I have daydreams and ideas of this perfect site forming and being a beacon of inspiration and hope to all who come here and look. A bastion of knowledge of where to go and how to start. I don't really know where to begin and how to go about things.
I just recently came across Mr. Michael Matera's podcast, website and Youtube channel. I've listened to a couple of the more recent episodes on the way to and from work and they have some content but seem to be lacking something, too. There's a lot of "talk" without substance. Wait a second... I mean, there is substance to the talk, but to me, it's like eating a chicken wing or even a crab leg: a lot of work for a little payoff. I realize this is very one-sided of me. I've only listened to two episodes so far and one episode was mostly of two women just laughing. I didn't watch it on Youtube (yet) so I'm sure I'm missing something, but on the podcast format, it seemed like a lot of wasted time, but as he said, it's unedited, which is good! They talk about some things I want to go into in more detail, but let's make that another post. :)
I took 2 classes in pursuing my masters in the hopes that I would learn more about gamification. One class was too short to be meaningful enough. The other class, the teacher disappeared and we mostly taught ourselves. HOWEVER, the second class did introduce me to a pretty good handbook for game-based learning (not so much gamification). That book was Katrin Becker's Choosing and Using Digital Games in the Classroom: A Practical Guide (Advances in Game-Based Learning). It discussed a lot of theory and such behind how games should be evaluated and rated; things I had never really considered before. These are things I like to think I do sort of intrinsically but are hard to put in words. However, it has some great ideas in there and I guess that's where I am going to go with this post.
So, I am a teacher that uses Classcraft to help me gamify my classroom. It's a wonderful suite of tools, but I can't help but think about how much better it could be. Boss battles are great and the kids beg for them, but it needs some competition components to it. A team should be able to "steal" an answer and teams should ALL have to answer, not just one. One day, I'll learn some coding, but we'll get there.... Speaking of which, I really do need to email the people at Gimkit. A high schooler created that. What software language and how? That's what I would like to learn.
So anyway, I've been contemplating some alternative activities for my students. Today, we were doing a boss battle in Classcraft using Internet Acronyms. Here is a link to my boss battle. Once we were done, the kids were complaining about wanting some more of the ones they use. They don't know acronyms like AFK, ROFL, and IMNSHO. I thought these were BASIC ones, but they seem to think they're hard. They want ones like STG (Swear to God), HML (Hit My Line), HMP (Hit My Phone) and GTG (Got to Go). [And you don't know Tigger's TTFN? Ta-Ta For Now!?]
But I digress. What, then, I ask myself, are some activities I can offer kids that are "fun" and unusual and out of the ordinary? Something that allows them to be creative and do more? Well, how about letting them talk in their own lingo and teach a concept to a 'friend'? There are sites out there that let you make mock iPhone chat logs and such and using that as a way for students to post a review. Posting it in a forum or such where others can read others would be even better. Perhaps even limiting it for the students that it can be "one screen's worth" only could add a level of challenge to the activity. I need to find a good source for this type of resource and amend this post, but for now, that's my idea of the moment. I'm posting it here in the hopes that maybe I'll remember it and use it!
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