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Will Richardson in his book, Why School, offers a well crafted argument to demonstrate that schools haven't kept up with the world. This argument is echod by Sir Ken Robinson in his TED talk called, "Changing Educational Paradigms." Robinson argues that the current education system was designed for the industrial age and modeled after it. Schools are factories where students are educated in groups and all given the same information in the same manner (Robinson, 2010). Will Richardson offers two paths a teacher can take, the first one is the path of least resistance where teachers adopt the Common Core and use that to rephrase their tried and true practices (Richardson, 2012). The second is where I try to be. It involves taking information and using it, mastery of knowledge is not the goal, but learning how to learn is the focus. This past year I have been fortunate enough to teach in a magnet school that focuses on Project Based Learning. We recieved PD once a week after school, and then about once a month all day Saturday. The learning experiences we created for our students were great. They were excited, engaged, asking questions, and working together to answer the questions. As we progress through our EDL 680 experience I am going to be writing and learning about how to Gamify my class. I'll admit it is my new obsession. I started researching it yesterday, and stayed up most of the night gathering information from various sources. I created a google spreadsheet template for the students to track their progress during the game. I designed some badges and the criteria for "leveling up." I have also begun to work on the basic storyline for the game. I am using The Legend of Zelda (the original) (Nintendo, 1986) as a model for play. It is my hope that by transformng my classroom into a fun "playful" environment where everyone is working for knowledge, my students will increase their "buy in" and assume more of an active role in class, or as Will Richardson calls it, take the power.
I believe the upcoming school year is going to be a fun and interesting one! Nintendo. (1986). The Legend of Zelda, (Nintendo) "video game". Richardson, W. (2012). Why school how education must change when learning and information are everywhere / Will Richardson. New York, NY: TED Conferences. Robinson, Ken (2010, October). Changing Educational Paradigms. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms.
5 Comments
6/3/2015 06:45:26 am
One of the great things about living in this day an age is the ability for teachers to expand their knowledge and the knowledge of the students beyond what a district is willing to provide. At my school we are an independent charter where we are able to create our curriculum as we wish as long as test results show our students are "learning" which can be challenging when you are trying to have students create social change but also be able to analyze answer A from B. Not that is impossible, but challenging. 6/7/2015 07:54:03 am
I love the idea of using the Legend of Zelda to gamify your courses. My eldest son would have loved to be in your class. He once created a video for an English class where he set part of Romeo and Juliet to one of his video games. It was the most excited I ever saw him about an English project. My youngest also loves video games and they are 11 years apart. So, I see how gamification can work across grade levels. When my oldest was struggling with reading, I bought games that required him to read. It worked. He was determined to read in order to progress in the games. However, as effective as I believe gamification is I believe in a balances approach to learning that incorporates new technology and some of the tried and true methods. Some skills must be learned without technology in order to more effectively use and learn from the technology. What Jacob mentioned in his experience with administrators and their understanding of "literacy" as books is similar to my own experiences as well. Change is difficult, and change in concepts is a bigger challenge. Whenever we use the word "literacy" in my school, we are talking about reading levels and skills. We have a program that is set up for improvement in this particular area and have specific goals we want our students to achieve. Therefore, is it so crucial to have a definite definition? What really matters is how we take traditional influences and work forward on the same page. Hence, I applaud your amazing efforts to implement gamification into your classroom, in incorporating a well-known game to new materials for student engagement. I agree that students should work for their knowledge in a playful environment. Allowing students to take charge of their own learning while having fun; and as you put it, “learning how to learn.” 6/7/2015 10:35:06 am
Michael,
Lexie Nielsen
6/7/2015 11:39:23 am
Michael, Leave a Reply. |
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