Part Four: learn together

You will work together on one device to complete four different challenges as you learn about gamification in the classroom. As you finish each challenge, you will get a game code or clues for how to find your game code. Enter each of those game codes on the Code Form to earn points for your team. You must enter one code at a time and please remember - you MUST use the exact same team name!

Each challenge is slightly different so be sure to read all information and use Google as needed!

After 20 minutes of work time, the top three teams will compete in a trashketball competition!

Challenge #1: What is gamification?

Challenge #2: Player types

Bartle identified four main video game player types and I think his definitions can be extrapolated to explain most players who play any type of game, video or not. The four types are Killers, Socializers, Explorers and Achievers.

The Killers love action and love to conquer others. They are the type who loves to win or finish first and throw it in everyone’s faces! It really isn’t about the win, it’s more about the bragging rights. The Socializers love to communicate while playing the game. Their main motive for playing a game is to talk to others. The Explorers love a good challenge, enjoy puzzles and are always on the lookout for errors or secrets in the game. They love finding clever strategies to win. The Achievers love to earn points and feel a great sense of accomplishment when they are able to complete a game. They aren’t that interested in competing with others and are more focused on simply completing the game to the best of their ability. Can you guess that the Achievers are the students who always do their HW and the Explorers are the ones who are motivated to learn but forget to turn in their HW?

The issue is that we have spent a lot of effort trying to turn the Killers and Socializers into Explorers and Achievers, and it doesn’t work so we label those students as lazy! nThe truth is that we need new ways to motivate students to play our school game. Sure, we need engaging and relevant lessons and we need brain based strategies, but we also need to motivate students with exciting and meaningful reasons to do the work! Hello gamification!

To meet the needs of Killers you need to give powers or visual rewards to those who complete work or units. They can choose where they sit or to wear a hat or they can partake in food and drink during class time. Students could also earn badges that are digitally displayed, but the bottom line is that they need a way to show others how awesome they are. Socializers need to be allowed to talk while learning. This is the most difficult gamer to teach because they easily get off track with their conversations. You will need to set guidelines ahead of time and follow up with any Socializers that aren’t meeting the learning goals due to off task conversations. Explorers love hidden clues and secrets so anytime you can bring some sort of suspense or puzzle to your lesson you will intrigue these learners however, they are generally motivated to learn any new fact. And the Achievers are easy peazy since you are already meeting their needs with the grade point system of achievement.

Although it is not necessary to classify your students as a gamer type, you might find this quiz entertaining if you have a few extra minutes of class time.

Some content taken from:

Topec, Jordan. “Richard Bartle Player Types.” Repignite. Web.

Now, let's see how you do on this Kahoot!

Insert Kahoot here about gamer types.

https://create.kahoot.it/share/9610e909-84cb-43a7-9e27-1703a190f960

Remember to open up the HW Challenge.

https://kahoot.it/challenge/0832940

GAME CODE 0832940

Challenge #3: Gaming strategies

There are so many ways to gamify learning that it can be difficult to get started, so let me explain how you might organize competitions. First, you should consider who will be competing: individuals, partners, teams, or classes. Then think about how they will compete: complete an assignment, play an online game, take a quiz, participate in a lab and finally you must figure out what they will win: points, badges, level up, privilege, treat, etc. As you get better at gamification you will find that all of these types of competitions are useful depending on the particular lesson and you will likely begin to visualize how to design an entire game based unit.

Sometimes I use several of them at one time; for example, 'Today you will be playing a Kahoot. If everyone participates the class will earn 50 points in the class challenge (to earn a party). The top three teams will get a chance at trashketball. Any team who makes a basket will get to leave class 5 minutes early.' You can take a dull lesson (say doing 20 practice problems) and turn it into fun and games quite easily (like the example above).

Challenge #4: Rewards

Go through the Pear Deck below and answer the questions as you go.

Part five: trashketball

The top three teams will send one player to represent them in the amazing trashketball competition!