USM Summer Spark!

I'm back home now and can relax a bit and I spent a week writing this post. I unpacked my bags in minutes, but it will take me a long time (weeks? months?) to unpack the experience. That same invigorating feeling of having been to a smashing good concert or winning a championship is buoying my spirits. I'm PUMPED. I am also tired as heck.

First of all, I'm glad I went. I paid for most of the trip myself and was hoping it would live up to the hype. The hype was well placed. The location was beautiful! I'm happy that the trip gave me the chance to experience the wonderful city of Milwaukee. The University School of Milwaukee is a site to behold. You can tell right away that the entire community takes great pride in the school and its students.

The conference was incredibly well run. Pamela Nosbusch (@pamelanosbusch) and Chuck Taft (@Chucktaft) made Summer Spark run so smoothly. This was their forth year doing Summer Spark and their organizational experience shows. Few things I noticed were: sessions on-time, tech issues few, key-notes superb, session rooms accommodating, and food wonderful. Honestly, it was one of the best run conferences I've been to.

Below is a list of the sessions I attended and main takeaways from each.

Top 10 Games for Any Classroom

-Melissa Pilakowski (@mpilakow)

A great assortment of ideas from Jenga, Scattagories, to a Google Vocab Challenge. I will definitely look at playing a few from this session.

AR and VR in the Classroom

-Rachel Dene Poth (@Rdene915)

I love seeing what new things are on the horizon. Google Expeditions continues to be the leader. Why are so many others on iDevices only? I find much of AR and VR a bit gimmicky still but the engagement level is amazing.

Teaching Inspiration

-Michael Matera (@mrmatera)

Finally got to see a presentation by the #xplap man himself. I'm going to use "time" as a game element in more activities.

Digital Breakouts

-DianaLyn Perkins (@PerkyScience)

Practical session from one of my #scitlap friends. I needed to know where to start and what Digital Breakouts were all about. This session has got me stoked to do one in the fall.

Insert Coin

-Chris Hesselbein (@ChrisHesselbein)

I had visited Chris' blog before and wanted to attend one more gamification session. His passion permeated the session and was a great review/introduction of game mechanics and gamification.

Student Voice in the Classroom: Don't Forget the Introverts

-Julie Smith (@Julnilsmith)

I posted a picture from the first slide of this presentation and my Facebook went nuts. My introvert friends are not introverts on the internet I guess. Good practical strategies for reaching out to introverts: wait time, give students paper to write down questions, provide speaking prompts, and more!

Bite-Size Mastery: Nibbling on Mastery Learning

-Tiffany Ott (@TechieTeachOtt)

I had been seeing Grid Method come across my Twitter feed for while and had a passing knowledge of mastery learning. I was hoping to get some specific pedagogical strategies out of this session. I learned out to plan out an entire lesson for mastery. Love it. She provided a sheet breaking down a standard into DOK levels that go with lessons. A formative assessment at the beginning breaks out students into DOK levels to tackle those tasks.

Shattering The Perfect Teacher Myth

-Aaron Hogan (@aaron_hogan)

Aaron wrote the book with the same name as the title of this session. I managed to snag a copy from him after the session. He went over each of the myths in his book. One thing that stuck with me is the change in thinking from "Students should know how to do this." to "I need to teach students how to do this." This is particularly true for behavior problems in class. The idea that students are trying their best. Not just thinking that they are being lazy.

Blogging Summer Spark!

My goal is the blog about my experiences at USM Summer Spark which is a two day conference on innovative teaching practices. Many educators that I have met online via Twitter and other conferences will be attending. Never before have I spent my own money to travel to and attend a conference. From all I've heard it is worth every penny.

About a month into this school year I knew I would need something to reinvigorate my love for teaching and get me excited again. Without getting into any details I just want the ready to understand that of my 15 years teaching this one was the most trying and exhausting. I don't want you to also think this is because I'm now a veteran teacher and am old and jaded. Not at all. I leave the complaining to those around me and try to remain positive. Try to remain positive.

Planning ahead I got to Milwaukee a few days early and saw some sites as I anxiously awaited my colleagues. Tonight I get to meet many as we wine and dine. Wait. Not wine in Wisconsin. Beer. We'll gather around and talk teacher. With teachers I find there is never a lull in conversation and teachers generally like to talk. Often about teaching.

Last Few Weeks

The last few weeks are upon me. Time to plan out my summer edu "to do" list.

Water rocket launcher build
Build wrestling room weight class board
Treasure chest with items
Plan or help plan physics class
Develop Classcraft quests
Get more stuff for game club
Read books

All I can think of for now. I will probably tack on more after attending USM Summer Spark and after reading more books.

Podcasting About Sound

Last week my physical science students had to complete a podcast on one of several topics relating to sound. The stuff they came up with was pretty good. Some exceptional. Of definite benefit was that they already knew how to use Soundtrap thanks to the music teacher. The bumper music was great. Next year I will try doing this again but give students much more time to schedule recording time in Studio M308A and the music room. The enthusiasm for the assignment was refreshing but they struggled to plan their time and get things recorded. I also need to provide more time for script development.

Studio M308A

Starting the project at the beginning of the unit with a sign-out sheet for the entire two weeks should give students plenty of time. Completion rate of long term projects is always a struggle,but this one in particular students seemed really stoked about and came in outside of class time to record. I would like to use a more social platform to share their creations as well and will need to look into how to best do that.

Podcasting Thoughts

First time doing podcasts in class. Ever. The music teacher approached me about a collaboration involving Soundtrap. Students already have experience with it from music class and I figured I needed a year end challenge to liven things up.

Nervous about this though. I have never done this before. I worry students will run out of time, have huge technical glitches, and not get students learning the content I need them to.

Ordered a mic to work with their chromebooks and set up a recording studio in my prep room. Will need to make up a sign out sheet for the studio. Getting a class of 29 recording and keeping them on task may be my undoing. Great stuff may happen or complete chaos.

Wouldn't be the first time.

Blogging More

I've decided to blog more frequently for several reasons. The main one being that doing something is better than doing practically nothing. Most of my past posts have been very thought out and developed reflections. I still plan on doing those. Just blogging more will be of more benefit to me and possible benefit to others. I'm not thinking daily is an option, but some kind of routine needs to happen. Once a week perhaps? Maybe when I have a down moment in my creative lesson planning endeavors I can spit out a few reflections here.

In general I feel the posts will be shorter. Getting on a soapbox can make for just as large of a post too. The writing and rewriting part, though, is often where I my reflection happens and I worry I might lose some of that. Even now this seems more stream-of-consciousness writing with little reflection.

Gamification Update

Halfway through the school year and it is time to reflect on how my gamification experiment is proceeding. I am not entirely happy with my progress so far, but realize that this is a process. I have had some success with Quests within Classcraft and in a few other places.

Successes

• AP - Students regularly spend AP (ability points) to heal each other and use the Sainthood power (they get a Starburst candy).
• Random Events - By far the most popular aspect of Classcraft and gamification so far. If I get going and forget to do it students remind me. I have yet to have a student that is not excited when they are awarded random XP or get to roll a dice.
• HP - Students lose HP for doing things we want to discourage in class. Far fewer students ask to leave class since they lose HP if they do (unless required to leave by the front office or something of that sort).
• XP - Students like to see that they are rewarded for doing well. Giving students XP somehow works to show a recognition by the teacher that they are doing well.
• Quests - A limited success yet something worth mentioning in this space. I don't generally have quests integrated with grades. They are separate though there is some overlap (extra credit for some quests).

In Progress

• Leaderboards - Yes, one of the most integral parts of a gamified class is not really there. I have no trophy or endgoal in place. Students see XP on Classcraft and that is all. Group/team XP and competition is non-existent. I thought I would have more ability to manipulate individual and team XP data within Classcraft for some reason. Would it be that hard to have team rankings within the game?
• Badges - I have the labels that I want to print them onto. I have plenty of ideas for badges. I just haven't had the time to think it through and I don't want to introduce an aspect of the game before it is ready for roll-out.
• Easter Eggs - I have started to consider this more deeply. I am thinking of starting really simple like including a hidden link in a document to a simple side quest.

Final Thoughts

I feel it is really quite impossible to have your entire game laid out before the school year begins. Like most teachers, I don't get curriculum time over the summer to plan out a regular curriculum let alone a gamified experience for learners. I've been slowly incorporating additional features as the school year moves on. I feel this makes sense in many ways. First, you don't want to overwhelm students at the beginning of the year, and you also don't want weeks of onboarding. Releasing or "unlocking" new features throughout the year can bring new life into a game that may need a bit of invigoration.

There are a few features that you can easily integrate into Classcraft or any gamified space: dice and cards. I've started to use both since the time after the holiday break.

The past few months I've started to release cards to students as a part of our game. I make cards using a MTG online card maker, print them, and laminate them. (Adam Powley @MrPowley has a great blog post on making cards.) I plan on this feature of the game growing as students find using them useful and fun. I have cards that let you hold our class bearded dragon and cards to change your assigned seat. Other features I hope to introduce in the next few months are posted leaderboards based on Classcraft XP, quests that take students around the school, and more inter-team competition.

The change in dynamics of gamifying my class have been amazing. The element of fun and engagement it provides is undeniably positive. We need these positive vibes in a year that has been a struggle as every day brings new challenges. Sometimes learning and games seem trite relative to the overwhelming social-emotional issues facing children. However, I suppose, that may be even more reason to gamify and introduce engaging methodologies into instruction.