EDET679 Gamification Week 8 Reflection

This week was super exciting for me because I began thinking about details on what I could actually do in my classroom with the gamified content. I had to get out some scrap paper and a pencil and jot down my ideas. Many times I ended up crossing out ideas because it would be to difficult to implement but mainly I was improving my ideas with different game mechanics. This week I realized how much gamification can really help me as a teacher with the things I struggle with if I let it. I was able to help my classmates think about their own themes and story lines and push them to keep developing the ideas they have. I am really excited to dig more and more in to the gamified classroom and can't wait to learn more this week.

EDET674 Virtual Teaching/Learning Week 8 Reflection

This week I enjoyed meeting with my class on Thursday. It was a very stress free class which gave me the chance to collaborate with my classmates and not worry about what I am talking about but only what I am learning. In my blog, I felt like I brought the point that to help someone who is teaching an online course, you need to teach them how to get their students to collaborate and have a personal connection to the course. So many times I understand how a student can get by without really learning anything but if the teacher is able to connect to that student, learning will happen. I am excited about the online courses that we are developing and mainly because I am excited to use what I create with my own students. I think I will change my course to not just be French language and culture but in general the language and culture of the place that the students are traveling.

EDET674 Virtual Teaching/Learning Week 8 Blog

Essential Question: What would you require of instructors who taught a course you designed? Why?

            When a person designs or is a part of designing a course, they know the details and intricacies of the entire course. This makes teaching the course fairly smooth because they understand the reason of each activity and the intentions of having an assessment or collaboration time. When the course is passed off to another teacher that was not a part of the design, then the learning environment is not known and it is needed that the teacher learns the course as if they made it themselves. The major expectations that I have for an instructor who is going to teach a course that I have designed will be to know the content and technology, to provide meaningful interaction between students and between teacher and student, and provide timely and meaningful feedback and support to the students.

            Moore and Kearsley explains interaction is key in having a successful course and this includes learner-content interaction, learner-instructor interaction, and learner-learner interaction in distance technology courses. High level interaction looks like the instructor responding to all inquiries, students responding and initiating messages, two-way visual and text exchanges between student and instructor, students share results and feedback with other students, and encouraging communication between students. (2012) Having interaction with the content and people gives the maximum learning experience because students are processing the material and speaking about it with others.

            Teachers should also think about how the course is going to begin and what information the instructor needs to give to the students. A checklist that is provided for Online Instructors by University of Wisconsin is helpful and it contains the following main things for instructors to cover: course management system, course maintenance, reference citations, course multimedia accessibility, news and announcements, gradebook set up, virus protection, course calendar, syllabus, welcome email, pre-course survey, student orientation, student contact info spreadsheet, course goals, learning objectives, ground rules, discussion prompts, past course evaluations, and course assignments. (2016) This check list is very helpful for an instructor who may be teaching a course I designed so that the course is organized for the students to learn successfully.

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

University of Wisconsin-Stout (2016). Checklist for online instructors. Retrieved from https://www2.uwstout.edu/content/profdev/teachingonline/before.html.

EDET679 Gamification Week 8 Blog

 Essential Question: Which aspects of story and game mechanics will be useful in your class and how might you use them?

            To gamify my class, I would like my students working in groups and support each other in the group. In order to an atmosphere that has built in groups, guilds can be introduced which gives social game players the chance to connect with others and share the game experience. Also having guilds will provide an easy way to have a bit of competition of which conqueror game players will enjoy and thrive. Guilds are also intriguing to me because it gives students who are non-gamers the chance to buy into the game and an easily understandable way to begin thinking with a game mindset. Matera does indicate that the cons of having guilds might include making “authentic reasons for the guild to work together” and as a teacher of mathematics this can be difficult for me (2015).

            Another game mechanic that interests me to use in my classroom is items because there are so many ways to be creative and encourage specific students. It is actually really easy to introduce a new item to the gamified class and it requires little planning ahead of time. Using these items, students can feel unique, have powers, and thrive to have powers that others do. Adding items into the class gives explorer gamer types the chance to be constantly searching for what is possible for them to get and how it will affect the game.

            The last game mechanic that I 100 percent want to have in my gamified class is special challenges. I am not sure what the challenge would look like but it would give my math students and the whole school something special to look forward to that is academic and math related. I hate to admit it but math class can be boring and having “a sense of curiosity and anticipation” would be good for my students and even me!

            The part that I still need to think about and play around a bit more is the scene and characters (of the guild). I couldn’t come up with my own story or theme so I will have to borrow from a book or movie. I am thinking about making the characters to be important figures or groups in mathematic history. This will give students the chance to learn a bit more of history that I have a hard time teaching in math class. Overall, my goal of gamifying my classroom is to support my students and myself especially in the moments and situations that I am weak in.

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

EDET674 Virtual Teaching/Learning Week 7 Reflection

This week was a hectic week for me but I was able to get on top of this class's work and got the chance to work along side of Amy and Genevieve for our presentation on Thursday. It was my second time and I felt much more confident and actually I am glad we get the chance to present more than once. This makes me reflect on my students and the fact that I should always give them more than one opportunity to do some sort of activity because the first time is always figuring it out and then after that the second time can be more focused on content or collaboration. With blog posts, I was able to point out how important it is to know your students when you are teaching an online course; it is also important in traditional courses but a bit more difficult to do this in online courses. I look forward to building my online course and I am actually really excited about it now after I talked to some classmates in class last week.

EDET679 Gamification Week 7 Reflection

This week I really dropped the ball when it came to doing my blog post. I had so much going on with this class (presenting Google Cardboard at the beginning of the week), my other class (OLTAK: presenting also!), and teaching (all my math classes needed way more support than usual) that I thought I had my blog post finished and posted already. I was busy Friday and Saturday all day helping with ACT proctoring and at the wrestling matches that I didn't realize until today, Sunday, that I did not post my blog for Gamification class. I see how this is not okay because the blogs is one of the main ways we collaborate and communicate between students. I apologize but posted it today and commented on others. I am starting to notice that my classmates and I are really beginning to embrace gamification in the classroom but maybe more at a core that education needs to be different than what it has been for the last 100+ years. This scares me honestly but I am happy to be able to listen to what my classmates have to say of which helps me figure out what I want to say about education changing and more specifically, the role of gamification in the classroom.

EDET679 Gamification Week 7 Blog

Week 7 Gamification Blog

Essential Question: How do you or might you use language to change the way that your students think about learning in the classroom?

            Creating an environment that fosters student learning is very important. This environment includes everything from what seat the students sit in and to what activities the students will do to learn a concept. The words that we use in the classroom also help create an environment to be motivational and even the opposite way, discouraging. Therefore, as teachers, we need to be intentional with all we say and when we mess up that make sure to change our wording. Matera gives teachers ten words to use when working with their students and they are confidence, creativity, enthusiasm, effort, focus, resilience, initiative, curiosity, dependability, and empathy (2015). Giving these words and the concepts behind them to the students provides an opportunity for each student to take a hold of their own education. They get to put a word to what they are doing and support by the class and the teacher behind that word.

            This is a concept that is embraced even to standards being created for teachers to teach kids. In the Alaska State Standards of Mathematics, there are eight main concepts that when used in everyday conversation of math class really changes how the focus of learning is not just the math but really the process. These eight focuses are called Mathematical Practices and they follow: “make sense of problems and persevere in solving them, reason abstractly and quantitatively, construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others, model with mathematics, use appropriate tools strategically, attend to precision, look for and make use of structure, and look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning using other methods.” (2012) The purpose of the mathematical practices is to help support students in not only being successful in mathematics but also create students who applies learned math skills to all parts of their life. Giving the students something to choose from that puts words to what they are learning can be freeing for them because they are able to feel confident in what they are learning by putting a name to it.

Department of Education and Early Development (2012). Alaska mathematics standards. Retrieved from https://education.alaska.gov/akstandards/math/akstandards_math_081312.pdf

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