If You Are on the Fence About Gamification, Jump Over....I'll Show You How and Why I Did

To say I have a great group of kids this year would be an understatement.  I have a awesome group of kids.  Of course, that doesn’t mean they are perfect.  As teachers, we always discuss how a certain group of kids can build a reputation for certain things.  For example, someone might say, “Just wait until you get these next 4th graders.  They are an athletic group”.  What I remember hearing about the group this year is that they were a tough group.  Well they must have morphed over the summer.  They are polite, kind and funny as a group.  If I had to pick one area that frustrates me with them, it would be responsibility.  In the first few weeks of school, I would give an assignment and the day it was due, about 16 kids out of 48 would turn it in on time.  That blew me away.  How could so many of this sweet group of kids not turn something in?  Of course, I assumed it was me.  My directions were terrible or something like that.  Then I started creating video directions and nothing changed.  I took points off assignments if they were late.  Still nothing changed.  I started racking my brain and trying to think of someway to motivate these kids.  I believe something flowed across my Twitter feed about Gamification.  It’s not like it’s a new topic but I’ve never really let it get inside by head.  I went ahead and read up on it and the ideas of how it might help this group started flowing like fine wine.    

             

Gamification can mean different things to different people.  For me, I wanted it to be a way to make the students better students but also better people.  I wanted to get away from the mind set of punishing kids for what they are not doing and into the mindset of rewarding them for what they are doing.  I teach reading and writing to two 5th grade classes.  I started the whole gamification journey by asking the students, “If this classroom was a video game, what would the name of the game be?”  My first period class came up with the game title, “Clash of the Warriors”.  My second period class came up with, “Rise of the Warrior”.  The game titles alone got me fired up and made me want to redo our whole class into a video game concept.  I started by thinking, “What do I want the students to do?”.  That led me to create a system of actions that would be rewarded with points.  Here is the link to my points system.  Points  Next, I created a system of levels that the students could achieve as they earned points.  Here is the link to the levels.  Levels  It wasn’t easy trying to come up with those levels but I wanted to make it look as cool as possible for the kids, so you can see how the font changes and grows as they move up levels.  Mind you all this creating was going on without the students knowledge.  The more I got into it, the more I got motivated to make it epic.  The kids were then given a secret name.  I had to come up with 48 names, so I tried to make it easy.  The names are random names like PinkUnicorn01.  I try to be sly, so I don’t make the PinkUnicorn1 a girl.  I give that name to a boy.  They have to keep their name a secret.  There are two reasons for that.  The first reason is because I knew I was going to post a leaderboard and I didn’t want any child feeling bad because they were at the bottom of the leaderboard.  This way, they only see a fake name and they have no idea who it represents.  The other reason is because by earning 1500 points, they reach The Ultimate Warrior level and they earn their way to a party.  This is no ordinary party.  It’s a reveal party.  At the party, they must try to dress up as whatever their name is.  They reveal their identity at the party.  When I told them this, I think their heads almost exploded.  The excitement was thick in the air.  I have a checklist for each class and I award points during the week and add them to the checklist as they earn them.  Over the weekend, I submit the points to Class Dojo and enter them separately into a Google Form that calculates a Leaderboard.  Here is what the leaderboard looks like and the credit for it goes to Chris Hesselbein.  I found his video on YouTube.  Leaderboard  In one way, the kids are competing against each other because the person with the most points will get an award.  The top ten will also get awards.  In another way, they are working together to succeed.  The group points part of the system has kids encouraging each other and helping each other.  I don’t care if they are only doing it for points.  Isn’t it said that if you do something enough times, it becomes a habit?  What a shame if having good manners, learning teamwork and becoming responsible become a habit right?  Wrong!  Bring on the good habits.  I should add that a friendly little rivalry was born between my two classes.  They came up with the idea of competing against each other. We worked on making video game posters for each class. Check them out.  

We’ve been doing this for three weeks now and I can report the changes I’ve seen.  Let’s start with the turning work in on time.  The first assignment showed quite an improvement from the beginning of the year.  The 16/48 kids turning an assignment in on time, turned into 47/48 kids turning the assignment on time.  When I wrote that I could literally hear Matt Damon saying, “How do you like them apples?”.  I know that may sound a bit corny but that turn around just fires me up.  The kids are also showing better manners.  We just had 4H earlier in the week and I had to step out of the room for a meeting.  In past years, the kids could be pretty rude to the 4H teacher.  When I returned, the 4H teacher said, “That is the most polite group of kids I have taught all year.”  It never hurts a teacher to hear comments like that.  I also see kids picking things up in the hallways, helping each other and doing assignments that I didn’t even assign.  I’m just waiting to see where the hurdles are going to be but hoping there won’t be any.  One thing I keep asking myself is, “Why didn’t I give Gamification a chance earlier?”.   Stay tuned for the end of this marking period when I take pictures at the reveal party.  I know I can’t wait!  I will have another little surprise for them at the party.  I can’t write about it here because my students might read this and that will give it away.  It’s just too good of a surprise to ruin, so make sure you check out my follow up in a few weeks.  I know it will be worth it.  

The Teacher I am HATES the Teacher I used to Be

     Cruel detentions, tucked in shirts, hours of homework. These are  some of the policies that the old me used to  enforce that the new me would never allow.  

     What is a cruel detention?  If you ask any of the kids that I taught in the first ten years of my career, I'm sure everyone of them will know.  If they broke any of the class rules three times in one day, they would earn a one hour detention after school.  During this detention, they would have to sit with both hands on top of the desk and not move their hands or feet.  Just typing that alone made me cringe.  I'm not saying I did it to be cruel.  I didn't!  I did what I thought was right at the time.    I wasn't a monster though.  With kids staying an hour after school, there was no crossing guard left to help them cross the intersection outside our school.  I would walk them across the intersection and many times, I would even walk them most of the way home.  See, I wasn't all bad.  However, I could have been better.  I could have found a better way to inspire kids to behave in school.  Now I know that when you create great lessons and make things in your classroom fun, kids don't misbehave nearly as much.  A huge part of classroom management is making learning fun and keeping kids engaged. That of course doesn't eliminate every behavior problem but it takes care of most. 

     We were a uniform school and I always required the boys in my class to tuck their shirts in.  In some way, I guess I was trying to force them to be disciplined and look nice.  Meanwhile, I was walking around with my shirt hanging down to my knees.  For some reason, the word hypocrite comes to mind.  It made sense to me at the time.  It doesn't make much sense to me today.  
      Today, I spend more time focusing on preparing my students for 6th grade.  I set my sights on much different goals.  For one, I want them to learn to love learning.  I want to make them want to come to school.  Another goal is to make them self driven learners.  That's not an easy thing to do, but it's worth a try.  I work so hard to make them understand that the only person worth comparing themselves to is themselves.  I want them to start from right where they are and go forward and improve and see the results of their effort.  That sure has nothing to do with whether a shirt is tucked in or not. 

     Kids love homework don't they?  I'm sure my students did.  They got so much of it, they may have learned to love it.  I was big on teaching kids how to outline text.  Why?  I don't know.  I still think that knowing how to outline is a great skill.  The worst part is that I would often assign this as homework.  Outlining takes time and we know all kids are different.  Some may have been done in thirty minutes, but others may have taken three hours.    Today, I don't even believe in giving homework.  The only time a kid will have homework in my class now is if they waste time in class and don't finish something.  That is their choice, not mine.  Kids have so many after school activities they might be involved in these days.  It might be a sport, cheer leading, karate, music or some other activity.  I want them to have time for these things because they are just as important as anything they can learn at school and more important than anything I could make them do at home.    I want them to go home and work on their fast ball,  practice their jump shot, learn to play the piano or just go home and do something different than school work.  Unless....... you wasted my time in class.  Then you can go home and do homework all night!   

     The funny thing is that my old students probably have no bad thoughts about the detentions, the tucked in shirts or the homework.  They may even look back on those times as great times.  Many of them are friends with me to this day and they still say their year with me, was their best year ever.  I always think how much I wish they could be in my class now or how much I wish I knew then what I know now.  Wouldn't life be grand if it were that way. 

     I didn't write this to step on any toes.  I've been very transparent here and I've been critical of myself.  I'm not judging anyone else or how any other teacher does things.  I'm not telling anyone to give or not give homework.  I'm simply judging how I did things and how I've continued to evolve over my career.  More importantly, I'm showing that I'm always reflecting about what I do as a teacher, why I do it, and if it benefits my students.  We should all be trying to improve continuously.  Learning to be a better teacher has never been easier or cheaper.  The thing that has helped me grow the most is Twitter.  So many wonderful educators share the best ideas they have to offer, freely.  If you haven't tried Twitter, I think you should. Let me end with this parting thought, "Ten years from now, I hope the teacher I am then, HATES the teacher I am today." 

So You Want to Use Green Screen in Your Classroom

Why You Should    

     Nothing is more exciting for a teacher than seeing excitement boil over in your students.  Making school fun for our students should be one of our biggest goals.  Using green screen technology in your classroom is one way you can achieve this for many students.  I'm not saying everything in school is fun.  Taking assessments doesn't exactly equal to a party.  However, all assessments don't have to be multiple choice or long answer.  Showing what you have learned about something can be done in a fun way using green screen.  Here is an example of kids learning about the Bill of Rights and using video technology with green screen to show what they've learned.



This next video is an example of using green screen technology to create a video newsletter in 2012.   

Using technology this way helps kids with the writing process (writing scripts), and helps them learn to be more creative through designing, filming, editing and publishing the videos.  We've gotten a bit more advanced over they years.  This is our latest video newsletter. 


 What You Need

     I've been using green screen technology for many years and I can't tell you how often I've heard other teachers say something like, "I wish I knew how to do that" or "I wish I had the resources to do that."  It's easier than you think.
     To start, you need a green screen.  Here is the one I started with: My First Green Screen. ($18 on Amazon).  For this green screen, you will also need a way to attach it to a wall or board.  I used these spring clamps at first (Spring Clamps).  You will also need something to video tape with.  You can use something as simple as a smartphone, or something as sophisticated as a top notch video camera.  Most schools have something in the middle available to them.
     Finally, you will need video editing software.  Those schools that use Apple products can use iMovie.  iMovie has chroma key editing features built into the software.  WeVideo is free, and it's easily integrated into Google Drive.  I use Sony Vegas Movie Studio, which can be purchased for as low as $50 and you can find it even cheaper on Amazon.   Some people may be nervous about learning to use the software.  No fear my friends!  Youtube has more videos than you can count for virtually every software program.  We all also seem to have at least one "tech wiz" in each class.  You can have that student learn the software and teach you or teach the other students. 
     If you get more advanced or come into some funds, you can upgrade to a green screen like this (Green Screen with Support Stand).  One important thing to also mention is lighting.  You either need a room with pretty good lighting or if you have the funds, a Lighting Kit.  You don't have to have perfect lighting but the better lighting you have, the better the green screen affect will work.  The picture below was made using a green screen with a lighting setup. 

Now go get a green screen and get started!