From the desk of Mr. Walters

So, my last post focused on including girls in esports and my willingness to take a hard look at my own mistakes and failings. This post focuses on engaging boys in school through gamification and a company we all love's unwillingness to do the same...  on to glory! The success I decided to roll out Classcraft in all of my classes two years ago, and I have found it to be surprisingly effective. I've shared here in the past how not only do students take the health and experience of their characters very seriously, but they also strive to help their teams and classmates in general. One thing that continually surprised me was how much students crave XP (or experience points). Remember, what I do with Classcraft has had no effect on student grades whatsoever. Yet, I've been able to attach points loss / gain consequences to my behavioral and procedural expectations via XP and HP . While these points don't matter in terms of students' grades, they do matter a grea...

Back in 2010, when the concept of gamification was new to most of us, I remember trying to add game elements to my classroom. I remember being further inspired to do so my amazing TED talks from Dr. Jane Mcgonigal in 2010 and Gabe Zichermann in 2011. I remember discussing it with others in a group lead by Jeff Mummert . At that time, we felt like we were building gamification experiences out of duct tape and baler twine. Occasionally, we would discover a tool we could “splice” on to our classroom, but more often than not, our IT departments would block that tool almost as soon as we began using it. Most gamers today are a combination of player types. Today, we are blessed to have myriad gamification tools for education available. Some of my favorites are Classcraft , ARIS , and Edmodo’s Badges , but there are a lot more. All of them scratch a specific gamification itch. Some scratch many. None, in my opinion, cover all bases. The Premise I’d like to propose that the most suc...