Beginning Gamification with Classcraft

My goal in gamifying our blended learning rotation during reading groups is to increase motivation and engagement when students are working independently. Since students are working on their own, and not in a whole group setting, I was in need of a sophisticated gamification app to both deliver online content and assess student learning. 

While I like the idea of being able to customize game settings to best meet the unique needs of my learners, I really needed an app that is easy to use for a complete novice in the gaming world (that’s me!). Classcraft is a perfect fit. It’s really great, guys! I can easily customize settings for my class, and it has online support via chat, community forums, and all kids of video tutorials. All those resources made it really simple to get things all set up for my class. 

Basic Features

I created accounts for my students and assigned teams in only about 10 minutes. Once that is done, individual students are able to create their own character. Student teams work together to gain points, protect one another from possible negative events, and ultimately, level up in the game. This collaborative aspect of the game provides an extra layer of motivation through peer accountability. As the gamemaster, I can assign students or teams points or damage based on their class behavior, very much like Class Dojo. All this is free for teachers! 

Teachers can view student profiles and add points from
 a computer or smartphone. 

Delivering Lessons and Assessments 

It gets better! What I’m really excited about is quests. I decided to pay for a premium account so that I would have access to this feature. Quests are a series of lessons and tasks that I create for my students. This is how I deliver online lessons and assessments. Each task is accompanied with a story, where I write a narrative of what is happening in our fictional world of the game, and what characters must do to complete the quest and win. 

This map outlines the seven tasks students must finish to complete the quest.

As students work their way through each task, they reveal a new part of the map we are playing through and earn rewards for their character and team. When students earn enough points, they level up, making their character more powerful and acquiring new skills. Students can also use the gold pieces they have earned to get a pet for their character or buy new accessories to make their characters look extra awesome. 

Personalized Learning 

Another great feature for quests is that I can personalize learning for my students. Within each quest, I can create multiple paths for students to reach success. If Student A is completing tasks well, she can continue on the normal path, or even choose a more challenging path. When Student B shows that he has not mastered a skill, I can set up the quest so that he automatically follows a separate path to receive reteaching and extra practice before progressing to new skills. How great is that!? 

After a bit more practice, I plan to start creating quests with these more complex paths to personalize student learning. Here is my first attempt. The yellow path is the most direct route and requires basic mastery of skills. The red detour includes reteaching and remediation activities, while the purple detour challenges students to apply their learning in new ways. 

This map shows multiple learning paths for success. 

Initial Implementation

We have been using Classcraft in our reading groups for about two weeks now and we LOVE it! My students are so engaged and motivated. When students have failed at a task, they have asked to try again so that they can further develop their character. They have even asked if they can "play" Classcraft at home. Wow!! This is winning!

My next goal is to maintain this motivation after the honeymoon phase wears off. I can’t wait to see how my students learn and grow using gamification! 

Art in Our Digital World

Kelly is our art teacher. She sees about 800 students a week ranging from Kindergarten through sixth grade. With only 45 minutes with each class, Kelly faces a time crunch to teach content, provide adequate time for her students to create art, and clean up at the end of each class. Lately, Kelly has been using digital art tools for some of her lessons with her third through sixth grade students.

Using technology tools in art class has many benefits. First, students are naturally motivated to explore and create digitally. Some online tools allow students to create projects relatively quickly, changing colors, shapes, and overall designs almost instantly. This allows young artists freedom to explore with less risk. Students are also able to create new work or continue working on their art projects even when they are not in Kelly’s studio because they can access their work online.

Digital technology tools also solve a great deal of problems related to materials. Just imagine the materials needed for 800 students to participate in art each week. It’s staggering! Digital tools don’t require additional materials, and students don’t require much time to clean up at the end of art either, meaning they have more time to be artists. Finally, using digital tools allows students to explore and create art in a variety of mediums. It’s also a great way to teach graphic design and media creation skills. Combining digital tools as well as traditional art projects allows young artists to experience many different aspects of art.  

Kelly has created some really interesting and engaging lessons to help her students learn how to use the art tools needed for various projects. Her fourth graders explored Sketchpad and learned how to use their webcam while also learning about a famous artist. Students used the webcam to take a picture of themselves and then imported it into sketchpad, where they drew a mustache to match the artist they read about.

Last week my fourth graders finished a digital project in the art studio with Kelly as a performance assessment for the unit “Elements of Color.” Students used Sketchpad, a program allowing artists to paint, draw, sketch, and manipulate graphics, to create an image inspired by nature. Students were expected to demonstrate their understanding of complementary colors and saturation levels.  

There are many benefits of using Sketchpad for this project. Students were able to better focus on the concept of color because Sketchpad offers a variety of shapes and images they can choose to include. Color saturation is easily manipulated digitally, and students expressed that they liked having infinite colors available to use. They weren't limited by what materials were provided, like they may have been with a traditional assignment. They liked creating art in new and different ways from the traditional art projects they made so far this year.

Check out these works in progress!

Kelly has also been using these art apps with her students:

Planner5D.com  is a great website that allows students to plan their own buildings. Students can create the shape of their building, make floor plans, and decorate the interior. This interactive website is a great way to help students see how architecture and design are forms of art.

Jacksonpollock is a famous painter known for his drip paintings. With this website, students can imitate his style without flinging paint around. Everyone wins! I made this digital painting in about 2 minutes. Give it a try! Just click to change color.

My Jackson Pollock inspired art

Kidstate is a website with numerous art applications. Kelly had her students create their own street art after learning about murals.

This is sand is an interactive sandscape website. Artists can pour digital sand in a variety of colors. Kelly challenged her students to make pictures using sand. Look at these impressive pieces! Don't be fooled- it's much more difficult than it looks.

Landscape by Melany

Minion by Elian

America by Alex

What great ways to use technology with art. Thanks for sharing your ideas, Kelly!

Increasing Accessibility with Google Read and Write

Misty is our occupational therapist. In her role, she helps our students with disabilities in a variety of ways. She provides sensory regulation support such as exercises, weighted vests, and focusing techniques. She helps student develop fine motor skills, and also provides flexible seating options like wiggle cushions and yoga balls for students needing movement.

Misty also provides technology support for our students with disabilities to make our standards-based curriculum more accessible.

With an increase in accessibility to the web, our students are becoming extreme consumers of content. They can connect to the web and easily read or watch infinite sources of information. While many teachers are beginning to rely more on digital texts, there is a great extension for Google Chrome that can make reading and writing more accessible for our students with special needs.

I’ve been using Google Read and Write for the last few years with my students. Until recently, I was only using the basic reading and writing features. After chatting with Misty, though, I’ve learned some other great features of this extension that will be so helpful for my students.

Reading

In its simplest form, Google Read and Write will read any web-based text aloud. You can even control the rate at which it reads. Readers just click where they want to start reading, press the play button on the toolbar, and the program will highlight each sentence as it reads. Students can pause or replay at anytime.

Google Read and Write also has a tool called the Screenshot Reader. It’s intention is to read any text on a student’s screen once they draw a box around it. This allows students to access text in images, PDFs, and online textbooks. Misty has been working to get this feature available for our students, but due to a glitch on our end, we are unable to use it at this time. Instead, Misty has been using Snapverter to convert PDFs into a format that will work with Google Read and Write. Unfortunately, it takes a bit of time to do all the converting for students, so we are still hoping to get Screenshot Reader to work soon.

The read aloud feature is such a powerful tool for students who struggle with reading because they can still access online text, even when a teacher is unavailable to read aloud to them. This tool allows students to build independence and gain confidence in their online reading comprehension.

Writing

It also provides word prediction for writing. Students who are using this feature can begin to type words, and the extension will automatically provide word choices for the students. This is especially helpful for students who struggle with spelling.

Google Read and Write predicting words

Google Read and Write also has a speech-to-text tool, allowing students to use a microphone to create written text by simply speaking. The tool automatically converts the speech into text, including punctuation. Students can stop at any time and use the reading tool to check their work.

"I like using [the speech tool] because it helps me get ideas
out. When I write, my words get stuck sometimes."

So Much More

Google Read and Write also has some great research tools. While reading online, students can highlight text that they find important. When finished, students can choose to collect their highlights. This feature pulls all of the highlighted text into a new Google Doc. If the reader chose to highlight in various colors, perhaps to signify which text they found the information in or what main idea the information supports, then Google Read and Write will sort the highlights by color in the Google Doc. How awesome is that?

One other feature that I just learned about is Voice Notes. It’s similar to making comments in a Google Doc. Rather than typing a comment or note, the user can leave an verbal note. Instead of translating into text, Voice Notes remain in audio format, allowing the listener to easily hear comments and notes. I really like the idea of this feature for leaving specific feedback for my students. In the past I sometimes hesitate to write comments for some of my students because I know they will struggle to read my feedback. Voice Notes solves that problem. Students can even respond with their own voice note to form a running conversation of questions or comments.

As you can imagine, these features of Google Read and Write are a game changer for my students with disabilities. They can access text online and write much more fluently. Organizing notes from research is quick and effortless, and students can understand teacher feedback through voice notes. What a great tool!

Student Interviews with Flipgrid

Student interviews are a great way to get a clear idea of what your students know. Many teachers use these informal assessments to inform their instruction. Unfortunately, they take a considerable amount of time. As a teacher, I rarely use interviews as an assessment, despite the benefits, because I can’t justify the time it takes to sit with each of my students on a regular basis.

Kamaren Cross is a third grade teacher at my school. She is starting her second year of teaching, and she has found a great solution to the biggest drawback of using student interviews. Rather than sitting with each student during class hours, she is multiplying her time by having her class create video summaries of their learning using Flipgrid.

These short videos are a great way for Kamaren to check each student’s understanding without eating up lots of class time. She can even set a time limit for students so that each video is a reasonable amount of time. Students are highly motivated to create meaningful videos because they enjoy producing original content for their peers and teacher to view. Another benefit is that each student gets to have a voice in the conversation. Everyone is included and has a chance to explain what they think.

Flipgrid allows teachers to create a free classroom account. After students join using the class code, they can begin creating videos to answer the prompt that Kamaren has posted. The flipgrid interface is very visual- making it extremely easy for students of all ages to navigate. After only two days of using flipgrid, Kamaren found that most of her students could use the site independently to respond to her prompts. During my visit, each student used Flipgrid to record their learning within a 10 minute window.

While Kamaren’s third graders are nearly proficient at using Flipgrid, their first experience took a considerable amount of time. Providing appropriate modeling, examples and non-examples, along with adequate support to create initial videos took more time than she initially expected. Kamaren also had to problem solve when it came to the noise level when having all her students recording at the same time. Her solution is to have students tuck themselves away in small spaces around the room, such as under desks or near their cubby, to provide a bit of space.

Here’s what Kamaren’s students have to say about using Flipgrid:

“I like it because everyone can see my work.”

“I’m nervous when I have to answer in front of the class, but when I’m making a video I can do my recording over if I make a mistake.”

“It’s easier to explain what I’m learning when I’m talking.”

“I like adding stickers to make my video fun. It can look unique like me!”

“It’s fun hearing what my classmates say.”

Kamaren isn’t the only teacher in our building using verbal responses. A number of my colleagues from grades Kindergarten through sixth are are beginning to use this method through Flipgrid and our learning hub to allow students to respond to questions, create projects, and reflect on their learning. Students are excited to create video content, and they are accountable for their work because they have a genuine audience.

So far, Kamaren has used Flipgrid video responses for reading and writing lessons. She’s looking forward to trying it out with math content as well. She also plans to have students begin to collaborate by responding to peer videos, and in time, she hopes to have students pose their own questions for the class to answer.

Increasing Student Participation with Nearpod

This week I visited my colleague, Dautie. She’s a fifth grade teacher who enjoys trying new apps and tech tools in her class. She introduced me to Nearpod. It’s a platform that helps teachers create engaging lessons to increase student participation and interaction. Teachers can set up a free account and create content to use in their classrooms. There are also pre-made lessons available for purchase.

During the lesson, students use their Chromebooks to visit www.nearpod.com and enter a code provided through the website. This allows students to join the live lesson and participate by answering multiple choice, true/false, short answer, or poll questions the teacher has created. When students respond, all student answers display on the teacher’s screen. When projected for the class, students are able to see what their classmates are thinking.

This teaching tool is great for helping teachers to get instant feedback on their students’ learning throughout the lesson, allowing them to adjust their teaching. Students are motivated and excited to see their answers displayed for the class to see, increasing participation and accountability. Moreover, every student is able to participate and answer every question, improving engagement and thinking.

Lesson Examples

Let’s take a look at few of Dautie’s lessons. This week she used Nearpod along with a novel study. Students completed the selection of reading with Dautie and highlighted the text looking for explicit information to answer questions. This was followed by a second read of the same text with a partner.

Using Nearpod, Dautie posed different implied questions in which the students had to find the evidence in the text and make an inference. Students were able to chat with a partner and then respond using Nearpod. Dautie created a variety of question types including poll, multiple choice, short answer, and extended response. She made sure to draw attention to exemplary responses to use as a model for future questions.

Short answer question

Poll question with percentages

Extended response question

Last year, Dautie used Nearpod during a lesson in which students used multiple texts to compare point of view and how events in a text are perceived. She designed this lesson to require students to deepen their understanding of point of view, beyond simple identification. Dautie has also used Nearpod for her math instruction to allow students to explain their thinking and their process when solving a problem.

Student Perceptions

I asked a handful of students what they thought about using Nearpod. Many of them stated that they like typing better than writing with paper and pencil. One student even said that she was able to type faster than she would write. While observing Dautie’s students, I noticed that every student was engaged and working hard to complete their answers in the given amount of time. Not all students were typing correctly, but I would say that most of them were typing faster than they would have written.

A few students also mentioned that they like being able to answer every question from the teacher. Rather than waiting their turn, and making their arm tired from raising it all the time, each student answers every question. By projecting everyone’s answers on the front screen, everyone can have a voice in the lesson.

Two students stated that they like Nearpod because they can see what everyone else is thinking. They can interact with other students, even if they are not sitting right next to them, because they can read their work on the screen.

This student is reading her peers' responses and commenting

Reflections

I initially thought that Nearpod would mostly allow for basic, low level questions, but Dautie has created language arts lessons that require her students to analyze and compare texts, make inferences, respond to peer answers, and justify their thinking with textual evidence. Her Nearpod math lessons allow students to explain their thinking and the processes they used. What a great way to use this technology tool to improve instruction.

I’m looking forward to trying Nearpod in my classroom soon. Thanks for these great ideas, Dautie!

Student Video Creation

Students are naturally motivated to produce interesting content that they can publish for others. Visual learners also have the opportunity to produce work using their processing strengths in order to communicate their ideas. Students are engaged in active learning requiring critical and creative thinking skills while collaborating with their peers. Like other posts in my multiliteracies series, I will share some teaching ideas and reference the five critical elements of of digital and media literacy discussed by Hobbs and Moore in their book Discovering Media Literacy.

• Access: locating materials responsibly and understanding those materials
• Analyze: comprehending messages in a variety of formats and evaluating the credibility and quality of those messages
• Create: using digital tools and technology to make content in a variety of formats
• Reflect: making responsible choices and evaluating one’s own behavior and work
• Act: taking action to solve problems and address social issues

Public Service Announcements

I use video creation as one option for assessment for a project based learning activity with my students. They are tasked with researching a current event related to natural resources (access) and then creating a public service announcement to persuade an audience to take action to protect our natural resources (create, act). The videos student produce are used to assess content knowledge, writing techniques, and use of digital media. Students can learn the digital literacy concept of sequencing images, language, and sound to accomplish the task of persuading a specific audience through the various stages of the video creation process.

When working through the five step process of identifying your goals, preproduction, production, postproduction, and distribution and promotion outlined by Hobbs and Moore, I used a workshop model with my students in order to provide adequate support for each student group. Each day we met, we started with a mini-lesson addressing the step in the process that the student groups were working on. The lessons included direct modeling, viewing or creating examples, and setting a goal for the day’s work time. Following the mini-lessons, student groups would begin working on their outlined task for the day while I conferenced with groups and provided necessary feedback and support. This type of daily feedback and support was necessary for my fourth graders to stay on track with their projects and remain focused on our goals of communicating a clear message and using expression and tone when speaking. The workshop model worked nicely because I could address each group’s needs and provide scaffolding through feedback, just-in-time instruction, and clarification.

This year I shot the scenes for the public service announcements using my iPhone and edited with Windows Media Maker. Next year I will look for a better recording option as my sound was inconsistent. Unfortunately, we ran short on time as this was our last big project of the year. That means my students missed out on the postproduction part of creating videos, and I did all the editing at home to finish before school was out for the summer. My students loved viewing their work and hearing feedback from their peers about their messages (analyze). Each group also took time to reflect on their work and make comments about how they could improve their work in the future and how I could better support groups next year (reflect).

The students in this public service announcement want to persuade their audience to consider alternatives to gas-powered cars.

This is a public service announcement I created for my students as a model.

Digital Storytelling

Producing digital stories is a meaningful task for students as they both learn from digital content and also produce it. Using digital stories is a great way to connect technology and content in the classroom. Students can practice the digital skills of sequencing images, creating images with meaning, and reading with expression.

I plan to use digital storytelling in my classroom next year as a tool for students to express their ideas creatively while writing stories and demonstrating their visual literacy skills. One literacy skill my students struggle with is understanding how characters interact with and impact the plot of a story. To practice and teach this skill, I will have students rewrite, or remix, a story of their choice by changing a main character’s traits and showing how that affects the plot (create).

My lesson closely follows the four steps outlined by Hobbs and Moore in their book that I mentioned above. The steps are: develop the characters, write the script, frame and film the scene, and perform and receive feedback.

First, students would brainstorm with a partner about various character traits for a main character and how that trait might cause the character to behave differently. While they write their stories, students would create a storyboard to visualize each scene they want to portray.  When students have their planning finished, they can create digital slides or draw scenes and scan them to digital format. Finally, students can use the skills they already learned through screencasting to record their stories. Once students publish their work, their peers can explore various stories, provide feedback, and explain how the plot was affected by a character’s traits (analyze, reflect, act).

I created a model for my students, and next school year, I plan to have my students create their own digital stories. Watch my digital story model of the Three Little Pigs and the Lazy Wolf. I used one set of clipart that I purchased from Etsy to create multiple scenes in Google Slides, and then I read my script and recorded my story using Screencast-o-matic with voice over. Creating the visual images was surprisingly easy, and the end result will interest students.

If digital storytelling is new to you or if you are interested in incorporating it into your classroom, stop by the Creative Educator. They have lots of great examples and lesson ideas if you need some inspiration.

Virtual Field Trips with Google Expeditions

Do you know about Google Expeditions? Our district recently received a kit through a grant, allowing 30 students to follow their teacher to the ends of the earth. Google Expeditions is an app that turns 360 degree pictures into virtual field trips. Teachers can give a guided tour, highlighting points of interest while students experience new places. There are hundreds of locations already prepared for teachers to use with their classes, and it’s free through the Google Expedition app!

Today, my class had the opportunity to travel to the island of Borneo to study the ecological changes happening there as a result of deforestation. Sounds amazing, right? It was! This field trip was not only highly engaging, but it is also tightly aligned to our curricular goals. I planned this field trip as an introduction to our PBL incorporating current events, natural resources, and persuasive writing skills.

Before we went on the field trip, my class learned all about natural resources. We identified various resources, categorized renewable and nonrenewable examples, and realized our reliance upon them. The goal of our PBL is to further investigate current problems related to one of three natural resources. Once students become experts in their areas of study, they will create a persuasive product of their choice such as a song, public service announcement, or presentation to persuade their audience to take a specific action to preserve our natural resources.

Photo credit: Rachel Lamb

The field trip to Borneo allowed my students to experience the effects of deforestation. I was able to point out areas of interest, teach about the environment they were seeing, and pause their experience to allow for discussion. They were immersed in their learning far beyond what a picture or a teaching video could show.  They were shocked and genuinely concerned with the landscapes they witnessed and explored. Their reaction was so strong that there was a very natural transition to introducing our project, in which they were offered the opportunity to take action. My students ended our learning time today feeling empowered and motivated to continue our work on this project. Here’s what my students had to say about their virtual field trip experience:

• “I went somewhere on a phone that I wouldn't have been able to go to in real life.”
• “It’s like I was really there. The details were real! I could look around and explore Borneo.”
• “I discovered new things and new places.”
• “For a little while I was really standing in a rainforest today.”
• “I could look all around me and control what I was seeing by moving my head.”

Photo credit: Rachel Lamb

With Google Expeditions, the world is literally at your fingertips. I’ve spent a few hours just exploring my own interests, and I can’t wait to use this tool again in the future. If you have a few devices, consider trying this with a small group of students. It would work well in a station rotation model of blended learning. You could use your face to face time with a small group to guide a tour that is connected to their online content.

My students were begging to take more field trips, and I’m dreaming of all the ways I can incorporate amazing locations and experiences into our curriculum units. We could visit a courthouse while studying Indiana government, tour the home of a famous poet during our poetry unit, experience a Native American celebration as we learn Indiana history, or explore the Tetons to better visualize the setting of our read aloud, Stone Fox.  

If you’ve used Google Expeditions, share your virtual field trip experience in the comments. I’m interested to hear how other teachers are using this great teaching tool!