Blog about how you incorporate gaming, gamification, game thinking into your class. How? What are your objectives? Consider the following:
Wow. This session's material on gamification was eye opening. It helped me to understand my son a lot better, for one. He's really into games. He plays Red Dead Redemption, Battlefield 1, and other "first person shooter" games of the sort. Unlike my third graders, he outgrew Fortnite. I always knew that games gave people a sense of accomplishment and a system of rewards that are not always so accessible in real life. They also provide adventure when this is not always possible in our day to day lives. My fear has always been that if kids gets too dependent the dopamine they get in video games, it would stifle their desire to get these feelings by venturing out into the "real world" and doing "real things" like learning to play the guitar, or playing sports, or meeting with friends in person, for example. I always saw it as a passive activity of consuming media rather than an active and creative "real skills" exercise that might help them in the "real world". So the speakers in the videos really helped me to accept that this new Generation G is here to stay, and that video gaming can be more positive than I thought. Gabe Zichermann helped me understand that the "real world" has changed, that I'm getting old and out of touch, and that the best thing I can do for my relationship with my son is to stop fighting it and enter the game world with him. I especially liked how Jane McGonigal is trying to find a way to use the positive aspects of gaming, (blissful productivity, social fabric, urgent optimism, and epic meaning), in order to solve the big environmental problems our world is having today. Can it be done? Can we really use video games to improve the world? I always thought it was a form of escapism from the world rather than a way to change the future. I hope she has great success. This topic makes me think of my capstone project and how it has turned my attention to virtual reality as a way to interact with the natural world. The Covid-19 pandemic made me consider this option. If kids CAN'T get outdoors and experience nature, then maybe the next best thing IS virtual reality, or, a gaming experience. This just might be the only way many kids ever do get to experience natural environments. The problem here is that the health benefits of being in nature are lost. A lot of hard core gamers don't look that healthy. Are human beings evolving in a physical sense to be more indoorsy, and is this ok? Another question is, when people turn to games and away from being outdoors, is this good or bad for the outdoors? I have read that it's bad because when kids don't know nature they won't be interested in defending it. But you could argue that it is good for the outdoors because kids are not out there stomping on bugs and and shooting birds with bb guns. Maybe the environment will be better off if we stay indoors and get all of our desires met in virtual worlds. One last topic: I'm struggling with Class Dojo. Specifically, I can't seem to get used to rewarding my kids with Dojo points, even though I know, even more now after watching the gamification videos, they love to feel rewarded. The games they play in class that give rewards, such as Prodigy and Freckle, show me this. Other teachers do Dojo points and seem to have great success. I've always just given verbal praise and corrections and it seems to work, but with that, the parents can't share the success or failure. (The Dojo points their kids win or loose at school are visible to them on their phones.) Am I out of touch? I just can't get used to pulling out my phone and pausing to give or remove points during the day. Am I right to say that I'm fostering intrinsic motivation by not relying on this points system, or is that just an excuse for me not getting on board with new technology?
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Blog this week about what’s on your mind and what you’ve learned from this program that’s helped you transition to remote learning. What insights do you want to share with others, your administration, etc.
In an overarching sense, just being open to innovation and not seeing big changes as problems but rather as opportunities, has helped me to have the right attitude in this stressful transition to distance learning. We are now being required to teach this way. It will probably end soon. The lessons we have learned from this shock to the system will stay with us and change our teaching forever. A few of the concrete, technical skills I've learning in this class that have helped me are a familiarity with Zoom, an ability to create a quiz in Google Forms, the ability to record myself in a lesson in Zoom that includes a doc cam and Wacom device. I'm doing all of these things for 5 math lessons a week in my distance learning. I share the videos through YouTube. Those are probably the main technical skills that this program has helped me with. Also the increased familiarity with linking content has been a big help. Doing all of this has always felt to me kind of like wading in a muddy pond where you don't know where it's safe to step because you can't see the bottom and you have to go slow and feel around for every step. Now, the waters are starting to clear and I am stepping forward with more ease. I'll include a copy here of my weekly distance learning plan. This has taken qite a bit of energy in the last few weeks. It's kept me from my DQ! Wait that's an excuse. I'm so bummed about my stalled research that I am having a hard time motivating to write the DQ Analysis as an unfinished product. Hopefully, my shareable link will share with you all. I think it will! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AwqvbLdD1xaEIvdAGOVS-4jPbajlAs1iy5ZZvWafqQc/edit?usp=sharing I want to give live, online math lessons from our My Math workbook to my students. I just spent 2 hours trying to set up my iPhone as a document camera and record lessons on Screencastify and/or Zoom. The doc cams are either sold out or too expensive on Amazon. Also, it would take a month for one to get here. I was unsuccessful in turning my iPhone into a doc cam. I tried three different apps from the app store that were supposed to do this. None of them worked for what I needed them to work for. The myriad of glitches, compatibility issues, bad instructions, advertisement overload in the free versions, and my own ignorance has made this night, if not a complete waste of time, then an amazing learning experience. I'm trying to keep my growth mindset intact. Check out the cool doc camera stand I WAS able to make with the left over wood from the kitchen table I made yesterday. Just strap an iPhone in under the swim goggle strap stapled on top, and record amazing distance learning lessons! The hardware was way easier for me than the software. Well, stay tuned as I add to this blog tomorrow. I will continue to read about flipped classrooms, and dream of the day I'll be able to figure out how to record a video to do one.
Next day: This morning I had better luck with iMovie. Here's a link to the video I made about the Nature Photo Scavenger Hunt. https://youtu.be/eCyFiTEuuEg The kids liked this project. I just sent the link out on Class Dojo. I announced we can make another video with even more participants if everybody, (safely), gets outdoors and takes photos. Yeah! Ok, my next project is to TRY to record a video of myself with a Wacom device (my wife's), connected to the computer. I'll try explaining equivalent fractions in the Khan Academy style. I will be doing this in distance learning. I love how this class is lending itself so well to me training up for the next two months of distance learning. Next Day: Success! Wow. Is it just me or is getting this kind of thing to work too difficult? I can't begin to explain all of the difficulties I had in, one, figuring out what to use, two, using it, three, making the pieces work together, and four, share the product. It makes me feel like we humans are still in the early stages of tech integration into our projects. You should just be able to say something like: "Siri, I want to do an online meeting with my students where I share a video from YouTube on equivalent fractions, have a whiteboard to do further explanations, and am able to show our workbook with a doc cam. Please give them all immediate feedback on their progress, and adjust the learning to their level. Oh yeah, please collect, grade, and enter all of their work into Illuminate for report cards." Good luck, right? Well, here's the practice video I was finally able to make on YouTube. https://youtu.be/pI1aIjPgB9s |
AuthorJeremy Smith teaches third grade at Calistoga Elementary School. Archives
July 2020
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