Gamification Day 3 Recap

Friday went very well. They handled the lab activity better than most of the activities they did earlier in the semester. They were using light probes to make a graph of the intensity of light as distance increased. They then fit a curve to find that the relationship was an inverse square. That is pretty high level math for some of these students.

The first thing I noticed was that they finished the lab within the given time period. This is not normal. They knew that they would not be able to take their bar exams until the activity was turned in and thus they got it in on time. Some of my lower achieving students also focused on knowing how the lab was done and what the conclusions were. This was remarkable as in previous labs, if they turned it in, it was probably half done with little thought to conclusions.

Today will be a big day for the class. They will be taking their first bar exams. I am having them all take the multiple choice section, and then giving them an option to take either the free response, or the math portion. Many of them may take all three, but they are given the option. They need only pass two of the three to make Ensign, but passing all three gives them a brighter colored bar. I will truly get to see if these incentives are effective today. How many will choose to take all three? How many will pass on the first time? What will that do to their engagement if they fail? If they succeed easily?

I will let you know how it goes.

Chris
@christopherlike

Galaxy Fleet Gamification Day 1 recap

Well I survived the first day of my classroom gamification experiment. This may have been the most important day of the lesson, the day I had to sell the students on the idea. Here are a couple of observations from that first day that I think I should share.

1. I did not bring out the coat to turn myself into the hard ass admiral as I planned. I ran the class as myself, but as we got into the game I did joke about how I was thinking of using the character. They thought the yelling and the southern accent was pretty funny. I will pull him out when the class needs some motivation (in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way)
2. Overall they seemed to think of this as a pretty good idea. It is hard to get a read on every student in the room, but most expressed willingness to try it. 
3. I heard comments from some of the best students in class that they were going to be the first one to the level of Captain. For the top end student, it took me literally four minutes to tap into their competitive nature. Lets see if it will hold for the entire unit.
4. The mid-level students seemed to like the idea in general (most are "gamers" and the idea of gamification seemed natural to them). I think they are a bit hesitant about the amount of work that I am going to ask them to do, and the testing involved, but hopefully they will fall in line as we go. 
5. I have a group of lower-level students that concern me the most. There are two sects here. There is a group of four that sit in the back, do little work, and thus do poorly on exams. I know for a fact that these are smart kids, who have the ability to learn this. However, they are disenfranchised with high school in general and thus are the hardest to motivate. I have been working with one of these individuals a bit lately, talking to him about being a leader of his group of friends, and how he can help focus their attention. I am happy to say that out of all of the students in the class, he was the most excited about the game on that first day. I think he wants to do well, but for some reason that is not "cool" with his friends. This is giving him an avenue outside the normal school-type functioning, that he can embrace. I will work on him a lot through this experiment. 
6. The other sect that worries me are the students who feel that they are not smart enough to do the astronomy. They feel that their background, especially in math, is hindering their learning. It is my hope that both of these groups of low-level students can feel some successes in the lesson as they go and that that success will carry them to learn the material. 
7. I will say that the game is also fun for me. Having created a "Star Trek-like" game, I made myself the commander. I asked them to call me "Sir" or "Admiral". That is fun in itself. They stand at attention when I enter the room, which really is a cool feeling. 

Yesterday we did an intro to EM radiation with the activity Lost in Space. Today we will be exploring the EM Spectrum and beginning an activity on the Inverse Square Law. 

I will let you know how it goes.

Chris 

@christopherlike

Galaxy Fleet Day 1

Today is the first day of my gamification experiment and I am excited to get it started. The anticipation of something new can be consuming, and filled with anxiety. You all know how it is. I was up this morning at 4:30 with epiphanies about creating characters for the class. Do I think the kids would like to meet a hard-ass military general who will introduce the game to them? Do I put on a coat and accent my voice to turn into  this character or just do it as myself? Cool or lame... it is a fine line. Science Expert Dr. Like in a lab coat could take them through the activities... ???

I brought the coat but even one hour before class starts, don't know if it will come out of the closet. Game-time decision.

I did figure out how I am going to grade this thing though. My plan is to have 85 points for each learning cycle. 30 points will be from their scores on two of the three bar exams, 45 points will be from the activities that gave them the commendations the exchanged for the exams, and 10 points will be if they participate in the process. I don't like participation points, but with what I may ask them to do, it would be nice to give them some small reward as an incentive. I am thinking of taking off those points if say, they don't follow the game by wearing their lanyard displaying their rank or stand at attention when the General enters the room, or call me sir... you know the fun part of the game. With three learning cycles planned, that is relatively the same points I would have devoted to this last semester.

Time is a big factor in this, so I will be pushing them hard. It doesn't help that I just graded their last exam and it was far from stellar. I plan on using this fact as a springboard for changing what we are currently doing to something new, fun, engaging.

Wish me luck. I will update you all tomorrow on how it went.

Chris
@christopherlike

Gamification of Classroom T minus 1 day!

I am planning on starting the gamification of my Astronomy class tomorrow and I am getting nervous. If you have not been following this blog you can find information on the planning stages here and here, and you can get to the site I set up for the class here.

That being said, I plan on blogging updates on this every day for the duration of the experiment. Today is T minus one day!

Over lunch, I will be going to Hobby Lobby to retrieve the beads and pins for their level awards. Nothing like waiting for the last minute!

I went through my schedule on how I believe the day to day progression is going to go and I came to a realization... I need 19 days for this and I really only have 10! With the addition of several activities to round out some abbreviated learning cycles, the timeline for this curriculum has grown much more than I anticipated. I spent an hour this morning paring down the days in an effort to lessen the blow the other units I need to cover before the end of the year. I have a schedule now that is 14 days long, which I should be able to make work.

We shall see. Feel free to give comments or suggestions as I go. I will try to get some pics and such as I go.

Wish me luck.

Chris
@christopherlike

Gamifying a Classroom: Step 2

Earlier, I posted that I have been looking at applying the principles of gamification to a classroom experience for my students. I started with the idea of revolving the class around a Star Trek-like world where students would be earning ranks by fulfilling achievements. I began a website here.

I am planning this for my Astronomy class, in a unit that is rough for them. The underlying topics to be covered are Electromagnetic Radiation, Spectroscopy, Doppler Effect, and Telescopes. It is basically the "science" part of astronomy in terms of what principles astronomers use today.

The basis behind the game is that students will enter a classroom that is to prepare them to be the captain of their own starship. They begin the game as Cadets, graduate to Ensigns, then Commanders, then finally Captain. You can read more about this on the site or the previous post. 

I have worked out a pretty cool advancement tool that I am going to incorporate. I plan on taking some safety pins that they can attach to their school issued lanyards. Upon completing a level, they will be given a bead to place on the pin (think cub scouts). The color of the bead will indicate their level of completion. For instance. If they pass their advancement exam on their first attempt they will be awarded the title Cadet 2nd Class (Blue Bead). If they complete the enrichment exercise, they will advance to 1st Class (White Bead). If they fail their bar exam, but pass it on their second attempt, they will be considered Cadet 3rd Class, but can move up to 2nd Class by doing the enrichment exercise.

Thus by looking at their pin, they have their rank right on their chest.

0 beads - Cadet
1 bead - Ensign
2 Beads - Commander
3 Beads - Captain

1st Class White (Passed test on first try and completed enrichment)
2nd Class Blue (passed test on first try)
3rd Class Yellow (Failed test on first try but then passed)
4th Class Red
5th Class Black

Let me know if you think this is a good idea or if you have something that will make it better. I am seriously thinking about trying this in late April with my astronomy class. It will take a lot of work re-writing labs and resources to give them a Trekky feel, but it is timely with the reboot of the movie franchise. I will post more when I have more. Any feedback on the development of this would be appreciated.

Chris
@christopherlike

The Importance of Having a Pedagogy

California scares me. They have tried to pass a law (maybe they did) that says that anyone with a college degree can teach for a few years. Sounds great on paper. You have a bunch of engineers who can't find work in Silicon Valley after the Dot Com Boom of the nineties. Throw them in a classroom and let their expertise in science and engineering drive the curriculum. This scares me. Good teaching is more than knowing the equations in the homework, or how to place a prepositional phrase in a sentence. Good teaching involves a knowledge of how kids learn.

I realize that there are many factors that go into being successful in the classroom (personality, relationships, content knowledge, confidence, and work ethic). I may hit on some of these in later posts, but today I want to discuss planning the lesson. Great teachers have a method to their madness. They have a base set of ideals and beliefs that govern how they teach. They have studied both before becoming a teacher, and more importantly while in the act, how students best learn material. They pay attention to the group as a whole, but know that there is no silver bullet that can catch every student. Their lessons do not write themselves, and rarely are written by another. They steal, develop, or create the lessons that work best for them. They talk with each other, and are open-minded enough to try something different or adapt their perception of learning with changing demographics of students. 

Let me give you the secret to my teaching. The biggest push in science right now is this thing called Inquiry Learning. What is interesting is that with all the books written, articles published, buzzwords created, standards carved in stone, and legislation passed, I can not adequately define it. Talk to two different people and they will tell you it means two different things. Here is my definition of inquiry. Any lesson that forces kids to think, is an inquiry lesson. When I say think, I mean solve problems, analyze situations, or come up with conclusions based on data. Memorization, matching, or any rote learning is not inquiry. (I don't want to downplay rote learning as there is a place for that too. Sometimes we spend too much time on having kids make inferences, and not enough time on them actually understanding premises of problems.)

The Learning Cycle

When it comes to tried and true methods of teaching, few stand up to the learning cycle. It has been around for something like 30 years, peer reviewed in numerous research scenarios, and updated through more dissertations than I can count. I was weaned on this method in college as the University of Northern Iowa's physics teaching department used it as the basis for much of their products. (PRISMS, CRISTALS, BIOMES, etc)

There are many different types of learning cycles out there. I use the simplest as it allows for the most flexibility. ALL of my lessons have these components to them, in ALL of my classes. This is how I teach, and I believe it has been successful. I have applied this from my AP Physics to workshops with kindergarten teachers who stated "Why had no one ever told us this before?!"

Step 1: Exploratory- This initial part of the lesson is where you give students a common experience. It may involve a lab in chemistry where you have students make patterns of shapes that will lead you into a discussion of the periodic table. It may be a 1st grade teacher taking her students on a walk and then having them discuss anything that they noticed that was affected by the weather. 

Step 2: Concept Development- This aspect of the lesson is where you take the common experiences that student have been given and expand them to the concepts you want them to understand. This may be a lecture, a lab activity, or any other aspect that many would say is normal teaching. More often than not, for a science classroom, it is an activity (or set of activities) that is much more pointed than its exploratory counterpart. The questions are expected to push the student towards understanding the concept. In physics, after students have made graphs of motion and recognized that the slope is related to the velocity, these activities have them calculate the slope or even look at the area under graphs. 

Step 3- Application- At this point the instructor should be fairly confident that the students understand the material. But can they apply it to a new situation? Imagine 2nd grade students who did connect the dots on a set of constellation worksheets for exploratory and learned stories behind constellations in concept development. Can these students then make their own constellation out of given stars on a sheet? Can they make their own story about how it got into the sky? This may be the most often overlooked part of the cycle (time is always and issue), but it is probably the most important.

Chris
@christopherlike

Mission to Mars Activity

Last week our school was give the unique pleasure of hearing from one of our graduates through our Visiting Scientist Program. Jeff Hanley has been a director at NASA for many years, serving as flight commander in mission control on several missions including the repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope and the construction of the International Space Station. He spoke at some length on the challenges faced when we set our sights on Mars. Even for me, an astronomy teacher, it was eye-opening.

For many years I have done a project in my Astronomy class dealing with placing a base on the moon. This was very timely when then President Bush rallied our engineers to go back to the moon as a stepping stone to Mars. Unfortunately (especially for Hanley as he was director of the project) now President Obama has shifted NASA away from Moon exploration.

I am shifting the project towards a Mission to Mars. Here is how it works.

1. I break the class into three groups, two large Engineering Firms and one Mars Mission Council consisting of three students. I choose the groups ahead of time taking care to know who works well together and who the class will accept as their Mars Council. 
2. The job of the Engineering Firms is to come up with a plan on getting to Mars. There are usually about 8-10 in a group, which seems large. The task is large and they need all the manpower they can get. Their elected Chief Engineer sets smaller groups to solve the problems with air supply, food, transportation, waste management, recreation, etc.  
3. The task of the Mars Council is to grade the projects. Part of the Engineering Firm's grade is based on whether their proposal is accepted by the Council (10/60 of the points for the activity). The Council spends their time making rubrics, deciding how long the presentations will be, creating questions for the groups after their presentations, and answering process questions from the groups. They are in charge. 
4. I move the Council to a completely different room and set them up with a computer. They typically create a generic gmail account for their Council that they can share documents and answer emails from the groups. If one of the Firms has a question about their proposal, they can email the council. The Council can choose to answer if they want too, or ignore it. That is real world. The Firms can not directly talk to the Council. 
5. I will only talk to the Chief Engineer from each Firm. This sets up a real-life bureaucracy that students begin to get exposure too. 
6. I set up some focus questions for them online to drive some decisions that need to be made about the Mars Mission. 
7. They get about three days (full blocks) to work before they give their presentations. Most groups dress up for the presentation, make scale models of their bases, and try to 

Here is a link to the website that I am using for Astronomy. At the bottom is the link to the Mars Mission Project. It has worked really well with the "Moon Lairs" that they have made in the past, I am excited to see if going to Mars will offer more challenges. 

Chris

@christopherlike

Gamification with Students: Galaxy Fleet

Alright, this is a bit out there, so try to read through the whole thing before passing judgement. I will tell you that this is only an idea, still in the "It may be cool if I try this someday" stage. It may be something great or may fail miserably. Hard to crystal ball that kind of thing.

If you read my previous post on Gamification, you were introduced to using game dynamics in a non-game setting. I have done this for staff PD and it has been very successful. This is my first attempt at planning something for students. After talking with our Physical Science teacher Breelyn McMahon, I tried to develop a unit based on a game. She encouraged me to include some standards based grading, which I think was a great addition to the concept.

Here is the premise for a physical science unit on Electromagnetic Radiation. The students start out as Cadets training for Galaxy Fleet- a futuristic military academy. (I am trying to give this a Star Trek feel.) They begin by being trained to become Communications Analysts (Ensigns). In order to gain this recognition (which I plan on doing with virtual metals) they need to pass their bar exams. These exams would consist of three quizzes, one conceptual, one multiple choice, and one mathematical (or performance). I basically broke the unit exam into three parts. They have to pass at least two parts with 75% or they have to retake them. After becoming an Ensign, they strive to pass on to Commander, and then Captain of the ship.

In order to even take the Ensign exam, they have to earn "commendations." These are earned by passing standard classroom activities. If a student finishes a lab, they earn a commendation...  if they finish their homework, they earn another, etc. Once they have 3 commendations, they can take their bars. If they fail one or more aspect of the bar, they lose a commendation, which must be then earned back before they can retake the exam. This could be done with a remedial lesson or worksheet to review what they need to know to pass that part of the exam.

The lessons are all based on the Learning Cycle approach. Students will earn a commendation for their exploratory activity, their concept development activity, application activity, homework and such. The lesson would be planned and executed with sound science teaching methods of discovery and inquiry.

Here is the basic outline of how they could become an ensign.

1. Pass the "Lost in Space" exploratory lab to learn types of ways in which we can communicate (what a wave is) 
2. Pass the "Keeping Time with Pendulums" lab to learn vocabulary (amplitude, wavelength, frequency, etc)
3. Do some homework associated with the previous
4. Pass the "Wonderful, Wonderful Toy" lab with Slinky springs to understand the types of waves out there as well as reinforce vocab.
5. Earn 3 commendations and take their bars. If they pass 2 out of 3 of the formative quizzes they reach Ensign and they do the application activity "It Sounds Good, But What Does it Mean" lab with standing waves. 
6. If they fail a part of the bar, they do some remedial worksheets to earn back the commendation to take the bar until they pass. As these students are doing this, the ones who passed will be working on the application. 
7. To get them all at the same level, we added an extension activity for the ones who passed to do while the others are doing remedial work and retaking the bar exams. 

Those set of activities would cover one standard in the unit. As a Com Analyst they will be exploring more about electromagnetic waves until they take their exams to become a Security Specialist (another standard in the unit). After that they will be applying what they know the to lasers on the ship, reflection, and refraction of materials to protect the vessel (a last standard in waves). If they pass out of that they can take their overall exam to reach Captain status.

Here is a link to a website I began to make for this. I included some preliminary lab activities and a description of the game. Note the feel of the writing. I may expect them to call me "Sir" as their commander and ask them to stand at attention when I enter a room, etc. Maybe I will wear a ribbon or jacket or something. It may be fun (at least for me). I envision having ceremonies at the beginning of class when someone earns their new rank, maybe having a website with kid's profiles/rank/commendations/etc to allow them to showcase their accomplishments.

This would cover maybe three or so weeks of class (on a full block each day), with exams at the end of each week. Some of the activities take 10 minutes while others may take a full day. The quizzes would be designed to last about 15 minutes each with the Captain's exam (the comprehensive one) being a full exam at the end of the unit. They can't progress unless they show they have met earlier standards on the formative quizzes though.  

The idea would be that the next unit in the class could be based on a different theme. I think students would get tired of Star Trek for 9 or 18 weeks. Perhaps we do a medieval theme, or spies depending on what the unit is. A unit on chemistry would be great for a detective/forensic angle, and a unit on motion could be done with designing roller coasters.

That's it!

Any thoughts would help in doing this. Do you think students would like it or hate it? Any ideas for adding to the game? If I didn't explain it well enough, please comment and I can try again.

As I plan to do a lot in this blog, I am just throwing out ideas. If you like it, run with it and let me know how it goes. I am still on the fence on this one as it will take a lot of time to put this into use.

Chris

Ring Around the Practice Problem

In physics we often have the daunting task of going over practice problems. As one esteemed colleague of mine is fond of saying for many of these kids, they think "Math was created to torture them." (Bruecken, 2012...;) There may be some truth to that.

I am going to toss this out to you as a way to take the tedium out of going over these problems and keep kids engaged.

• I start by asking them to pair up with the person next to them. Then one of the partners raises their hand. I tell them that they are going to be given a problem to solve with their partner. After a given amount of time (1-3 minutes depending on the problem) I tell them to switch. 
• The partner that raised his/her hand then moves around the room to the next group (like volleyball's 'rotate'). I try to time it so that they have discussed the problem and how they would solve it but may not be done. 
• Thus they take their knowledge to the next partner and finish the problem. They compare what they did with the last person to this new partner. Once they come to a consensus on an answer, we go over it (or I have them whiteboard it). 
• I then give them another problem and we rotate again halfway through it. 

This is just a quick way to take the tedium out of going over the problems. Most of the time they don't want to look like an idiot when the rotate happens so they pay attention. I like how they have to explain the problem to their new partner by showing their work.

Give it a try and let me know if it works. Any suggestions?