Gaming and Gamification- Let the Games Begin!

What kid doesn't like games? Right? In fact, don't a lot of adults like games?  Educators are always trying to find that perfect mix.  How do we get children motivated to learn?   Many believe that games can be the solution.
Michael Brit gave a podcast of Gamification.    He gave several reasons that games can be good for children.
Here are some of the positive characteristics of Gamification:

• Feedback – they have that with the gauge but it’s not instant feedback
• Goals – try to get this (efficiency) score. You win!!
• Rewards or points: – give drivers badges or of course discounts
• Levels: if/when they reach a certain accomplishment (number of points or badges) the driver levels-up (use normal distribution
• Conflict/Competition/Challenge – “drivers of this truck typically get X score” See if you can get Y score”
• Real-time competition: use geolocation 
• Leaderboards: see where you fit among others (kind of feedback)

But Some people just aren't buying it.  They say that it is insulting, silly and manipulative.

I teach young children.  As long as I have been teaching we have used games to reinforce concepts.  Bingo is used for things like math, reading, and many other subjects.  We are always trying to find ways to motivate children to practice what they know and keep learning.  Why not use games?  Children love games and they can be a great motivation to learn.  I work in a summer camp during the summers.  I bring along my iPad for the early birds(kids dropped of early) to use.  I am surprised to see these children really enjoying a lot of my educational apps.  I am watching children practice their states and capitals then switch to practicing their multiplication facts.  I remember trying to get my own boys to do "work" during the summer only to be told "No" or complaining that they didn't want to work on their vacation. The difference is that these kids want to play these games and can actually learn.  It doesn't replace completely the learning or teaching process but games can be a great motivator for many children.
Some games can be really motivating for children.  In the young grades, games that reinforce learning (stack the states, math bingo..) and inspire children to create (puppet pals, toontastic) can be great in the elementary classroom.  But online games that allow children to "talk" to others around the world make me a little more worried and cautious.  How do we know that these people are actually children?  Do they hold the same values that we are trying to teach our students?
My own teenage boys tell me that if used wrong(games), people can be "banded" from these games- not allowed to continue playing.  In fact my own son was banded from a game for saying "Free Tibet"in a statement.  He laughs about it, but as a parent, I worry about what they may be exposed to.  You can't undo something in their mind that they have already read.
Games like Mindcraft really attracts a lot of young people.  Using these games for educational purposes can be very attractive. But as longs kids are communicating with people that I don't know then I have to still be hesitant to use it. 
Teaching young children we tend to use games that reinforce things that we have been teaching. But watching the Jane McGonigal I have seen that gaming with older children using online gaming can be educational in it's own way too.

I am not a big fan of games like world of Warcraft.  I have two teenage boys.  One boy can care less for online games and the other loves them.  I have watched my youngest son play with people across the country.  He has made friends in different states that he has never met.  I as a parent am always a little nervous about my son talking to people I don't know.  These games have really developed his love for computers.  I hear about things that I never knew existed.  I am still trying to figure out what he means when he says that he and his friends are developing different mods for one of his games so that they can play together.

Now if we can take this idea of online gaming and use it to our advantage for learning, I believe we can reach children that we would have missed with traditional methods of teaching.
I watch my youngest son, knowing how much he dislikes school and wonder- can games like these motivate him to learn?  Could he be enjoying school instead of hating it so much?
It takes a special teacher to be able to use these games for educational purposes in the correct way. Where learning and motivation go hand in hand.

class video on polygons

This is my video that I made about Polygons.  I had a really hard time uploading it to You Tube.  I made it on my iPad so I'm not sure if it was the iPad or me that was really having a difficult time.  I started with Keynotes and then went into iMovie. I think my students would like quick little movies like this.  Now all I have to do is find an easier way to upload videos.

Flipped!

One of the new trends happening in education is the Flipped Classroom.  I have heard a little about this before and really haven't thought much of it. Watching the video Teaching for Tomorrow: The Flipped Classroom, helped me to understand a little of the idea behind the Flipped classroom.  Lectures that teachers would give are videoed and recorded for the students to watch.  Instead of doing the teaching lesson in the classroom, students watch them at home so that more classroom time is spent practicing and doing more of the experiments.  Students watch the lessons at home for homework instead of spending hours doing hours of busywork.  This then frees of the teachers time to devote more classroom time to reaching each child at their own level.  The students that mastered the subject can do more challenging work while the teacher can still review for those that still didn't understand.  This would really help keeping kids from being really bored reviewing material that they already mastered.

Watching the video Flipped Class 101 really helped with understanding how to start.  It showed two science teachers who are now using videos that they made to flip their classroom.  I really liked when one of them said that you should not just look at where you can add a video.  It's not just showing a video that makes a flipped classroom work.  They showed a picture of blooms Taxonomy.

The videos show at home would cover the bottom two areas of understanding and knowledge. That would leave the rest of the class time to reach the higher levels of learning.

I did really enjoy watching and learning about the flipped classroom.  I teach second grade and most of what we do is a lot of repetition.  I love the idea of spending more time with creating.  Every year I have at least two or three children that don't have access to computers at home.  This year will be the first time that our library at school will have computers for the students to use.  But even if I have all of my students on line I still have parents that are very reluctant to let their child have too much screen time.  They are worried about their eyes and in my opinion really don't want to reduce the actual tv time since that is free baby sitting for them.
The one thing that I would really find helpful if I did this would be for the parents to see what their child is learning and how I am teaching it to them.  The parents are often worried about helping their child or confusing them by showing them another way.  They want to be consistent with the way their child is taught.  I thing my biggest thing would be that I really am a little camera shy.  I would have to have my students watch videos that didn't have me featured.  Now it's time to find some to use with second grade.

Collaboration

I was really enjoying this weeks topic because I really want to do more collaboration projects with my class.  Ellen Lupton is a museum curator that wrote an article title Why Collaborate?  She wrote
 "It can be frustrating, however, when a few people are doing the heavy lifting and the others are there only to “insure consensus” or “weigh in” on concepts."
I really understand that frustration.  My two sons are in high school and are often given group projects to work on.  As a parent, it is frustrating to watch my son do the majority of the work because some kids are too busy and can't meet to work together. Or my favorite excuse is that no one in his group knows how to edit a video (so they say). Then he's left with writing, filming and editing a joint film along with trying to find a time they all can meet. I see him doing most of the work while others just float by doing very little.   

Luton wrote,  " Collaboration is becoming more important across many fields of creative work"

I believe that the goal of collaboration is  not only reaching children academically, but also to help them with gaining the needed skills for future jobs.

Ellie Ashford  wrote "Educators are increasingly seeing the value of having students collaborate in small groups on classroom projects—and whether such projects involve producing a written or multimedia presentation, solving a math problem, or creating a video, technology can facilitate the group process" 
With my second grade students I am try to find good ways to have students collaborate.  They love working together.  I think one of my favorite times was when my students had made stick puppets at Christmas time and they broke up into groups writing and making a little skit that they filmed and put into a short movie.  They would take their "scrips" outside to work on and practice with during recess instead of playing. 
 In Mind Mapping in Education  they wrote about the benefit of graphic organizers as:
 

• Improve reading comprehension
• Benefit students achievement levels
• Enhance thinking and learning skills
• Increase retention
• Support cognitive learning theory

 This year I am going to do more collaboration and graphic organizers with my class. I think my second graders will really enjoy it and gain a lot from each other.

Bitstrip and iMovie

The first project that I worked on was bitstrip.  I started with making an avatar of me.  I had a lot of fun designing and creating a person.  At first I went to the  bitstrip.com site.  I wasn't sure how to save and download it at first without using facebook.  I don't like to post stuff like this on facebook so I stopped with the project.  I later went back and realized that their was one just for educators.  I tried the free trial and again made an avatar.  I really like all of the fun back grounds and variety of people and objects.  After I made one I realized that I can print it up.  I started getting all these great ideas on having each child make  their own comic strip and printing them up for open house. 

Digital Storytelling

I really enjoyed the videos on the digital storytelling.  I got really excited because I realized that it is something that I am already doing in my class. I first started with my own two boys.  (guinea pigs?) When my youngest son was in the fifth grade he had to do a report on the Plains Indians. He had to pick two areas to cover in his report.  He picked how they lived and how they hunted.  It was only suppose to be one and a half pages.  It turned out to be a 11 minute video.  He learned a lot but he also was able to put a picture with what he was saying.  He not only wrote about the Plain Indians he understood what he was writing about.  I feel that by the time he finished this video he really understood what he was studying.
When I started to try something similar in my own class, I was a little worried.  They were only second graders and still learning to read and write.  Its really hard to get some second graders to write. My first project was a I am poem. They wrote a poem about themselves and then found pictures to illustrate their poems.  It turned out so well that at Thanksgiving I had them write a poem about what they were thankful for and about Thanksgiving.  I had one little girl who worked on her project all by herself and was really quiet about it.  It was almost a secret.  When she turned in her poem it was so cute!  She had some spelling errors but she  was the first in the class to add a little voice over.  She figured it out herself.  She then became a little helper showing others how to do that.  She became the expert. I don't think these kids really knew how much writing they were doing!
I continued to do more projects.  I was really surprised that they students loved doing them so much.  I thought that they would get a little bored of making these movies and start to complain. They were always eager to start a new one.
The great thing about digital storytelling is that it can be used in so many different subjects.  I was able to use it in almost every subject I taught.  It helps kids have a deeper understanding of what they are learning.  Kids of every age can do this.  If my little ones in second grade can make one I think that just about anyone can do one.  We used iPod touches for making and editing the movies in my class. (great tool for a fairly low price)

Here is a sample of the movie my son made in the fifth grade (He's now going to start the 11th grade) and Thanksgiving poem that my student made (second grade-this year)

Feedly

At first I wasn't really sure about Feedly. I wasn't really sure about it so I had to really think about it.  I was really glad there were a lot of You tube videos on it.

My first category I chose to add was education. I was excited to see so many different feeds that I could add. I started to see the benefits of having Feedly. I could easily keep up with many trends coming in with education.
I then added a news category.  I feel it is very important to know what is going on in my community and in the world.
The last category I added was one on SDA.  I am really interested on what is going on in our Adventist  family.

It took me a little time to find out how to organize it, but once I did, I started to have a little fun.
I enjoyed adding the theme where I can use my favorite color-blue.
Using Feedly will allow me to quickly keep up with current news, education trends, and happenings in the SDA church.  I find that this will help me more as a teacher than as an aid for my students. I'm still thinking about if I can really use this with second graders. 

Blog 3 Puenntedura's SAMR model

Watching Puentedra's SAMR model in itunes took a little work.  I was really glad he had illustrations because he talked so fast and was a little hard to understand.

The SAMR model stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition.
He stated that the most learning came in the last two stages.

Substitution: This is where technology is just a substitution with no functional change.  This makes me think of when I use iBooks with my students.  We have several ebooks on each iPod for the students to read.  This is just a substitution for the real thing-a book.  I do enjoy having these ebooks because they don't get lost in the kids desk and open up to where they last left off.  I don't have to worry about kids tearing the pages of the books.

Augmentation: Technology acts as a direct tool substitution with functional improvements.  The really cool thing about iBooks is that kids are able to highlight a word and get a quick definition of the word. I often have my students stop and discuss what they thought something meant, we then can use the define tool in iBooks to quickly find the meaning.

Modification: Technology allows for significant task redesign.  This is where real learning starts to improve.  If we were reading a book on nocturnal animals, my students can then go into researching a nocturnal animal of their own and start gathering information for a report or project on a specific animal.  They would use edmodo to receive their assignment(and turn it in).  Projects can be done in either pages, or of course my favorite iMovie.

Redefinition:  Students would be able to either produce their own movie on which would be shown to the class and shared with parents and family members.  Children can also produce their own books on nocturnal animals which can be published and shared with the class.


I tried to use the tools that I use or will use with my class.  I used to think that since I taught second grade there wasn't a lot of technology I could use with them.  As I am trying more and more to integrate technology in my everyday teaching I am surprised as to how much I can use technology with young children.  They really love it and learn so quickly.  Now I'm just trying hard to keep up with them.