December Class Post

Incorporating Gamification Into the Classroom

I definitely like the idea of gamification for material in the classroom. Students need to get up and move around – they need to feel the spirit of competition. I truly believe that students learn more while they are experimenting and playing with information. They also tend to perform better when a team is relying on the individual to contribute to a team success. It’s fun to see my students engaged and active – I see a different side of them as competition brings about a different type of kid. I know every teacher feels extreme joy when students leave a class asking if we’re going to do that again soon. As the years go on, I've incorporated more and more game-playing into the classroom; however, I have not done so much integration with game playing and technology.

While I know that I can begin incorporating more game-play into my classroom through technology, I also know that it would be very difficult for me to change my grading style to reflect the gain of badges versus grades. I’m torn. I keep asking myself: how can I get students to look beyond the grade and want to improve and learn from what they’ve done? Most of the time, my students simply look at the grade and recycle the paper and/or test. I’ve had revisions due in the past, but that is from my request, not through the students’ want or recognition for something to change in their own writing or performance. Now, this badges program idea has provided a way for students to have fun with the writing process and created a way for teachers to have a fun “grading” system. But still – I’m hesitant. I’m not sure my administrators would go for it; I’m not sure how parents would react; I’m uncertain as to how loyal  I could remain to a badges program. Is anyone else having doubt about this or am I too stuck in my ways? I often wonder if I need to open up more to ideas such as this – seemingly radical, but ultimately helpful for my students.

After reading further about Mascle’s classroom in Students respect the badge, I did become instantly jealous of the atmosphere her badges have created in their classroom. The super-hero badges are such a unique idea. “Wolverine – sharp and incisive (writing).” “Spiderman – great at making connections.” Those are so clever and they totally relate to the good writing skills students should be using to make their writing, or blog in this case, clear.  I’m sure the students feel complete ownership over the classroom since they were able to assign badges to whomever they saw fit. This sounds like an amazing class.

I do have to wonder though: Mascle reports that grading goes well and she hardly has students reject the grades given according to their classmates’ readings. I wonder how smoothly that would go in my own classroom. Students are so driven by grades and so very many are pushed by their parents to get the highest marks no matter what. I can see students reporting that they didn’t receive certain badges from other students because they were being bullied or their writing was misinterpreted by other students – which both cases could be true. Does this make me pessimistic? It feels a little pessimistic.

How would you incorporate this in your own classroom? I have been toying around with the use of a “low-tech” gamification badges to aid students in their writing. This is introduced in Mascle’s blog Why gamification. Give students little stamps or stickers as they earn badges for things they’ve done well in their writing? After they collect all of their badges, they receive their grade? A reward? I’m not sure.

Would you attempt the class blog? I have a colleague that tried a small version of blogging (she had students post opinions about a chapter to her Web site). She reported that it went well, but it wouldn’t be something she was able to do all of the time. Many students had trouble getting to a computer. I think a class blog sounds like an amazing way to give students a “real” world writing experience – but I’m held back by that same hesitancy I mentioned in the beginning. Will it work? Will I remain true to the technology? Will students be able to gain access to the Internet?

I know I have to do what is best for my students whether that makes me uncomfortable or not. Someone please give me a big push off the edge! 

November Reading Response - Technology Integrated Media

            Snow Fall would be an amazing story if it had been written in a traditional fashion. From a narrative point-of-view, the story is captivating due to the content as well as well-written due to the changing voices and variety of description, the foreshadowing and suspense. The author did an excellent job of obtaining all perspectives and weaving them in such a way that the reader cares about what happens to these people, and can “see” the terrain of the mountain and feel the extreme loss, panic, pain of the skiers and their families. On top of all of that, the story was well-organized. This type of story, with the varying voices, background stories, locations, and events could easily become muddled and disorganized, but the “chapters”, smooth transitions and clear movement of the story made this an excellent piece. Rebecca Greenfield’s review on The Wire, summed up the technological integration perfectly: “What's striking is how smoothly the illustrated tale transitions into even more full-bleed-style graphics that are as gorgeous as they are useful.” 

           Now, recognizing that this is not a story written in a traditional fashion, this piece is taken to an even higher level of excellence in reading experience. The reader has experienced the avalanche with these people after they have read/watch/interacted with this story.

           This work with integrating technology – video, images, historical information – does not seem forced. Many examples of technology-integrated journalism seem like they include integrated features for the sake of including technology, not because it truly enhances the reading experience. “The integration of multimedia in Snow Fall was purposeful. As New York Times Graphics Director Steve Duenes explained in an interview with Poynter Online, they were looking to find ways to create a seamless experience, ‘…So it didn’t feel like you were taking a detour, but the multimedia was part of the one narrative flow’” (Rue The Snow Fall Effect). 

           The review of Snow Fall on Storify was interesting – in keeping with the theme of technological integration, the review was presented through tweets that the crew and critics had sent out. This seemed effective to an extent. Definitely gained some information about the story with this format, but overall it seemed unnecessary and gimmicky as a follow-up to the article. This review made me recall a topic we discussed on the first day of class – the use of technology when it was a benefit, not just for the sake of using technology. 

           I was surprised by the some of the reviews that Snow Fall received – the backlash seemed like more than I had expected after I was done reading the piece. I understand that from a business point-of-view, the article breadth and depth cannot be repeated on a daily basis, but the reviewers that implied the technological integration was distracting were far off from what I had experienced. I was also very surprised by the reviews of Shark and Minnow. I thought the moving videos beneath the text in that story were much more distracting and made for more difficult reading there. What did you think? Who did it better? 

            My lingering question after reading through these interactive stories and their reviews is this: what will happen to traditional reading? I know Derek Thompson of The Atlantic doesn’t foresee this type of labor-intensive journalism becoming the norm, but there are many “less-involved” examples of this interactive media out there. I’m not trying to put on granny glasses and point a crooked, angry finger at the next generations of readers, but I’m just curious – how will this type of interactive, multi-media reading effect our up and coming readers that are born with this being the norm? Will it be easy for them to sit and read a classic novel when they are the ones coming up with images in their heads? Or, more positively, will this spark curiosity in readers to go and find information on the time period and part of the world to which their novels are referring? 

            Also I’m torn on this topic: I like the idea of stories and writing being more accessible to audiences – meaning, in this case, people who aren’t the best readers are aided by the pictures and the videos. But, I’m also not sure that is a great goal for readers. I know we’ve already moved toward the quick “snip-its” of information for today’s reader who only spends a few minutes looking at each Web-based article before moving on to the next. This reader is found in the classroom too, having trouble concentrating on a novel or a longer educational article for long periods of time. Is it ignorant and futile to want to hang on to the reader that can concentrate on text for longer than 10 minutes? Perhaps that is not a useful skill any longer. Perhaps in the real world, this is not something that is advantageous and I’m holding onto a lost skill/art. What do you think?