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!