They also have lots of different classes that they offer. Some are about what is going on in certain companies. Classes on building foam weapons for your LARP (live action role playing) character or how to make chain-mail, even techniques for painting miniatures better or writing seminars..I took a class on making sushi last year and soap making this year. Victor, Ethan and I took a Kung Fu class. There are all kinds of crazy classes you can sign up for .
This year my favorite class by far was about making education into a game. I really enjoyed the concept. Since I thought it was such an interesting way to go I wanted to share some of what I got from the class with you. Let us begin-
The end goal of making education into a game is to stop learning from being extrinsic (reward or punishment from an outside source ) to being intrinsic ( self motivated.)
In order for a game to be good it needs to have certain aspects such as, but not limited to-
- decision making
- resources that players control
- information about changes that occur after a decision is made
On the first day of class in an average classroom everyone starts with 100%, an A. However as the semester goes on, the only thing that really happens to your grade is that it drops. Be it dramatically or slightly overall it is usually lower than the starting point. The problem with this method is that as human beings we can become irrational if we think we are going to lose something. If you are going to lose your good grade, why even bother? ( I know I am not the only one who has ever behaved in this ridiculous fashion. )
His solution for this problem was that everyone started off at 0. You have no points. You are at level 0. By the end of the semester you have to have achieved a specific level ranking. Let's say level 50. So all of your assignments, tests, etc help you gain rank. Another important stipulation about this is that a teacher can NEVER take away your levels. He also game them progress bars to see how they were doing.
Part of how this teacher ran things was that he gave out tokens for class participation, homework completion, writing on the board, etc. Then he presented them with a menu of things they could use the tokens for. Hint on a test, a special pin he made, painting a brick on his wall. He specified that never should a reward be that you can skip a question on a test or get out of a homework assignment on the grounds that you are failing as a teacher if your questions on assignments are skip-able. Why is that question even there if it doesn't matter?
He also refused to accept work that wasn't correct. He would point out the mistakes and hand it back for changing. The goal is perfection, not just marking it as filled out. I also liked how he set up his homework system. He recorded his own lectures and white board work and then watching the video was the homework assignment. That way they could work on practicing in class and he would be able to answer questions and fix problems immediately as they occurred.
He also noted that the players(or students) need to be the only one with interest in what happens to the tokens. If the teacher tries to be involved than it is no longer intrinsic to the player but is effected externally now.
Another thing he offered were "side quests" so they could earn more levels on their own voluntarily. Thereby encouraging self motivation.
In the end everyone seemed stunned by the amount of work that would be involved in putting all this together. He did admit that it is a lot of front ended work. Instead of being just ahead of the students in your lesson planning you need to have the entire semester planned out so your students can see the end goal.
There happened to be a man in the class how appearntly did put this into action in his own classroom and had rave reviews about it's effectiveness. Here is his website if you want more information on how it all played out. http://joncassie.com/gamifiedclassroom/
To sum it all up our teacher told us in the end the goal is to get children addicted to learning, to make it an intrinsic part of them and that this system greatly encourages that.
Well, I hope this was informative, or at least interesting. I thought it was a really neat concept.
No comments:
Post a Comment