So, while Lauren has been heating up and cooling down multiple times a day, I’ve been working on trying something new with my programming class.
For the last couple of years people have been experimenting with using common elements in games in classrooms. It’s called Gamification, and it’s not playing games in class. People have been doing that for a long time. It’s turning the whole class into a game. People are also doing it outside of education too. You’ve maybe been gamified yourself without knowing it. If you want to know more about it in general, watch this video:
Okay, everything make sense now?
I’ve been working on how this will look in my class, and in a nutshell, students will still do (mostly) all of the same stuff I’ve had them do in this class for years. But this time around, they will get points for doing them and when they get enough points they will go up a level and when they go up a level they can pick certain perks. Additionally, they can see on Leaderboards how the rest of the class is doing and earn Achievements for doing certain things well.
See, Mom, I knew all those hours playing video games were going to pay off for me.
If you’re really interested, you can take a look at the Programming website. I’ve already rolled out a few of the leaderboards, I’m also keeping a list of useful resources and making some posts about how I’m doing things, why I’m doing them that way and how they are turning out. I’ve done 4 posts so far.