My first feeling upon going over these capstone projects has been one of intimidation. They are all so great! How can I ever hope to create a website that has so much great information and is such a great resource for teachers? My project is only half way completed! It's going to be a long summer of hard work. I'm in my growth mindset and ready for the challenge, but I doubt my end product will be as complete as these examples. I'm just not satisfied with what I was able to get done before the Covid-19 crisis struck. The creators all did such a great job of presenting their inspiration, resources, methods, data, conclusions, and directions for the future. I decided to do deep dives on the ones by Ellison and Cerda. It looks like Ellison teaches technology, and while her research will be best used by other technology instructors, the strategy of gamifying the classroom has possibilities for all teachers. Teachers can motivate their students by switching traditional points to XPs or experience points, without even changing the kind of assignments they give. Students can relate to "leveling up" and earning recognition in the form of digital badges. While her project idea was inspiring, she failed to convince me on its effectiveness through clear presentation of pre and post data. Does gamification produce markedly better results from what she was doing before? I did find in her research paper a discussion of the impact of learning coding on student performance. I'm not very good at reading quantitative data results, and her results were confusing for me. I could not get a clear picture of how her gamification worked and how it proved to motivate her students. It might just be me being a poor reader of data, however. I feel like I'm being harsh here, especially when I consider my own data and what I actually did with my kids, but we were asked to practice being critical of our peers so here is my shot at it. What I most appreciated in her website were the links to resources that I might use if I decide to gamify my own classroom. Cerda also had great resource links to show how he integrated video making into his instruction in order to motivate his students with 21st Century skills. I like how he included links to the reading we did in class, as well as student resources and teacher resources for making videos with students. In addition, he linked the scholarly articles that inspired him to try this method of instruction. Gosh, I'm going to have to learn how to use visual icons as links! I admit, I have never done this before. Ahem. I also liked how clear Cerda's site is. I could navigate it easily. I liked his focus on English learners and how the techniques he implemented improved their learning. In his research paper he shows this with clear graphs that were easier for me to understand. He compared their results with those of his EO or English dominant students. This is an important topic, especially in Dual Immersion schools like the one Cerda teaches in. There were some things missing in his website. The sections on the Design Process and Support and Next Steps were unpopulated, I believe. Did his site inspire me to want to try out video making in the classroom as an instructional strategy, however? Yes!
1 Comment
Tracy Moskowite
6/3/2020 07:40:40 pm
I always appreciate how you are able to explain your thoughts. I was also really impressed with Ellison and using buttons for links as well. Your blog was great because I was able to really understand not just audience but also how you felt about it.
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AuthorJeremy Smith teaches third grade at Calistoga Elementary School. Archives
July 2020
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