for chats that had anything to do with flipping the classroom and I found one group but I am not sure when it met and if it met.. There were also some useful people that had good ideas but I could not find an actual chat that met. I’m sure that it probably exist I am probably just not looking in the right places. Below is the link for my group project with Diane Williams How can social media be used effectively with students I think it is interesting that I have always thought of myself as a non-adult. Now there is a difference in being a non-adult and being a child. You reach full non-adulthood after you turn 18 somewhat but moreso after the age of 25. When do you actually become an adult? I’m not sure, but I know that after a certain point it happens and you kinda don’t even know it did until after you have already become one...scary….So, yesterday, I attended a district training that was given by someone who I have a lot of respect for. He (being of African American descent) was talking about the use of the “N” word amongst our students. Now, he made a point that really hit home with me and it was this. He said that he used that word all through college and it wasn’t until he started to think about his impact on the world while he was working on his Ph.D. that he decided to stop using it. My point is not to debate the use of the word but, it is to point out that once you reach a level you are expected to act a certain way. As, professionals we are expected to act just as this. We see it all the time, think about any basketball star who has gotten into trouble with the law. There are all sorts of issues that go on. I remember I learned how a professional is suppose to act years ago from one of my ex’s. She was always so picky about what was put on ye olde Facebook. I thought it annoying but I understood why. It is interesting how this whole subject has sorta taken center stage now with our president being a professional twitterer, and with all the issues he had with his private conversations brought to light. Or we could look on the other side with the “emails” being deleted. So it is very interesting how we communicate online. What would I do if I were to come across an inappropriate post made by one of my students outside of the school? I would have to say something about the post. I would not be overtly, well, I guess it depends on what it says really. If it was something that was demeaning to others I would probably have a heart to heart with the student and see if we could have a meeting of the minds about posting kinder things. If the post is something that could damage their reputation I may choose to take the opportunity to address the issue with everyone and make it a teaching moment for the entire class. I would find one of the articles that talks about how employers/college admin look at social media to determine employment/acceptance. I think that they need to watch what they post or make it tougher to see their profiles/tweets. Now, if this is a repeat offender then I probably tell them the first couple times but after that I am done. If you are determined to destroy your image hey who am I to stop it. Also, it depends on what it really is. If it is one of my younger students I would also, contact parents. I have a lot of tools that I use a lot for school but I think other than Newsela with a modified google form for the quizzes, I would say that I use Quill.org. Why? I teach English and our curriculum has systematically removed teaching grammar. My 8th graders come to class without a basic knowledge of grammar. I feel that it is my duty to help them understand the difference between, knowing your shit and knowing you’re shit. This is where Quill.org comes in. How? Quill.org connects to google apps for education and is easy to set up. You (as a teacher) can have students connect by the special class code given to each of your classes you created.
Teachers have a dashboard that shows them how their students are progressing on the Common Core standards. Each activity takes 10 minutes in length, and students typically complete their assignments in class. After completing an assignment, students receive instant feedback on their work. The instant feedback is valuable because they can review which concepts they understand and which ones they are struggling to master. Pros The site boasts that it provides learning activities that engage students in the writing process through web applications teaching grammar, vocabulary, and writing skills. The site does this well. Even if the grammar is correct but there is some other mistake in the student’s response it will give you a message telling you that they have the correct answer but they need to make sure everything is correct in their sentence. I find that my students enjoy most of what I assign them. It does take about 10 mins to complete an activity. It also tracks progress of student work. It provides instant feedback on their work and that helps them know what they need to work on. Cons The site is glitchy, not all the time but enough to notice. They also need to have more content. I have assigned some thing multiple times. I also give content from other lower grades. So, there can be some differentiation. Tracking and individual feedback is a paid feature. You can see some completion just not specific. One work around I have done for not having a paid subscription is to have my students take a screenshot of their progress and send that picture on a google doc to see how they are doing. Were you using the right tool for the right job? How do you know? Yeah, I feel that for a tool that teaches grammar this a very useful tool. I know this because I can tell the way that kids interact with it. It stretches their mind and then it shows them feedback instantly. I also see how much kids like it. They tricked one of my subs into letting them “play” Quill all day long. Haha pretty good stuff. I incorporate it into about 2-3 lessons a week. I use it as a warm-up activity. For me it is not really a matter of how will I begin to teach digital literacy, it is more of a matter of how will I continue to teach it. My kids have the opportunity to be exposed everyday to the digital world. There was a lot of frontloading and preparation that went on before they even touched a computer. I have tried to have a class that is a safe zone for the students to use. I first thought about having a strong online presence last school year when I found out that we had google classroom available in our district. In all honesty even without google classroom I still helped them to use computers and the gSuite. This year I started out with my syllabus having a technology contract between my students, their parents and myself. I will have to redo this contract for next year but it was a beginning.
My classes are made up of students with different leveled digital awareness. Because of this I have scholffolded my teaching of digital literacy. I have found that it takes about a week or two of chaos (really a couple of days) and then things are smooth and I use my TA’s and other knowledgeable students to fill in the gaps for students who were absent or just not getting it. Really it comes down to power for me. I know that having knowledge is powerful. I want to empower my students the most I can. I feel that I am thorough enough to cover most things they would need to survive in a digital junge. I then share this knowledge with my students. We explore different apps and sites together. They know that I experiment with them and they are glad to take the trip with me. So in short I teach my students through trial and error. |
Adam Vedomske father of Danger Archives
May 2017
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