Blog Archives

#PKP . . . Gamification

2/24/2018

Soooooo . . . I’m super duper excited to be trying my hand at gamification during our Passionate Kids Project unit. I’ve been digging into Michael Matera’s book “Explore Like a Pirate” and youtube channel. The guy is off the charts! I've been loving the #XPLAP community on Twitter and all their inspiration and encouragement. Give @MrMatera a follow.

The main piece of advice about gamification that I’ve learned so far is to layer the gaming elements on top of your existing curriculum. I wasn’t sure how that would work, but once I got going, it really does. I decided to gamify our passion project unit since it would be contained inside the parameters and time frame of the unit itself. Michael suggests a storyline, characters, side quests, and more. Since this is my first shot at it, I don’t yet have all the elements in place, but enough to generate interest.

Let’s see what we’ve done so far.

As I introduced PKP, each student received a game board. (I created it using Google Drawings.) The concept of the board is that students receive stickers on the inside of the board when they complete regular classroom tasks. The outside sections are for side quests (double point value). Side quests are completely voluntary. The ultimate goal is to earn points for privileges during our student-led edcamp. Basically, the more points you have, the more options you have during edcamp such as location of your table, which session you want to present in, or likelihood of attending the sessions you’re interested in. Here’s a link to the game board. Feel free to make a copy and remix it.

According to Mr. Matera, a good gamification unit has characters. We have four characters with passions of their own. Kung Fu Panda loves tech and especially Google Blackbelt Throwdowns and Care Bear is all about relationships and showing kindness to others. Curious George has a mind full of questions and continuously seeks answers. And Waldo, well, he’s completely random. Once never knows when he will show up. (And one teacher, me, needed a character for when something completely random pops into her head.

We’re now on our third week of PKP. Students have had opportunities to earn stickers on the inside part of the board as well as side quests. An unexpected result of the required classroom tasks is that students are expected to produce work at an acceptable level. Some students had to go back and add more details and elaborate on some of their work while others produced work that was superior to what they usually do.

Here are some of the required tasks so far:

Interest Survey here
Finding Your Passion here
- Bonus for sharing orally
Entry in our Curiosity Journal here
Cardboard Challenge individual design

The side quests have been really fun. The best piece of advice Mr. Matera gave was that not all students will participate in side quests. And, students will gravitate to quests that meet their talents and personalities. He suggested a balance of quests that are academic in nature and others that involve relationship building and empathy. With that in mind, I developed the concepts for the side quests.

We’ve had one Kung Fu Panda Blackbelt Throwdown. Once we get started with our actual collecting of evidence, writing, and creating, students will be asked to reflect on their journey. My dear friend, Jessica Ortega, has a phenomenal digi journal. Follow her @JessOrtegaEdu. For the challenge, I planted a link to a bitly that took students to an instruction page that Jessica created to make the digi journals. When students came back the next day, I asked students that were doing the challenge to meet me at our table. There were about 7 students. One student completed the task, one student started it, and the other students were interested but hadn’t started yet. I asked the student that completed the challenge to share with the group. She gave us a detailed walkthrough. (She earned her black belt sticker that day.) I let the group know that we’d come back after the weekend to see the other digi journals. On Monday, only one other student completed the challenge. She shared with the first student and me at the table. I ceremoniously gave her her sticker. My daughter works at Disneyland and we had just visited. When I was there, I bought pieces of “magic” as prizes. The two girls were able to choose a piece of magic. One girl chose happiness and the other chose generosity. I then closed the challenge. Side note . . . I’ve decided to close challenges at a certain point so that students have to strike while it’s hot.

For the Care Bear, empathy section, I’ve been giving students stickers for commenting on this PKP blog. Now, I don’t actually announce side quests. Because of the random element of gaming, students never know what will earn them a sticker. Of course, over time, they’ll discover some patterns. The stickers for blog comments came about by chance. I had posted the link on Google Classroom and a student commented. I took that as the perfect opportunity to hand out a sticker. Now that I’ve posted a couple of blogs, students are starting to see that commenting is a way to earn a sticker.

Oh, oh!!! Shhhhhh, don’t tell. Students shared their group design for the Cardboard Challenge on a flipgrid. Students that reply with a video response will be earning a Care Bear sticker. ❤

Soooo, I felt like I was doing a pretty good job with layering the gamboard on top of our PKP unit. But, I wasn't sure what to do with the points. I reached out to the #XPLAP community for suggestions. @KimSnodgrass graciously let me pick her brain. After getting a better handle on XP, I had a plan. As part of our PKP unit, we’re participating in the Cardboard Challenge. I have an office FULL of boxes, odds and ends. We have 10 teams creating games. Each group was given an index card and asked to total up their combined points and divide by how many team members they have. (Sneaky, sneaky!!! Pulled some math into the challenge.) Teams lined up from the most points to the least. Each group was allowed to get three items from the “warehouse”. It was absolutely brilliant! The excitement was off the charts. At that moment, we had a game!!!

All I can say is, “WOW!” My class and I are loving game based learning. I call them the beta testers and I’m the game master. We’re on this journey together. Since we began, students are constantly looking around the room, logging into Google Classroom, are more active participating, producing more detailed work, and keep asking, “When are we doing PKP?”

If you’ve been thinking about dipping your toes into gamification, I highly recommend starting with Mr. Matera’s book, following the #XPLAP hashtag, and ask your students to take the journey with you. They are gamers!!! They will help you and energize you to create engaging learning experiences for them.

I won’t be posting next week. But I’ll be back the next weekend to share our experience with Caine’s Arcade and the Cardboard Challenge.

#MuchLove,
Marilyn

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#Pkp . . . Finding Your PASSION

2/19/2018

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After our launch last week, my class and I were excited to get going with Passionate Kids Project, PKP, this week. But before I dive into the week, I’d like to give a HUGE shoutout to my Twitter friend, Meagan Kelly. She is a phenomenal junior high math teacher, AVID coordinator, and Google Innovator. Meagan shares so many resources that she’s created and uses in her classroom on her blog, I❤Edu. In October, she shared her 20% Time lesson design with us. (Click here.) I kept it on the back burner knowing that one day I would use it. Meagan has inspired me immensely and I have remixed several of her ideas to meet the goals and needs of my students. I am eternally grateful for Meagan. Give her a follow on Twitter at @Meagan-e-kelly.

We started the week with an interest survey. Actually, it’s the same interest survey that I gave at the beginning of the year, but this one had a PKP twist to it. (Click here.) Students were asked six questions, inspired by a talk given by Katie Martin at #EdCamp619 in Chula Vista this fall. Thank you Katie!!! Because the idea of passions may be new to students, the interest survey has students reflect on their own lives both in and out of school. Students took about 20 minutes to complete the survey.

We came back the next day and orally shared. The atmosphere was calm, relaxed, and respectful. Each question was presented one at a time. Students were given the option to stand up if they wanted to share. The attentiveness during this session was impressive. At one point, I reminded students that this is a safe environment and that we can trust each other with personal details. I was glad that I took the time to slow down and allow students to share. You could see students connecting with their passions and each other. Our Mr. Anthony even came in and took some videos of students sharing. His mind is ticking away on how he’s going to format the documentary.

I asked four students if I could share their PKP journey on my blog. I think it will be interesting to follow their process through the student perspective throughout the project. Click here, here, here, and here to view their interest surveys. There is an Answer Garden at the end that was completed by the 4th grade class and ours. If you’re new to Answer Garden, it’s a quick and fun feedback tool.

After we shared our interest survey, I gave each student an index card. I instructed students to reflect on the survey and list three passions on one side of the index card. On the other side, I asked students to write three concerns they have about our community or the world around us. Earlier in the year, we created Shark Tank inventions that would be useful to society. The exposure to looking at the world around us and attempting to solve problems and concerns sure helped us as we looked at societal concerns through the PKP lens. Students held on to these cards for a couple of days.

Side note . . . I had a conversation with Dive Into Inquiry author, Trevor MacKenzie, recently. He stressed the importance of making learning sticky. He used the term “velcro.” The videos, conversations, and brainstorming are hopefully providing something for student’s ideas to stick to.

As we launched into our “Find Your Passion” official lesson, students pulled out their index cards. We started the lesson introducing the essential question for the unit.

What ignites your passion and how can your passion make a positive impact on society?

Shout out to Joy Ceasar, our district GATE coordinator, for developing the essential question and providing structure for PKP district wide.

By this point, students had experienced the unit launch, completed the interest survey, and brainstormed their passions. I introduced the essential question to the class. Then, I told them that I wanted to share a story about a boy with a HUGE passion . . . Caine Monroy. We watched the infamous “Caine’s Arcade” video. Students were mesmerized. After the video, I walked the kids over to my office. This is what they saw . . .

Yup, you saw that right. A wall full of recycled boxes, containers, odds and ends. Right there in the office, with some students in and others outside the door, I introduce the Cardboard Challenge. This is my third year conducting the challenge. It’s a blast! The 4Cs at it’s finest. Here’s a blog post about my first experience with the challenge. There’s a fun video at the end. 😃

Finally, I felt that students were ready to starting penning their ideas down. Students were asked to write down three passions, three concerns about their community or world around them, and connect a passion with a concern. Because of the “velcro” experiences before getting to this point, almost all students were able to make connections. Phew!!! I’m so glad I didn’t rush students to get to this point on day one. Students completed this doc, remixed from Meagan Kelly. View our four student’s work here, here, here, and here.

When students were working through their doc, I revealed more about the project. Students will be asked to present a proposal, research, keep a folder of learning evidence, reflect, backwards map a timeline of work to be completed, write an article review that includes two sources, create an authentic piece, and present at a student-led edcamp. With that in mind, there was a lot of discussion about where their topic could go. Although students are working on their own topic and research, the class is used to collaborating and know the power of sharing ideas and getting feedback from peers. That mindset was clearly evident as students worked through the doc.

Take a peek at how students connected their passions with a societal concern . . .

"I believe that staying healthy and staying active is very important in order to do many things in life, such as play sports. Soccer is a good example, because if you practice, you are staying healthy, and at the same time, you are getting better at the sport. Also, playing soccer builds muscle strength, lowers your body fat, and it helps with your coordination. It also helps because of all the running and walking, and many other things, and a professional soccer player usually runs about 5 to 7 miles every game. If you aren’t active, you can get high blood pressure, you can have stiff joints, and you can become overweight etc. There are many ways soccer and any sport can help you with your health, and these are only some of the many reasons."
"I can combine a personal passion with a problem in society by combining at with depression. I can do this because people normally get depressed when a series of events happen. Another way many people get depression is if someone is a perfectionist, have a tendency to worry a lot, or some just have low self-esteem. When someone makes art, they usually do something that appeals to them and they express their feelings on the paper. When someone makes an art piece, someone might make a positive comment on it and whoever made it might have a boost of confidence."
"I can combine my passion of animals with the concern environments getting destroyed. These 2 work together because animals are struggling trying to survive because people are invading their homes. Without animals the food chain could not go on and other animals could invade human homes. Just like us humans, animals need food and shelter to survive. We are taking their homes and food by trying to make homes for people. Some animals are cute but are endangered because us humans cause then to lose so much. Environments getting destroyed means animals are in danger."

I can't wait to see where students go with their projects! Next week we will be going through the design process and begin creating games for the Cardboard Challenge. Additionally, students will be introduced to their curiosity journals. I'll be blogging next week about how I'm using gamification elements during our PKP unit.

Have an amazing week!

#MuchLove . . . Marilyn

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#Pkp . . . Launch

2/10/2018

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I’m eager to share an endeavor that 2 colleagues and myself are embarking on . . . Passionate Kids Project. This will be a multi-post blog series sharing the lesson design of the unit. Let’s get started.

Passionate Kids Project is a new twist on our district’s Phi Kappa Phi young scholars group. In the past, GATE classes researched and presented topics revolving around a particular theme such as conflict, resilience, and social influence. Academic rigor, collaboration, and presenting to an authentic professional panel were hallmarks of the program. Although it was a winning format, we were ready for a change.

This will be our first year to implement Passionate Kids Project, PKP. The format will be different, but the rigor will be just as high. The main difference is bringing in relevance to our students. Instead of being given a theme, students will focus on a passion.

I’m excited to say that we will be using Trevor Mackenzie’s “Dive into Inquiry” book and inquiry process as our guiding force. I read Trevor’s book last summer. (My initial book annotations say July 3, 2017.) I was enthralled by his powerful connections between relationships, passions, content standards, student agency, and inquiry. I highly recommend the book to any and all educators. Details here. Trevor’s insight will inspire you to let go, tap into student’s natural interests and capabilities, and build strong, positive relationships with your students.

Each teacher presented a different element during the launch to introduce students to PKP and ignite curiosity.

Mrs. Segura shared videos that focused on the concepts of bringing student’s passions to school, what passion is, and what passion projects look like. Discussion was built into the video session and students also reflected on this reflection sheet. Take a peek at the video presentation here.

Mrs. Whipple focused on the first pillar of the inquiry process: Explore a Passion. For her session, Mrs. Whipple used the Question Formulation Technique, or QFT, to formulate and categorize questions about possible student passions. Read more on the technique here. To conclude the session, students reflected on a Padlet.

For my session, I introduced our students to the inquiry process using Trevor’s inquiry map. I walked through the map then spent time having students brainstorm possible authentic pieces. I focused on the shift of teacher’s telling students what to research, study, and create to choosing their own topics and display of learning. Students jotted down ideas on this note card and added their ideas to a collaborative poster. Take a peek at the presentation here.

A special bonus to our PKP journey is that our computer technician, Anthony Rodriguez, aka Mr. Anthony, will be filming and producing a video documentary. His expertise, energy, and compassion make him the perfect person for the task. #WeLoveMrAnthony

We had a fantastic morning sharing our new vision of PKP with our students. As students began understanding the concept, their interest grew. By the end of the morning, sparkles of excitement were in our student’s eyes. Next week, students will complete interest surveys and begin the process of narrowing down their passion. And . . . I’ll be introducing a game board as I try my hand at gamification during our PKP unit of study.

See you next week . . . Marilyn

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#PKP . . . Gamification

#Pkp . . . Finding Your PASSION

#Pkp . . . Launch

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