I’ve been obsessed with preparing a new method of gamifying my classes for the upcoming school year this Fall. I’ve written a bunch of posts sharing my journey to make a Results Only Learning Environment (ROLE) classroom that runs like a real life computer game using the 3D GameLab (3DGL) interface.
I added more quests to my 6th grade classes bringing the total to 84 (now up to 90 total – 7-29-13) possible quests for kids to choose from and still at 54 badges/achievements to show them their progress and growth.
After planning out my 8th grade year based on what I’ve taught in the past I have prepared 99 (now up to 109 total – 7-29-13) possible quests for students to choose from not including about 100 NOAA Planet Steward quests made available by a course I took on 3DGL this summer! Pretty exciting. That class has 40 badges/achievements to show students their progress and growth.
8th Grade Badges
A typical 8th grade Screenshot.
So I’m almost ready for kids to try it out and help me tweak it and fix any errors I missed (beta testing indeed). I even created a class Shivtr account to try that for class discussions and see if it will work better than Collaborize Classroom (Why Shivtr? Because many of the MOOCs I’ve been taking use it and it has been great for me as a learner). I still have a few quests to add as I think of them but at least I’m ready to start their year. Start the year that is, once I get my computers, iPads, and Netbooks ready. Still many hours left to update software and make sure network is working and sites we use aren’t blocked. Still much to do and that is all I can focus on. I’ve prepped 183 quests and created 94 badges working obsessively since school let out and I’m not ecstatic like I thought I would be. It’s rather anti-climactic. I was so excited to be done and now I’m not feeling very done. Maybe it’ll hit me later. Maybe I just need a break and start my summer vacation. I need that so I don’t start the year burned out!
Tomorrow I’ll be starting an online course on How to Learn Math, I’m still participating in the Summer GamesMOOC, there’s still work to do in the 3DGL summer academies I’ve been taking (four July ones), and I’ve also joined the 20% Time Academy MOOC. Maybe I am doing too much but there’s so much good stuff out there! I need to scale it back and play and relax a bit. I haven’t even been able to run because I injured my calf the week after school let out. I tried running on it after I thought it healed and I injured it worse. Soon I can get back to training for the Aug 17 Seattle Zombie Run! I’ve been looking forward to that for a while now.
So yeah, I think I’ll slow down now and take a break.
