EDET679 Gamification Week 11 Reflection

This week was fun for me! I really enjoyed the Aurasma presentation and I have already used it in my French class. I had students write an autobiography and draw a picture of themselves. Then we recorded them reading the biography and connected it to their picture on the wall. They get to hear each other talk in French and listen to what they said. This week I will have them listen and come back to someone else and tell the new person what they learned from the video. In this activity we are practicing all forms of communication: Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking!

I am looking forward to developing my gamified class especially getting some comments from my classmates who were liking my ideas already. The ideas that I read both gathered ideas from a story or game that was already created. I did the same thing and it is helpful to see where others got their ideas. Looking forward to Thanksgiving Break!

EDET679 Gamification Week 11 Blog

EDET679 Gamification Week 11 Blog

Essential Question: What is the game you are thinking of writing up for your classroom?

            In order to introduce and teach history of mathematics in my classroom, my theme of the game will be during a future time in which all knowledge of the past and more specifically all foundational mathematics has been forgotten. There are many technologies and everyone living in this time knows how to use it but the memory of how the technologies were created became lost. Each student in the class became of age this year to enter into the class of solving what has become known as “the math gap”. The community believes that in the next four years of their lives, the students must figure out why the world as they know it has lost their memories. If they don’t not solve “the math gap” in the four years, their brains will be fully developed and will not be able to attack the problem again.

            When children of age go to “the math gap” class, a magical thousand-year-old Möbius Strip sorts them into a guild of which they will be with for the rest of their time in school. The guilds are Statisticians, Theoretical Mathematicians, and Scientists. Each student is also given a new name by the Möbius Strip. My students are all given names of famous mathematicians and scientists from the past but no one knows how significant this is because not one person on Earth remembers these names.

            At school, students learn secrets by being number one on the leaderboard between the guilds and between individual students. The head professor will award groups who work together cohesively and use the math vocabulary frequently among other things. The head professor awards individual students for successfully completed tasks, who show leadership qualities, and other things that show promise of solving “the math gap”. Each student has the ability to gain items that will help them get closer to helping the world remember the lost mathematics. Items might include the use of a multiplication chart, the use of a calculator, the ability to eat food to energize the brain, or the ability to “remember” a formula (through a prepared formula sheet).

            Students are able to go on to side quests given by the head professor. Sometimes these quests seem far-fetched but they are often set to get students to strive because no student will solve “the math gap” unless they are able to fail and get back to work diligently.

EDET679 Gamification Week 10 Reflection

How exciting was it to read through the rubric and start thinking about how my gamification plans will be shaped with the best intentions for the most effective gamified classroom. About halfway reading through the rubric I got very overwhelmed. But my classmates steered me in the correction direction by telling me that they don't think the goal is to be at exceeding but to use the rubric to help us create our gamification that can eventually reach exceeding. I look forward to begin getting my ideas down on paper and hatch out my ideas next week with my classmates.

EDET674 Virtual Teaching/Learning Week 10 Reflection

This week I was able to stress the fact that professional development is very important in the changing world of education that we are in. My classmates seemed to agree with this and suggested ways that we can have this development whether it be actual courses, sharing with colleagues our knowledge, or having the district provide it. Something that I didn't think of but is so true that Dan brought up is that change is frequently shut down in education. The system has been one way for so long and as soon as someone wants or strives to change in response to the world's change, there is someone always there to shut it down or have a critique they need to put in.

I am feeling good about my online course that we are creating. After sharing with Sara and seeing her rubrics of assessment I knew what direction I needed to take my and have to revamp it quite a bit. Again like I said before, I am not comfortable with rubrics but this process is helping me grow as a teacher which is the goal of change!

EDET679 Gamification Week 10 Blog

EDET679 Gamification Week 10 Blog

Essential Question: How would you change the rubric for the final project to better reflect what is important in games?

            After reading the rubric, I think most parts are key on reflecting about gamification in the course. There is one big idea that I struggle with is the fact on how can I strive for “Exceeds” and still be realistic in what gamifying my class actually might work out considering the fact that I have never done it. For the majority of the criterion, I understand gamification enough in theory to be able to meet them but as a student I would like to try my best and exceed in the criterion. Therefore, the first thing that I see as a flaw in the rubric is that there isn’t a chance for the teacher to start small and then create more of the gamification off of this small beginning. Matera both encourage teachers who are beginning to adopt gamification in the classroom that this could and is suggested to be implemented at a small level and then begin to grow the storyline and the game of the classroom as time goes on (2015). Keeler also suggests in the beginning of gamifying your classroom, start with some basic gamifying concepts and tools that you might have picked up from playing a game on your phone with the eyes and thoughts of a teacher (2014). I can definitely begin implementing gamification in my classroom to help understand the ins and outs of gamification a bit more but I do not think my ideas will grow to the level of “Exceeds” by the time of the final project is due.

            The criteria include the main aspects of gamification in the classroom. One main part of gamifying a classroom that isn’t included in the rubric is how to explain to present the gamified class (assuming the whole year or semester is going to be gamified) to the students, parents, and administrators. Having a classroom that seems to have games as the main form of learning can make many people hesitant about what is actually happening in the classroom and how much learning is actually happening. The criterion I would add is “Communication to the community” and what I mean by community is the people around the student and the teacher. It is possible that a teacher might not have enough support to implement a gamified class and being prepared on presenting solid facts and ideas about how gamifying a classroom will enhance learning is very important.

            Lastly, in the explanation of the rubric I would ask that we can strive for “Exceeds” in two or three of the criteria so that when we go to implement gamification in our classroom we feel confident in how to begin engaging students with this method of teaching.

Alice Keeler: Getting Started with Games Based Learning. (Feb., 20, 2016). Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ_UKW_AFOU.

Matera, M. (2015). Explore like a pirate. San Diego, CA: Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc.

EDET674 Virtual Teaching/Learning Week 10 Blog

Week 10 Blog Virtual Learning and Teaching EDET674

Essential Question: How can we manage the change that is inherent in our distance learning efforts?

            Distance education is bound to change whether the change is commercialization or globalization. A way that distance education can change is to have all virtual universities instead of physical universities. Instruction can have lower standards in order to not have to pay teachers so much. This idea supports commercialization of education in which the education system runs to help the economy therefore it is meant to educate the consumers of education to be consumers of goods and services. (Moore and Kearsley, 2012) Also technology being used in distance education can change and developed to be formatted differently. Looking back, distance education began with what millennials call snail mail. Now we are able to connect instantly and collaborate with others that live somewhere else and has a different culture from each other. To be able to stay up to date with these changes, professional development and support for each other will be key.

            Rasmussen & Byrd found in their research that professional development taken online is effective by keeping mind of the five key characteristics of PD (focus on teacher’s content and pedagogical knowledge, duration of at least 20 hours, promote collegiality and collaboration, an evaluation component, require participants to engage in activity) and actually the lessons that teachers learned through the PD were still being used after three years. A role that can play significant part of successful learning in professional development is the amount of experience the teacher has. “More experienced teachers tended to use PD materials longer, as they most likely are more familiar with their curriculum and, therefore, may be more ready to implement new materials.” (Rasmussen & Byrd, 2016) For me as a new teacher, I need to pair myself up with more experienced teachers and work alongside them to implement the new methods learned in my class so that I can adopt the change that is coming and here.

            Lastly, I think we need to focus our support to online teachers for K-12 students. By learning how to support these teachers, we may be learning how we can support ourselves someday if education becomes to be more online than it is now. There is a gap between full-time online K-12 teachers who generally get paid less than a teacher employed by a district and also have to work 12 months of the year versus 9 months. (Larkin et al. 2016) This is one small part of what online teachers face and we need to be aware and support these teachers.

           

Larkin, I. M., Brantley-Dias, L., & Lokey-Vega, A. (2016). Job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intention of online teachers in the K-12 setting. Online Learning, Volume 20, Issue 3.

Moore, M. G. & Kearsley, G. (2012). Distance Education: A system view of online learning. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Rasmussen, C. L. & Byrd, D. R. (2016). Evaluating continued use of an online teacher professional development program with a sustained implementation scale. Journal of Online Learning Research (2)2, 145-167.