Hi All,
Thanks for joining me on this overview of gamification in the classroom. I am proposing the following plan:
Each week we will read an assigned chunk and then each of us will be responsible for penning a post wherein we speak of our take aways or respond to someone else's post? If you think I should provide more structure let me know but this is the format I have most enjoyed when doing book studies in the past. I will try to post earlier than the last day of each chunk but definitely by the last day. Feel free to post early (or late) if it suits you.
Schedule:
Week of July 11-18--Part 1 pages 1-33
Week of July 18-25--Part II (and part of part 3) pages 34-79
Week of July 25-Aug 1-- pages 81-138
Week of Aug 1-Aug 8--pages 139-171
Week of Aug 8-15--pages 173-229
Meet in person to discuss sometime after this?
Thanks for joining me on this overview of gamification in the classroom. I am proposing the following plan:
Each week we will read an assigned chunk and then each of us will be responsible for penning a post wherein we speak of our take aways or respond to someone else's post? If you think I should provide more structure let me know but this is the format I have most enjoyed when doing book studies in the past. I will try to post earlier than the last day of each chunk but definitely by the last day. Feel free to post early (or late) if it suits you.
Schedule:
Week of July 11-18--Part 1 pages 1-33
Week of July 18-25--Part II (and part of part 3) pages 34-79
Week of July 25-Aug 1-- pages 81-138
Week of Aug 1-Aug 8--pages 139-171
Week of Aug 8-15--pages 173-229
Meet in person to discuss sometime after this?
Finished with reading pages 1-33, plus a bit of the introduction. I also tried to look up any web info. on Michael Matera and he looked so different than how I had imagined. I guess I imagined a scholarly professor-type individual,, and he actually looked like my stero-typical imaginary image of a gamer. I must say, I was surprised. I listened to his ideas as he was interviewed by a radio host, and what he said on air went right along with what his book is telling us.
ReplyDeleteI have to say, sometimes I am a bit confused by our system's expectations, because I feel that in grading of some of our very serious exams, we are teaching our students to be very specific, and have even shown them examples of "right" versus "wrong" when it comes to essays they must write for core exams. Some of the essays we show them are pretty good but they are missing key elements so the student isn't able to earn full credit, rather than telling them to use their imaginations a pour their heart onto the page. I feel like we are giving them some mixed messages.
I do like the idea of gamification, and incorporating the mandatory curriculum, but I think it might need some balance. You could find yourself spending a lot of time on one particular unit when you may need to move on to cover additional material. Mr. Matera did state, however, that his students did enjoy this method of learning so much, that many were taking the time to work on this outside of the classroom. I could definitely see this being used to unify subject areas and provide the student with a deeper understanding of what they are learning in school.
The time involved in putting a lesson like this together? Well, I have no idea. Mr. Matera did say to start small and you can always build from there. To be honest, the slide show we created for our Civil Rights Era Unit, where the students selected a room in a museum to present their information with a voice-over recording and photographs from their topic kind of reminded me of Mr. Matera's "Castle" on one of his presentations that I looked up.
At first the task did seem a bit daunting to one who is still growing in the use of technology, but it did wind up being a lot of fun and the students really did take ownership of the information for which they were responsible. One typical complaint was, "I hate my voice when recorded," and I could totally identify with that, but once we got over the hurdle, we were good to go and it really prepared us for our end- of-the-year middle-school slide presentation.
I could go on and on, and I've never done this (blogging) before, so I'm not sure of the expectations...... especially having no rubric to follow...... just kidding. I love that gamification incorporates each of the student's strengths. I feel that it could also bring unity in the classroom, which is a real benefit, there would be collaboration, discussion, and constructive criticism, (at least that's what we would hope for).
Again, time may be an issue. So, I look forward to the next chapters where Mr. Matera will, hopefully, address that potential difficulty. Personally, I feel like so much of our project-based learning really seems to address so many of the goals discussed in this book. Engaging the students and teaching them to take responsibility for their learning.
I just got off my butt and got moving on this. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteHA--I just started moving again. As I am reading, I wish I had as much imagination as you, Guapo.
DeleteI am a little late to the game, but better late than never!
ReplyDelete