I have a few names that I have used repeatedly as I hop from one computer game to another. There are two names I use most often; both from my days playing W.O.W., but I have had other names in other games too. Most of my friends and family have one gamertag that they use consistently on their main characters of any given game, and secondary names or names that are a variation of the main on other characters. I am slightly jealous of this; that they have one universal gamertag that has followed them through all their role playing adventures. I have not done the same. I think I am just too picky and indecisive.
Earlier in the school year, I decided that since my Minecraft Club members would be sharing my accounts, it would be a good idea to have them create a gamertag for themselves; to make it feel more like they had some ownership of their avatar. Since the Multi-School Minecraft Server has an add-on allowing people to change their names by typing: /nick, I figured this would be easy. Because I was doing this as a club activity, I didn't really plan out how I was going to teach the use of gamertags like I would have, if I was teaching a lesson in regular class time. That was the wrong choice to make.
What I Did:
At the beginning of club time I had the students meet me at the carpet while they waited for their computers to log in, and spoke to them briefly about what a gamertag is, and how people often have one that they use across every game they play. I gave examples of gamertags of people I know and told a story about how my friend had reconnected with another friend she had lost contact with when she stopped playing Dark Age of Camelot. This friend saw an avatar with the same name her friend in Dark Age of Camelot run by her in the town of another game, and she was able to send them a direct message. Because of this they were able to renew their friendship. More importantly I spoke about gamertags can be one way of protecting their real personal information. I then gave a few examples of tags being used. I finished off by letting the club members know that they were to create their own gamertags for the next meeting in a weeks time.
What Happened:
I got some good tags, but more than anything I got a lot of long, difficult to remember names that were impossible to spell or read.
Things I Should Have Done:
- Given different strategies for creating a name i.e. based on interests, fandoms, genres etc.
- Practiced creating a gamertag with students i.e. if Harry Potter had to pick a gamertag what do you think he would use? Katnis?
- Demonstrate effective uses of symbols and numbers in gamertags
- Insist that students be able to spell their gamertag.
What I Am Doing Now
For health I am covering online safety with a focus on cyber bullying. As part of the overall online safety unit I will actually try address creating an online persona through gamertag. Hopefully this will also lead into deeper questions and discussions about roles and responsibilities as a digital citizen beyond what we do in school. For example: does having an online persona separate from who I am in real life mean that I can behave any way I want?
(My class uses Minecraft in the during class time so there will be a practical application to this exercise. Especially since I will soon be moving to MinecraftEdu, which will allow students to pick there own avatar names and skins.)
Showing posts with label game based learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label game based learning. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Centres in a Junior Class = an Opportunity to Play
Heads up, this is a bit of a longer post than I normally put up.
This has been one of the most challenging years for me as a teacher. I have had the privilege of teaching the first class at the TDSB Girls Leadership Academy. This is one of the programs of choice created by the TDSB; others include the Boys Leadership, Music, Sports and Wellness, and Africentric academies. The challenge I speak of is not teaching 25 girls -while there are challenges there too. No, my challenge is covering 3 grades and include time for play and discovery. You read correctly, I teach a grade 4/5/6 split grade class, and yes I believe there should be time for play. I am not the only teacher to teach 3 grades in one class. It is possible, just challenging. I have been fortunate to have support from a morning resource teacher for at least one period a day, great student teachers and Instructional Leaders. But I digress, The point of this post is not to talk about the challenges of teaching 3 grades at once, but how I was able to use centres to get to target some small group instruction, useful class production, and play at the same time. It only took 7 months.
I have been toying with centres in the junior grades for years (in the library, working with classroom teachers as a teacher librarian), but I have never really got the right balance of activities to ensure that the time is used effectively, but I think I got it, or that I am at least approaching a balance. My concern was making the centres both engaging and purposeful. I still think there are things that need to be tweaked, but for a first attempt it went far better than I had expected.
MY CLASS
In our class we have 4 groups of six students with one student sitting alone (her choice). One group is all grade 5 students, and the other groups are made up of four grade 4 students and two grade 6 students. We have a 30 computers, and that means that this year we have one computer per students, plus 4 on standby. Next year, we won't have that luxury, but for this year it is a pretty nice setup. Computers can be used at all the centres, but only really needed at one.
CENTRES
Here is the centre breakdown: Writers Workshop, Silent-ish reading, Research and Minecraft. At almost every centre students had the choice to work on or offline. Each table started where they were and then rotated to the other centres, logging off at each centre before rotating, except at the Minecraft centre where they stayed logged into their Minecraft accounts. This was done to minimize laptop movement, and to make transition in and out of the Minecraft centre smoother. Most students choose to use the computers, and in the research centre, students used a mixture of books and computers. I was actually surprised that many students wanted to use the computers over books at silent reading centre, but it gave me the opportunity to show students some of the ebook resource the TDSB has to offer, mostly Follett Shelf, but others wanted to read articles too. In the next couple of weeks I will be spending more time at the reading centre to help facilitate online reading choices -one of the problems was that some students were choosing ebooks that were either far to easy.
MINECRAFT
The Minecraft centre was the centre where I had to give almost no support. The girls helped each other for the most part, giving advice, and help to each other. The only time I was called upon, was when someone got stuck in a hole, or if there was a message for me from one of the teachers playing on the server in another school. I had one student opt out of playing, but by the end of the class she seemed to be open to trying it out if given another opportunity. I think the main reason behind that change is that one of her peers was very happy to be able to play and was excited to see their mutual friend from another school (Highland Heights) online at the same time, and it gave her the chance to have sanctioned chat time in class. Little did she know, I was happy with her chatting, as she is a reluctant writer and anything that gets her writing is a step in the right direction. I look forward to their future chats, and am interested to see if their chatting leads to play. I have already talked to the teachers at Highland Heights to see if we could plan to be on at the same time again. I also want to see what students will create, how will they play -one student has already made it clear that she wants to play separately- and how/if I should make them report on their time.
Some of my students have been asking if we could construct villages in Minecraft to represent the societies we have been studying (Midieval, Early and First Nations). I am inclined to do this, but I really want it to be from them more than from me. In Math, as a culminating task for area and perimeter we designed our dream home -on poster board not Minecraft, and I think that maybe I will let them know that if want to design a village they need to first show me their plans and then find them time to construct their villages. I will see how this flies this week.
FINAL THOUGHTS
All of these centre, with the exception on the Minecraft centre have been a part of the regular class program, but instead of having students work a full 50 minutes on their current research/inquiry project, or writing piece they want to workshop, students have 15 minutes to get to work then move on. There was also a couple of minutes transition time between centres that was not included in the 15 minutes. I wanted the centres to change every 20 minutes, but we had a later start than I hoped. Next time we should be able to be able to do it that way. The feedback at the end of the period was mostly positive, with the only negatives being; that there wasn't enough time at each centre, and it was difficult to work with Follett Shelf. The second complaint I took with a grain of salt, because I hadn't really planned to introduce Follett Shelf, except that students were choosing to read ebooks off other sites that were not very challenging and I intervened with a brief intro to Follett, and they really didn't have a very long time to practice using it before they had to rotate. So, all in all, it was a positive experience. Depending on how things go I may even split the centres over two days, but that's a challenge for future me.
This has been one of the most challenging years for me as a teacher. I have had the privilege of teaching the first class at the TDSB Girls Leadership Academy. This is one of the programs of choice created by the TDSB; others include the Boys Leadership, Music, Sports and Wellness, and Africentric academies. The challenge I speak of is not teaching 25 girls -while there are challenges there too. No, my challenge is covering 3 grades and include time for play and discovery. You read correctly, I teach a grade 4/5/6 split grade class, and yes I believe there should be time for play. I am not the only teacher to teach 3 grades in one class. It is possible, just challenging. I have been fortunate to have support from a morning resource teacher for at least one period a day, great student teachers and Instructional Leaders. But I digress, The point of this post is not to talk about the challenges of teaching 3 grades at once, but how I was able to use centres to get to target some small group instruction, useful class production, and play at the same time. It only took 7 months.
I have been toying with centres in the junior grades for years (in the library, working with classroom teachers as a teacher librarian), but I have never really got the right balance of activities to ensure that the time is used effectively, but I think I got it, or that I am at least approaching a balance. My concern was making the centres both engaging and purposeful. I still think there are things that need to be tweaked, but for a first attempt it went far better than I had expected.
MY CLASS
In our class we have 4 groups of six students with one student sitting alone (her choice). One group is all grade 5 students, and the other groups are made up of four grade 4 students and two grade 6 students. We have a 30 computers, and that means that this year we have one computer per students, plus 4 on standby. Next year, we won't have that luxury, but for this year it is a pretty nice setup. Computers can be used at all the centres, but only really needed at one.
CENTRES
Here is the centre breakdown: Writers Workshop, Silent-ish reading, Research and Minecraft. At almost every centre students had the choice to work on or offline. Each table started where they were and then rotated to the other centres, logging off at each centre before rotating, except at the Minecraft centre where they stayed logged into their Minecraft accounts. This was done to minimize laptop movement, and to make transition in and out of the Minecraft centre smoother. Most students choose to use the computers, and in the research centre, students used a mixture of books and computers. I was actually surprised that many students wanted to use the computers over books at silent reading centre, but it gave me the opportunity to show students some of the ebook resource the TDSB has to offer, mostly Follett Shelf, but others wanted to read articles too. In the next couple of weeks I will be spending more time at the reading centre to help facilitate online reading choices -one of the problems was that some students were choosing ebooks that were either far to easy.
MINECRAFT
The Minecraft centre was the centre where I had to give almost no support. The girls helped each other for the most part, giving advice, and help to each other. The only time I was called upon, was when someone got stuck in a hole, or if there was a message for me from one of the teachers playing on the server in another school. I had one student opt out of playing, but by the end of the class she seemed to be open to trying it out if given another opportunity. I think the main reason behind that change is that one of her peers was very happy to be able to play and was excited to see their mutual friend from another school (Highland Heights) online at the same time, and it gave her the chance to have sanctioned chat time in class. Little did she know, I was happy with her chatting, as she is a reluctant writer and anything that gets her writing is a step in the right direction. I look forward to their future chats, and am interested to see if their chatting leads to play. I have already talked to the teachers at Highland Heights to see if we could plan to be on at the same time again. I also want to see what students will create, how will they play -one student has already made it clear that she wants to play separately- and how/if I should make them report on their time.
Some of my students have been asking if we could construct villages in Minecraft to represent the societies we have been studying (Midieval, Early and First Nations). I am inclined to do this, but I really want it to be from them more than from me. In Math, as a culminating task for area and perimeter we designed our dream home -on poster board not Minecraft, and I think that maybe I will let them know that if want to design a village they need to first show me their plans and then find them time to construct their villages. I will see how this flies this week.
FINAL THOUGHTS
All of these centre, with the exception on the Minecraft centre have been a part of the regular class program, but instead of having students work a full 50 minutes on their current research/inquiry project, or writing piece they want to workshop, students have 15 minutes to get to work then move on. There was also a couple of minutes transition time between centres that was not included in the 15 minutes. I wanted the centres to change every 20 minutes, but we had a later start than I hoped. Next time we should be able to be able to do it that way. The feedback at the end of the period was mostly positive, with the only negatives being; that there wasn't enough time at each centre, and it was difficult to work with Follett Shelf. The second complaint I took with a grain of salt, because I hadn't really planned to introduce Follett Shelf, except that students were choosing to read ebooks off other sites that were not very challenging and I intervened with a brief intro to Follett, and they really didn't have a very long time to practice using it before they had to rotate. So, all in all, it was a positive experience. Depending on how things go I may even split the centres over two days, but that's a challenge for future me.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
What is Game Based Learning?
There are a lot of companies and people that claim to have great games for higher order thinking skills that are great for Game Based Learning (GBL). Yet, even though they use the right words in their pitches, post, pintersets etc.. I am left feeling like Indigo Montoya in The Princess Bride: I do not think those words mean what you think they mean.
At the same time I wonder if I know what those words mean. There are a lot of people who talk about what Game Based Learning is, and how to incorporate it in the classroom, but some of the messages I am hearing/reading are often conflicting and contrary to my understanding and/or personal philosophy around GBL. Is there a widely accepted definition of Game Based Learning?
Here are some of the things I believe about Game Based Learning, and please add to my understanding or correct something that I don't represent accurately:
-Student lead
-Engages students in creative critical thinking skills
-Not just computer games
-educational without having to be "Educational" -if that makes any sense
-Games students can 'break' and remodel, revise, rebuild
(Here is where I would normally wax poetic about Minecraft, but you can just peek at the gamingeducators wiki I belong to with @MzMollyTL and @liamodonnell)
What I think I am seeing is more of lately is Gamification being called Game Based Learning. I really think there needs to be more clarification here because the two concepts are very different.
Gamification (click for an infographic) -in my opinion- is like a sticker program for behaviour. Students complete certain game labeled task, and get a reward in; badges, exp. points etc... Sounds cool and often is. What I'm afraid of is that with this kind of program students, with time, will see through the educational modification to their regular program and stop buying into what is being 'gamified'. Students who do not have as many badges as their peers being among the first to opt out of the program. I won't lie, I have often become a slave to gaining achievements in games I play *cough* W.O.W. *cough,* but after time, and seeing my friends out achieve me, I stopped caring. Now playing Diablo III I see that there are achievements, and I do experience some satisfaction when I gain an achievement, but I don't really care, nor do I try to game in a way that will purposefully gain more achievements.
Honestly, as a teacher of close to 10 years I have not yet seen this type of modification work for a whole year, whether because of student rebellion against it, teacher burn out from having to administer it, or a combination of both. That being said, I know there are wonderful educators who are able to overcome both the obstacles I mentioned above. There are some great looking gamification programs that have been built by educators too. But I still don't think that makes it Game Based Learning.
I do believe the two approaches to using games in the class is motivated by the same basic goal: to engage, motivate, and scaffold students so they can achieve more. Yet the two have very different strategies for reaching their goals. Kinda like the whole language vs. phonics debates.
Perhaps I am being a bit pedantic by stressing the difference I see between Game Based Learning and Gamification. But honestly, I see them as two different animals.
So what is Game Based Learning anyway? Who should I read? Where am I misinformed?
(Note: I used the word "scaffold" because I think it appropriate and just in case my friend @nodycer decides to read this.)
At the same time I wonder if I know what those words mean. There are a lot of people who talk about what Game Based Learning is, and how to incorporate it in the classroom, but some of the messages I am hearing/reading are often conflicting and contrary to my understanding and/or personal philosophy around GBL. Is there a widely accepted definition of Game Based Learning?
Here are some of the things I believe about Game Based Learning, and please add to my understanding or correct something that I don't represent accurately:
-Student lead
-Engages students in creative critical thinking skills
-Not just computer games
-educational without having to be "Educational" -if that makes any sense
-Games students can 'break' and remodel, revise, rebuild
(Here is where I would normally wax poetic about Minecraft, but you can just peek at the gamingeducators wiki I belong to with @MzMollyTL and @liamodonnell)
What I think I am seeing is more of lately is Gamification being called Game Based Learning. I really think there needs to be more clarification here because the two concepts are very different.
Gamification (click for an infographic) -in my opinion- is like a sticker program for behaviour. Students complete certain game labeled task, and get a reward in; badges, exp. points etc... Sounds cool and often is. What I'm afraid of is that with this kind of program students, with time, will see through the educational modification to their regular program and stop buying into what is being 'gamified'. Students who do not have as many badges as their peers being among the first to opt out of the program. I won't lie, I have often become a slave to gaining achievements in games I play *cough* W.O.W. *cough,* but after time, and seeing my friends out achieve me, I stopped caring. Now playing Diablo III I see that there are achievements, and I do experience some satisfaction when I gain an achievement, but I don't really care, nor do I try to game in a way that will purposefully gain more achievements.
Honestly, as a teacher of close to 10 years I have not yet seen this type of modification work for a whole year, whether because of student rebellion against it, teacher burn out from having to administer it, or a combination of both. That being said, I know there are wonderful educators who are able to overcome both the obstacles I mentioned above. There are some great looking gamification programs that have been built by educators too. But I still don't think that makes it Game Based Learning.
I do believe the two approaches to using games in the class is motivated by the same basic goal: to engage, motivate, and scaffold students so they can achieve more. Yet the two have very different strategies for reaching their goals. Kinda like the whole language vs. phonics debates.
Perhaps I am being a bit pedantic by stressing the difference I see between Game Based Learning and Gamification. But honestly, I see them as two different animals.
So what is Game Based Learning anyway? Who should I read? Where am I misinformed?
(Note: I used the word "scaffold" because I think it appropriate and just in case my friend @nodycer decides to read this.)
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