One more thing...

I love my gaming club kiddos. They are fantastically brilliant.

One of my kids comes to me today and says, "I've been thinking about the health system and I have an idea.... You could get a black piece of paper, and put 'Players Online' on it and put it up by the sink (near the door) and then you could get everyone's name laminated and put velcro on the back and when they come in the room, they could put their name in the 'Players Online'."

Fantastically. Brilliant.

It does my attendance for me. Plus I could have the health bars, lives, and gold on the individual name laminates. Plus it is in an easy to get to, easy to locate spot. Plus it is a routine that students can become easily familiar with as part of their entrance procedures. Plus it would give students instant feedback about how much gold they have. Plus students could take their names down as part of clean-up procedures and switch out the classes for me so I don't have to remember to do it every period. Plus it takes a little bit of the burden off of me and makes them more responsible.

Waaaay better than what I have now. Did I mention that I love my gamers? :)

Open House

Open house went great! I was amazed by the reaction from parents about the system. They reported that they were initially very shocked (as I expected) to see their child's grades so low, but then they said their child was excited and engaged and that they loved my class. It was more than I could have hoped. I did field a lot of questions from parents who were unclear, or hadn't received the letter sent home at the beginning of the year, so next quarter I will have to have a sign-off on the letter to be sure parents have read it.

So far, the buy-in has been great with the boys - anything with the word "game" in it and they are all over it. The girls are still figuring it out, but the keen ones are seeing the underlying system and are starting to take initiative to complete quests on their own. Just as I planned! I think it is because the girls are less versed in the language and rules of games that they have gotten off to a more tentative start. Perhaps in the future there needs to be a more "tutorial" like quest arc taking the class from levels 1-6 so they are more used to it. Or perhaps demo a different quest each day - although that already is kind of happening. Ultimately I think its just that the format of the class needs to come more in line with the way I envision it - a little more creative freedom for the students and just total emphasis on the creative process itself and less emphasis on the product.

Week 1

Week 1

For the first week I introduced the students to the Art Quest rule system and quest book. I broke it to them how the grading would work and they mostly took it ok. I had one class that received it negatively, but once they figured out the system, the whining stopped.

Some students were very adept at picking up how they could use the system to their advantage and have leveled up quickly. Most students are still stuck in the old way of waiting for me to give directions. That may have a lot to do with how I set up the quests.

Now that week 1 is over I can see that the quest system is pretty flawed and way to rigid. In order to be less flexible and up to student interpretation and planning what I propose is creating a quest system that can be dropped into any project. The wording is more general and applicable to wider variety of student scenarios. More student planning and less speciifc teacher instruction, although I still plan to deliver demos, doing an activity directly related to the demo will not, in itself yield XP. Instead, doing an activity related to what you have planned for your artwork will yield XP. If that correlates to what I demoed then that is fine, if not, that is fine too.

I also want to change how the content is gated. Previously, I told students I didn't care what order they went in because the XP would all balance out. If they shot themselves up to level 6, then inevitably, other assignments would be worth less because of my XP curve. However, I found that students who did this aren't making the connections I want them to and aren't planning for a successful project using the vague directions in the quest book. I still honored the XP, but this will change soon. I plan to gate students by forcing a progression from level 1 quest up the chain to level 6.

My goal for next week is to work on this new system.

Intro

This blog will chronicle my journey into creating and implementing game elements into a middle-school art classroom.

This change was inspired primarily by Lee Sheldon's Multiplayer Classroom, but also by other trends and videos including:

Teaching for Artistic Behavior

Extra Credits

Jesse Schell's Beyond Facebook

Khan Academy

...and others.

It is my ultimate goal to provide students with a learning environment in which they take charge of their own education by completing assignments at their own pace, interpreting the essential question through their choice of media in their own way, and being motivated to use their own creativity to answer problems in unique ways.