From the desk of Mr. Walters

Opinion: We need D&D in our classrooms!

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 18:11:00 +0000

A Short Rant on why WotC needs to enter the Educational Gamification Space

I hate to beat a dead unicorn, but I just wanted to write a short (tumblr-sized, but who uses tumblr anymore?) post about the secondary education gamification space and why Wizards of the Coast should throw their hat in the ring.

A void in the space

We all know that the elementary folks have Class Dojo, and until early 2019, the secondary folks had Classcraft. At what I would consider the height of that service's popularity, they made themselves more elementary-friendly and, as a result, way less relevant in the secondary space. I don't know how they're doing as a company, but no one I know even talks about Classcraft anymore. You can read more about the changes here and here.

A player that's already in the game...

Participation in tabletop cooperative role playing games like D&D has been shown to help us develop social skills, prime our brains for interdisciplinary stem learning, and improve our imaginative skills in writing, game design and more. Myself and many others across the country are creating D&D clubs at their schools. Local Libraries are starting D&D clubs for kids. D&D is already one of Hasbro's most successful properties. Wizards of the Coast, the division of Hasbro responsible for D&D and Magic The Gathering, having sent their leader up the chain to be the new Hasbro CEO, has hired Cynthia Williams to head up their band of adventurers. In the midst of a lot of talk about upcoming digital products, they hired a leader "straight outa Microsoft". They believe that digital products are definitely the way to get D&D and Magic in front of more kids, which is the key to long term growth.

My pitch

Not that my opinion matters to anyone, but I would say that Wizards and by extension Hasbro has the opportunity to get their name into a lot more classrooms (in front of a lot more kids) by throwing some of that digital products manpower into developing a simple classroom gamification app like Classcraft.

One that doesn't insult kids by nerfing Warriors into Guardians.
One that uses WotC's vast library of art, proprietary monsters, and colorful characters to make rich stories and quests.
One that is built on a foundation of one of the most inclusive communities on the planet right now.
One that can be cute or serious, depending on the tone desired by the class / teacher.

So, there you have it. That's it. We need a D&D Gamification app.

FTGOTC Minecraft EE PE Controls

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:17:00 +0000

I saw some teachers asking for this online, so I made one... still a work in progress. Hopefully it helps your distance learning kiddos.

...and here's a link to the PDF.

The Bald Sage's Complete Guide to Minecraft Game Design

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Mon, 11 May 2020 14:39:00 +0000

If you're a student looking for Game design help, skip ahead to the section, "Game Design with Minecraft EE". If you're a computer teacher who normally reads this blog as a part of professional growth, or just to make fun of me, feel free to read from the beginning.

The challenge

Yes, COVID-19 Strikes again
Recently, in my post, 5 Elements and Still Relevant, I explained that as far as an actual sound curriculum in Game Design that Middle School students can comprehend and apply, Gamestar Mechanic is the only game in town. It's the only thing that simply and concisely takes students through designing balanced games (games with flow), using 5 Elements of Game Design while essentially using Gamification and Game Based Learning to do it. NO OTHER TOOL TEACHES GAME DESIGNas a distinct discipline.

Tynker doesn't teach it.
Code.org doesn't teach it.
Minecraft edu, as cool as it may be, doesn't teach it.
Microsoft MakeCode Arcade doesn't teach it.
Unity doesn't teach it.

No computers = no flash. Now what??

I talked in my last post about the challenges associated with students are working from home on their 1:1, school issued devices, which are, for the most part, iPads. Well, Gamestar Mechanic is yet another thing that doesn't work on the iPad. In fact there's nothing like Unity or Unreal or even GDevelop. Trying to make games in the browser is sometimes painfully awkward, though it can be done with Gamefroot or Microsoft Arcade. Not to mention, while all of these tools have great practical tutorials available on the nuts and bolts of game development, there is little to no mention of good game design. So, here I am, someone who teaches this, with a group of students sitting at home waiting to do everyone's favorite unit from my class, expecting greatness... What do I do?

So, I have put together a system that combines a smattering of Youtube videos and some activities in Minecraft Education Edition, that should be both educational and fun. Minecraft Education Edition is not free. I should note that right off the bat. However, if you're teaching in a school with an Office 365 license, chance are you have it or can get it very easily. If you're lucky enough to be one of the PA schools whose IU pays for it, then you're in good shape too. If you know nothing about this, you can find out more here.

Game Design with Minecraft EE

So from here on out, this is going to look more like a Unit Plan than a blog post because this is for the kiddos as well.

Part 1 - Introduction:

In this introduction, you will learn what Game Design is, including the 5 elements that make up good game design, and you'll be introduced to Minecraft Education Edition and what makes it special.

Intro to Game Design concepts

What are the 5 basic elements of game design, and whcih one is the most important to you?
Of the popular design strategies game creators take to ensure a fun experience for players, what one do you respond to the most? Which one do you think would be easiest to use in making your own games?

Intro to Minecraft Education Edition

Give students instruction on how to download and install Minecraft EE. Below are my sample instructions that work in my district.

Install Mincraft from the app portal on your IPAD or...
Download to a COMPUTER from the website

Then, a good introduction to Coding in Minecraft is the Hour of code activity in the Lesson Library. I am assuming you've already done some kind of blocks-based programming with students, such as that provided by code.org.

Part 2 - Mastering Minecraft EE:

I like students to get some tools in their belt to make game design / development easier.

Learn the Education Tools

Learn to Play: Programming NPCs
Learn to Play: Using the Book & Quill

Learn to Play: The Camera (for adding pictures to your books)

Learn to Play: Using Border, Allow & Deny Blocks

Learn to build Stuff Faster

This lesson teaches how to program the agent using MakeCode to build structures. There are 10 exercises starting very easy, and gets harder.

Some kid figured out World Edit!

New Commands for WorldEdit In Minecraft Education Edition (Agent Mods 3)

How to import Agent Mods (Agent Mods 4)
Import code for Mr. Walters' world edit: https://makecode.com/_Yhp7XC7kKXqW

Code your first Game in Minecraft!!

You will create and advanced game, called Alien Invasion, using the Code interface with Tynker (Instead of Makecode, which we usually use).

Get the Alien Invasion directions here!

Part 3 - Advanced Game Design Challenges

Mix the following Game Design Theory videos in with the following Challenges:

Maze / Runner Challenge

You will need...

A deadly enclosed obstacle course with lots of treasure and dangers along the way.
The use of Border, Allow & Deny Blocks to keep your player from gaming the system.
A goal so your player knows when he / she has won.

Bonus Items

A prodding mechanic to keep the player moving ever forward for a simple in-line runner (such as a chain reaction TnT explosion that starts behind the player shortly after starting).
Deadly enemies of increasing difficulty for a maze (treasure should help player overcome more difficult enemies)

3d Platformer (AKA Hardcore Parkour)

You will need...

A parkour-tastic course with plenty of deadly pitfalls for your player.
The use of Border, Allow & Deny Blocks to keep your player from gaming the system.
A goal so your player knows when he / she has won.

General hints:

The Nether is a great place to build a 3d Platformer
Flat worlds are also great because once you build your course, you can easily use code to delete the ground.

Ultimate ultimate challenge... The Dungeon Crawl!

Use building, coding, command blocks, and redstone to create an old school Diablo / Gauntlet style dungeon crawl.

You'll need:

The use of Border, Allow & Deny Blocks to keep your player from gaming the system.
A goal so your player knows when he / she has won.
The Elements of a good crawl -

a complex labyrinthine dungeon,
plenty of traps,
plenty of mobs,
some sweet treasure,
and some bosses.

Extra points for a beautifully designed / decorated dungeon that is awe inspiring and dread-inducing at the same time.

Remember: you should use the Camera, Book and Quill, and Lectern to provide some synopsis of the project or what's going on near the spawn point. You may also use the NPC to provide guidance for the player.

Think about how you'll creatively add your dungeon(s) to your map. Maybe it is in the basement of an unassuming village house or under the town church (like in Diablo). Will there be portals with parts of the dungeon in the Nether?

Add your ideas!

In the comment section below, I would love to hear from students and teachers with ways to make this better, additional challenges, or other great videos on Game Design concepts that are kid-friendly.

Corona, Computer Class, and Consolation

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Mon, 11 May 2020 13:04:00 +0000

Three lessons learned amidst a pandemic.

Lesson 1: Computer Science Does Matter

So, I'm going to open by saying that I have never been more convinced of the need for an actual "Computer Class". I'm painfully aware of this thanks to the global pandemic that is COVID-19. My Students have been sent home with their iPads, and I have been called upon to teach them my Computer Science Class remotely.

Over the last few years, as students have found themselves in possession of "devices" throughout their school day, thanks to 1:1 programs, usually with Chromebooks and iPads, many districts have sadly asked themselves the question, “Why do we need a computer class?”. Even more sadly, many have given up their Computer Science curriculum, at least in the K-8 realm. Hopefully, without sounding classist or making this a politically charged issue, I can make the assertion that iPads and Chrome Books, as well as the myriad smart phones that most people carry every day, are consumer devices. Personal computers are still very much creator devices. Yes, there are a lot of cool things that students can "create" for their Social Studies, Science, and English classes on iPads & Chrome Books. What I’m pointing out, is that there are no post-graduation situations in which there is a great demand for employees to make a Flip Grid, complete a Goose Chase, design a Pic Collage, or do a Quizlet. They may very well be asked to develop a front end for their inventory database or design a custom template for their company CMS driven web portal or mock up a logo for the charity fun-run t-shirts. None of these things can be done well on an iPad, at least not with the apps we have.

Yes, there are limited possibilities, on iPad for example, to create. iMovie and Garage Band have both gotten more robust on iOS devices. What about game development, though? Is there anything like Unity or Unreal or even GDevelop? Is there anything for serious coding? What do we have for that? How about computer aided drafting? There's really nothing comparable to Sketchup for iPad. Adobe has some decent beginner – level graphic design apps, but if you have students under the age of 13 (& your gate keepers look closely at the ToS) you’re out of luck there as well. For the most part, design and development is severely limited, particularly when there are gate keepers involved, who decide what apps the kids can add. Yes, there are some decent web apps that work right in your browser, but not in Safari on an iPad. Again, if you have gatekeepers, you may only get Safari, and an alternative browser, like Chrome, is out of the question. Bottom line: Kids need a computer to be a serious creator (or "Maker" to use the parlance of our times), and there's is a definite place for a computer science class.

Lesson 2: Your Learning Management System wasn't designed for Kids...

Don't know about LMS? Click here.

First, while my Bachelors degree is in Secondary education, I have a Masters degree in Adult Education and Online Learning. I feel that gives me some authority when I say that most Learning Management Systems (Blackboard, Canvas, Schoology, etc) are built around the learning theory of Andragogy, or how adults learn. Meanwhile, most codified expectations of quality Pedagogy, how kids learn best, such as the Danielson Framework used to judge the performance of so many of today's teachers, are built an underlying value of behaviorist thought, which is the antithesis of Andragogy. There's nothing inherently wrong with this. The assumption is simply that kids learn differently from adults based on their different stages of development and different inherent motivations.

That said, you may have big plans for a brilliant threaded asynchronous discussion in your Schoology course, only to find that out of the 50% of your students who participated, 30% didn't post their replies as replies, but just randomly out in the discussion board somewhere with no context and so many pronouns that you have no idea what they're talking about. Meanwhile, of the missing 50%, roughly 15% of them send you a new email daily, saying that they're not sure what they need to do this week (when it's clearly posted the same place it has been the last two times they emailed you) or saying they're not sure they are enrolled in your class (despite having received 3 emails from you with a screenshot of them in your course members list). You can make screencasts and post to your "Help Forum", and email step-by-step instructions, but it's not going to do you any good. In fact, you'll probably have to calm down some parents who are more frustrated than their kids are. Why?

Our kids aren't wired or conditioned to learn this way. YOUR PRESENCE IS ESSENTIAL!

What's more, their parents probably have several kids, are working from home, taking care of an elderly relative, or even trying to figure out food and bills while not being paid. No matter how cool the gamified quest is that you've designed, they don't have the mental or emotional real-estate to figure it out. You may have heard "Grace over Grades" enough times that it washes over you, but seriously, let's cut everyone some slack.

Like, no kidding. How stressed out are you right now with your own progeny, and you know all this stuff? Imagine never having seen a Flipgrid, and suddenly your middle child has one that's two days overdue, while your oldest can't figure out his math assignment (what on earth is the point of a stem and leaf chart anyway??), and your youngest needs you to help her upload her phys. ed. assignment, but your cellular hotspot is telling you you've exceeded your monthly data, and, while you have "unlimited data", your speed is being throttled down.

Possibilities, presence, and the pain of disappointment.

Honestly, I was super excited at the outset of this adventure to use all of my awesome online learning chops and to try the plethora of tools that were suddenly free. Imagine my rapid descent into despondent melancholy when I found out:

My whole curriculum is pretty much trash on the iPad; forget teaching anything I normally teach.
The gate keepers who decide what gets added to the iPads and what doesn't don't really want to make many changes without a near act of congress.
Kids and Parents are overwhelmed enough with Schoology and Google Classroom and Flipgrid, that they don't care whether you use Classcraft at all, premium features or no.
I was going to spend most of my time with a spreadsheet trying to figure out whom has posted what where and whether I've completely lost anyone.

On top of this, many of us are now living in Limbo, or the liminal state of working from home. We're at home, but we're also at work. Our families wonder what the heck we're actually doing with our time and why we're not mowing the lawn right now or ripping plaster out of that old farmhouse or helping one of our kids with their Pic Collage project...

The Consolation

In all of this crazy, I find consolation in the following.

I have seen my teaching colleagues rise to this challenge in a way that should leave the public with no doubt as to the value, professionalism, and care of our nation's teachers.
I have seen administrators not only lead, but also inspire and encourage.
I "miss my job" in the business as usual sense, so much, that it just reinforces that teaching is what I was made to do. I miss walking onto my classroom in the morning so much some days that I could cry.

So, here's hoping that things get back to some semblance of normalcy for the fall. Y'all are doing great work out there. Hang on. We've got this.

What happened, Classcraft?

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 15:52:00 +0000

So, my last post focused on including girls in esports and my willingness to take a hard look at my own mistakes and failings. This post focuses on engaging boys in school through gamification and a company we all love's unwillingness to do the same... on to glory!

The success

I decided to roll out Classcraft in all of my classes two years ago, and I have found it to be surprisingly effective. I've shared here in the past how not only do students take the health and experience of their characters very seriously, but they also strive to help their teams and classmates in general. One thing that continually surprised me was how much students crave XP (or experience points).

Remember, what I do with Classcraft has had no effect on student grades whatsoever. Yet, I've been able to attach points loss / gain consequences to my behavioral and procedural expectations via XP and HP. While these points don't matter in terms of students' grades, they do matter a great deal to students, who are ultimately more concerned with the game than their grade anyway. The biggest gain, however, is how they got so excited about equipping their avatar with custom stuff. I had so many cool "anchor projects" sitting around, ignored, despite being worth a ton of bonus points. It was the drive for XP and cool new gear that got students into finally doing those projects, now called "Boss Fights" with a ton of XP attached.

While my team leaders were healers for the most part, it turns out that from a Bartle Type perspective, the Achievers in my class were always driving the pursuit of XP. They typically chose Warrior (because coolest gear) and dragged their team on Boss Fights to level up, while the others come along. These same kids used to bug me every day for random events, thus driving an overall sense of excitement and buy-in for the game.

The change

So, like everyone else, I had a lot going on at the start of the school year. I got everyone going on Classcraft the first week, students chose their character class and created team names. Then the crickets started. My seventh graders have been loving Classcraft for the last two years (as someone who teaches a new class each marking period, that's 24 classes of seventh graders I've done Classcraft with... 24 classes of students doing boss fights, begging for random events, and asking whether we're doing any special quests or events this week. Then, crickets...

Meanwhile, I had a few move-ins for my eighth grade groups. I was helping one, a student with Neurological Impairment, set up his character, a warrior. He asked, what level he had to reach to get gear like the kid next to him. That's when it hit me. The warriors, the ones with the cool gear, the gear that finally engaged so many students in my classes, lost it in favor of "light shields". The kid next to him blurted out, "they nerfed Classcraft!", and suddenly all of my students (this is a game design class I should mention) began trying to find answers on what happened. It turns out the answers can be found on Classcraft's own blog, in the posts "The story of our new logo" and Announcing Classcraft’s 2019-2020 gear refactor

Specifically, we are making some small tweaks to maps and student gear to harmonize [emphasis added] them with the expansive new world we’ve created while addressing concerns around violence and some minor religious connotations that have been carried over from our roots in gaming. We’re starting this transition by changing Warriors to Guardians, updating the power names and images, and shifting “falling in battle” to simply “falling.”

My students pointed out that "harmonization" is a term used for game censorship in China and that when they English patch a Chinese language game, they often also apply an "anti-harmonization" patch to get rid of any censorship (example).

Either way, it seems as though Classcraft received some pressure from somewhere to get rid of the weapons, and rather than sticking to their guns, saying, "this is a secondary gamification platform", they decided to go ahead and risk alienating their main customer base by caving.

The response and ramifications.

It turns out that a lot of folks were upset about this from the official Classcraft forums to Facebook. The response from other teachers, like myself, who have had nothing but praise for Classcraft, should be an indicator of how bad a move this was. Probably no one seemed more upset to me than my 7th graders. My eighth graders took it upon themselves to interview my seventh graders about the changes and the result was a group of kids who had been indifferent (indifferent - not excited or enthused, mind you) about Classcraft to a group of very angry kids. They felt ripped off, particularly those with older siblings who had played it in previous years. Surprisingly, it wasn't just the warriors who were angry. Everyone felt betrayed by this. This is their first year doing it, but they said things, like, "it's just like everything else at school... starts out cool, then it gets turned into something so safe it's stupid."

Why such vitriol? I have a theory, based on one of the comments I saw on Facebook. Jared Oaks, noted that,

For better or worse, it's those fore-mentioned boys, who want to be big mighty warriors that we're trying to reach. Again and again, they're receiving the narrative that what engages them has no place in school, and here we are again!

He was referring to the October 2010 TED talk (embedded below) where Ali Carr Chellman shares her assertion that zero tolerance policies and the way they're lived out is sending a message to our boys that says, "Well I guess [school] was just a place for girls, it wasn't for me. So I've got to do gaming, or I've got to do sports." Chellman's call for better more engaging games around the curriculum seemed to have been answered by Classcraft in a big way, but now they're stepping back.

So when Scott Ilkenhons refers to "the over PC-ing of our culture and having the overly sensitive people alter our way of thinking versus being free with our thoughts and creativity," when Michael Ludlow says "take away the cool factor and you take away the engagement," and when Scott Beiter notes that "When I first read this was happening I didn't believe it because I thought it was a joke"; they're clearly speaking from a subconscious understanding of this very concept that Chellman is speaking of.

Classcraft's "roots in gaming" that they are so quick to malign and cut ties with is the very thing that engaged this entire previously disengaged population. Amanda Xavier put it beautifully when she said, "my kids will lose interest and then I have to go back to the drawing board on how to engage these title-one middle school kiddos". Yes, Stephanie, swords may, for some, only represent — "power, autonomy, and identity", but for this kids who always feel alienated by edu-culture, the swords removal spoke volumes about how once again, those kids don't belong here.

Finally, the theme I saw emerging over and over again on Facebook, Twitter, and Classcraft's teacher forums was that teachers want choice. They want the ability to choose to accept or not accept these changes:

This was bigger than you thought, but it all boils down to choice, give us the option to make an intelligent decision whether this is right for us or not, rather than enslaving people to a limited set of ideals. Scott Ilkenhons

I just want more options with a subscription, not fewer! Scott Beiter

I support the idea of it being up to the teacher. I like the idea of secondary mode I think would be very beneficial, because middle school kids would buy into the program more. Amanda Xavier

PLEASE rethink this. Make it a feature to turn on or off. I love the idea of new costumes and such "the new gear and other assets we’ll be adding" -- but if being subscribed to Classcraft for five years has taught me anything, it's this: there will be large promises of new tools LONG before they ever actually appear. Nicholas Hendley

Rather than punish the whole community, why not let the teachers and administrators make the decision about what is best for their classes and schools? It cannot be that difficult to make this option available to those who wish to use it.... The right path to take would have been to allow your customers to choose what is right for their class, students, and school. Gavin Meeks

They want gamification that looks like the games they actually play. I feel this was a terrible move, and I want the option to change the setting back! Clint Walters (me)

My students, especially the boys, are quite disappointed. I teach FSL (wich is really not a favourite subject!) and ClassCraft was a big motivator, especially for my spec ed boys who would sometimes do extra work just to get gold pieces so they could buy cool outfits. Now without the weapons the outfits are not so cool anymore! Please give us the possibility to have the weapons back!!! Lyne Parent

I think you should be giving the teachers the choice, based on their school's policy and atmosphere, on if they want the weapons or the power stones. To sound like society (and my business law class when we talk about new school rules), you are punishing EVERYBODY, because a few locations/schools/adminstrations are upset about fantasy weapons. Jeffrey Holley

I, too, was very disappointed in the change to the Warriors, as were my students. I would love to have an option to change it back to the traditional weapons. I have been a huge proponent of Classcraft and have embraced every change until now. I am very much not a fan of this! Mr. Ermenc

As others have said, it's a fantasy game, warriors have weapons. I mean, you do realize you now have an unlockable suit called the "Blademaster" that doesn't use blades, right? Almost all the warrior ability icons show swords or weapons of some sort. Fine, maybe some people are uncomfortable with any kind of weapon being shown. Ever. But for the rest of us, why not leave it as a setup option? Warrior weapons/No weapons. Scott McLaughlin

My 7th grade students are very disappointed with the changes with the warriors' weapons, as am I. This is a fantasy based game, and part of getting the kids excited to use it is that the graphics mirror what they would see in a real fantasy video game. Please bring back the original warrior gear, or allow teachers the ability to unlock it for specific classes. You could even offer it for the students to buy with their GP. Erin Murphy

I understand why the decision was made, but question why there wasn't consideration for optional inclusion? I teach at a high school level. My students usually enjoy classcraft; however, they were the ones pointing out to me the most recent changes. Luke Morse

So, clearly people are looking for some choice in this matter, Classcraft. Are you planning to provide it? My students have gone from rage back to indifference. So while kids have accepted this, they are no longer interested. You've satiated the educator community for the time being by saying,

Please know that we are taking your opinions to heart. There are plenty of discussions taking place around this issue. Your comments are being heard. Classcraft's Official Facebook

Now, it just remains to be seen whether or not you'll actually do anything about or whether you'll dig your heels in and plug your ears until, as Scott Beiter said a developer somewhere, looking at making another fantasy gamification platform develops something with "features that this Platform doesn't such as different weapons to equip and highly customizable boss battles and avatars... Teachers will quickly jump platforms". Heck, some of my game design / development students are already trying to work it out, and they're only eighth graders. I imagine there are some highschool students out there right now who could easily set something like this up.

Gender, Ettiquette, Conduct, and ESportsmanship

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Fri, 27 Sep 2019 16:25:00 +0000

A brief look at my own failings and shortsightedness, and my attempts to course-correct before even beginning...

Preparing to form an ESports team

I am currently in the process of researching, planning, and hopefully implementing an ESports club or team for the HS / MS level at my school district, along with our new Superintendent and our Director of Technology. This is a more daunting challenge that one would expect. Don't get me wrong, NASEF along with the Emerald Foundation has everything in place that one would need to get started, but one must wait on administrative and board permission before hitting that "Activate" button. There are a lot of people that we need to have a "yes" from before we proceed. As a result I've had a lot of time to think about what I, and hopefully we, want this to look like, which is a good thing when vision casting for something completely new to your institution.

Ultimately, we're looking for an inclusive activity that supports students that are not normally involved in extracurricular activities (such as traditional sports) in character development, peer relationships, and positive connections to school. The work of Constance Steinkuehler, Ph.D. Department of Informatics Donald Bren School of Information & Computer Sciences University of California, Irvine, is showing Esports to help students build character and develop discipline, self-esteem and sportsmanship through practice and gameplay.

As I have been thinking about this, two things emerged. First, I was thinking about how to create a non-toxic culture in our yet-to-be-formed group. Second, I was beginning to get a picture of what this group would look like. As I was mowing the lawn a few days ago (Yes, it is still crazy hot here in central PA and the grass is still growing), I was listening to this Podcast where James O' Hagan talks about the difficulty of recruiting female players on the collegiate level. Women don't want all-women's teams. They want the best players to play. It turns out that my picture of what this group would look like, despite all of my hopes to be inclusive, was very wrong.

Gender Bias in Gaming Culture

So, without thinking about it, I had already completely surrendered to the gender bias in gaming culture and pictured a team that was all male. The crazy part is that I am a semi-serious gamer these days, and the groups I PvP with are very diverse, along lines of race, gender, orientation, etc. What's more, some of our best players (way better than myself I might add) are women. I have had female students tell me about their Overwatch characters of choice, and a student who identified as non-binary explain League of Legends to me because I don't understand MOBA's. Still, when one pictures an Esports team, the immediate mental picture is predominantly male. That image is reinforced, not only by teams we see competing, but also in things as ubiquitous as stock image search. When writing a post, I go to Unsplash first to look for images. Searching "Esports" gives zero photos featuring female players. Searching "gamer" gives the two images found in this article (clearly they could only find two stock images for female gamers too) and a new one today of a woman gaming in her underwear. Oddly, there are not pictures of dudes gaming in their underwear.

So, rather than be a part of the problem, I'm hoping to be a force of change, right here in central PA. I've been reading up on the scene and the challenges. There is a lot of great stuff out there. If you're getting ready to start a team, I highly recommend reading Women in Gaming: An Introduction. This blog post was written by Coach Bethany Pyles, who works as NASEF's Esports Coaching Coordinator. This was as very eye-opening read. I also am making frequent use of the ideas presented in How to get more female gamers involved in professional Esports, by Brenda Ronan. Finally, the piece I mentioned earlier (and block quoted below) that used the same two Unsplash photos I'll be using here, includes profiles of women in Esports. I plan to have my Graphic Design oriented students turn those into Women in Esports posters, similar to the Women in STEM posters we put up around our Learning Commons.

Where eSports was once an industry dominated by men, almost 50% of all gamers in the world today are female. (Women in eSports: Why They’re the Market to Watch)

I also recommend the podcast, Jessamyn Acebes: Growing as a Woman in Esports. At one point the question is asked, how we should treat women and girls on our teams and the answer,"Just be a normal person, actually," was funny on the surface, yet reflective of how far we have to go.

Conduct Codes, PR, and Follow through

So a big part of organizing any team is dealing with teamwork, adrenaline, and conflict. When you add in the culture of toxicity that's prevalent in multi-player gaming culture, you have a pretty steep cliff to climb when organizing an Esports team.

Luckily, developing a code of conduct will not be as monumental a task as I had originally presumed. For starters, most leagues and organizations, like NASEF, have a code of conduct already prepared for you.

There are also numerous resources from full-blown codes of conduct, such as An esports Code of Conduct, to organizations to help you create a more inclusive program overall, like AnyKey and NASEF's #GameChangers: Esports for Everyone.

As esports competitors we should never: Use language, nicknames or other expressions that insult another player’s gender, gender identity, origin, physical ability, sexual orientation, religion or age.Use language or actions that refer to sexual violence or other violence. (An esports Code of Conduct: For players, organizers and parents)

Another organization to watch is Women of Esports. They don't have much content up yet, but you're missing out if you don't read their first article, A day with Cloud9’s Susie Kim: Presented by Ateyo.

A Code of Conduct is helpful, but it not only needs to be enforced but be made to seep into the culture. Why am I having kids invest time in creating posters about female gamers? Why am I determined to recruit a diverse team? I want to build a culture, like the one John Robertson has in his school where students enforce the code, informally and non-judgmentally, in a way that reminds their peers, "this is not okay". I also want to feed into an Esports ecosystem from HS to College to Pro that leads to more diverse pictures on Unsplash.

Ultimately, sooner rather than later, we're going to be scrimming a team that is light years ahead of us. we're going to be dealing with teamwork, adrenaline, and conflict in a real and tense situation. When the stress seeps in the old habits seep out. It's in that context the culture will show it's true colors, and that's where I'm sitting right now. What strategies have worked for you seasoned EsportsEdu facilitators? What strategies have backfired? Please tweet me or comment below with any and all feedback. Let's get a conversation going that goes beyond a brief Twitter chat (those are awesome - don't get me wrong). We need each other. Let's build the culture we want to see. As the feeder program for the whole ecosystem, we have the most potential to make a difference.

Parting Shots

While I clearly don't have a great deal of wisdom or experience here (heck, I've probably made several gaffs while trying to wrestle with this issue in this very post), I do have a great community to look to. So, before I go, here are the folks I'm letting speak into my space and inform my program as it shapes up. It's a diverse list, but I hope you'll find it helpful. Consider it a little #followfriday action:

Obviously, there are so many more. I've just listed folks that have lots of links to other folks you should follow, or those with whom I have had actual conversations.

Also, keep an eye on these sites:

AnyKey
NASEF's #GameChangers: Esports for Everyone.
Women of Esports

5 Elements and Still Relevant

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 17:45:00 +0000

UPDATE: GSM put out a survey about the future!

::Take the survey::

Back in 2008 (seems like yesterday), E-Line Media in partnership with the Institute of Play, rolled out a new site, called Gamestar Mechanic, which was originally developed by Gamelab in partnership with the Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Lab (AADL) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This is a site that aims to teach kids how to design their own games, with the premise that designing games builds:

Systems Thinking,
21st Century Skills,
Creative Problem Solving,
Art and Aesthetics,
Writing and Storytelling,
and creates a motivation for STEM learning.

If you've read my blog for any length of time, you will know that this is a tool that I consider to be indispensable. I was pretty new to teaching Computer Science in 2008. I had only been at it a year, and I was trying desperately to make the leap from programming (we were using Scratch for that back then with no manual or guide whatsoever) to students being able to design good quality games; you know, games that were actually fun to play. Gamestar Mechanic speaks directly into this space, and was a life saver for me. It also has a "Learning Guide", which was developed by The Institute of Play and E-Line Media. There was also an awesome Teacher Blog, which I had the privilege of contributing to for a time, but sadly that is now gone.

In fact, despite starting strong with generous funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for an original grant proposal by James Paul Gee, Ph.D and Eric Zimmerman and being a big part of the National STEM Video Game Challenge up through 2017, the site has seen little to no updates for quite awhile. There was talk of an iPad app, but it never came to fruition. I have to admit, that as a teacher who has lost access to so many great teaching tools (always in the area of game design and development, the most loved and popular component of my course), I am scared! I'm downright panicked that we are going to lose this too, and there is NOTHING to fill this void.

You may wonder, "Clint, do you know something we don't know? Do you have the 411 on some plan to shut down GSM?" No, I don't. I haven't know anyone at GSM, since Brian Alspach left the project. So I don't want to cause a panic. I hope it sticks around for a week or so, at least. I'm right in the middle of using it!
It is my sincere hope the Gamestar Mechanic is around for a long time to come and remains proudly displayed on E-Line Media's Projects Page.

What I do know is this. Adobe announced in July of 2017 that it was killing the Flash plugin by 2020. Gamestar Mechanic runs on the Flash Plugin. Flash will die, and it's taking a ton of free interactive educational content with it. Being that the GSM website hasn't migrated to Html 5 yet, and it hasn't seen any love in terms of it's Apprentice or Mentor Badges, I have grave concerns.

This may all sound a bit melodramatic, but as far as an actual sound curriculum in Game Design that Middle School students can comprehend and apply, Gamestar Mechanic is the only game in town. It's the only thing that simply and concisely takes students through designing balanced games (games with flow), using 5 Elements of Game Design while essentially using Gamification and Game Based Learning to do it. NO OTHER TOOL TEACHES GAME DESIGN as a distinct discipline.

Tynker doesn't teach it.
Code.org doesn't teach it.
Minecraft edu, as cool as it may be, doesn't teach it.
Microsoft MakeCode Arcade doesn't teach it.
Unity doesn't teach it.

All of the above are great at teaching development, but none teach game design. I fear the day where the only tools I have to teach game design with in class are woefully crippled over-simplified pay-to-learn apps like Tynker or insanely complicated industry apps like Unity 3d, which is awesome, don't get me wrong. Unfortunately, Unity is crippled in the classroom. It's

Crippled by updates that constantly break the educational content and kits they crank out.
Crippled by network security at any school that recieves Erate funding.
Crippled by extremely large files, which must be downloaded to do anything.
Professional grade makes it edu-impractical.

So, despite being a little old and dusty, Gamestar Mechanic is still very very relevant in 2019. So, if you teach game design in your Computer class, and you use this tool, I'm calling on you to share this and be vocal yourself about how much this tool means to you. Teachers and entrepreneurs in the Edtechbridge Community, I'm calling on you to discuss this. Can we make something similar? Can we continue Gamestar and breathe new life into it somehow? Folks at forward thinking organizations, like Games for Change, Code.org, and Institute for the Future, do you have any ideas? Finally, E-Line Media and Institute of Play, what's going on? What's the plan? Is there anything you can communicate with us?

Parting Shot

Finally, a parting shot. As someone who has started playing games in recent years, I've noticed that if people value something in the private sector / for-profit market, there is a way to keep it alive. I play a few Private Server Games. This is where a game is dropped by the company that hosts it, and the source code is made available to private individuals who want to keep it alive for the love of the game. Basically something that was once a for-profit venture becomes a labor of love. This does not happen in education. When tools like Project Spark, Teach with Portals, or Game Kit Beta go away, they're gone. No one makes this material available to anyone. I tried with Game Kit, but was ignored. I'd like to see that change.

10 Computer Class Tools you should be using right now!

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Wed, 23 Jan 2019 17:16:00 +0000

Engaging Middle School students is hard, even in the computer lab. In one of my recent posts, I mourned the loss of several great initiatives and tools that are no longer with us. As I looked over my contributions to the CSK8 (Computer Science K-8) community in this blog recently, I noted that a lot of what I was doing / promoting just two years ago, is completely antiquated now. On a positive note, though, it's 2019, and there are a lot of great new things to be excited about. As long as there are technology producers as well as consumers, computer class will remain very relevant, despite the prevalence of thin devices, such as iPads and ChromeBooks.

Let's take a look at 10 things you should be including in your computer class in 2019 and a few honorable mentions for the good of the cause...

Classroom Environment

Today, I'd like to begin with Danielson's Domain 2, Classroom Environment, because sometimes the atmosphere we work in can profoundly affect the work itself.

Classcraft

Recently, I decided to roll out Classcraft in all of my classes, and I have found it to be surprisingly effective. Not only do students take the health and experience of their characters very seriously, but they also strive to help their teams and classmates in general. One thing that surprised me was how much students crave XP (or experience points).

Edmodo

I know that Edmodo is old hat, and that many districts have begun using much more sexy Learning Management tools, such as Schoology, or Canvas. The problem is, I still don't see Edmodo as a Learning Management system. Edmodo describes itself as "a global education network that helps connect all learners with the people and resources needed to reach their full potential". I see Edmodo as a Social Network. It looks like a social network. It works like a social network. I still use Edmodo as a space students can treat as our own safe Facebook. Kids post things they're working on, ask questions, discuss muffins vs. toast as a preferred breakfast carbohydrate, and have real genuine conversations about their projects that I wouldn't get in a contrived, LMS environment.

Instruction

New Google Sites

Google Sites has recently undergone a big overhaul, and the new editor definitely looks a lot nicer than Classic Sites and is much easier to use. Students can select from between six “styles,” which basically determine header appearance, font, and font colors, thus preventing students from going into the technicolor-nightmare-scape of colors images and fonts. While it’s severely restricting in terms of what users can actually build with it, it makes a beautiful website one can use as a portfolio, project website, or even a collaborative workspace. It opens from Drive, so if you have G0Suite for schools, you need to add this to your toobox.

Unity 3d

Unity is one of the most in-demand tech skills and has one of the highest forecasted growth rates, at over 35% over the next two years.Unity offers software licenses at no charge for in-class instruction to qualifying academic institutions at any level. Educators are invited to fill out the online application form on behalf of their institution or program.

Unity has a wide range of resources for creators at every stage of learning. Te 2D Game Kit alone is worth the price of admission, which is FREE for your classroom if you apply here.

It is important that you have decent computers that allow students to save to the HDD. I have students creating some amazing things from scratch, with the 2d and 3d kits, and with the assets on Open Game Art.

Code.org

Code.org is a nonprofit dedicated to expanding access to computer science in schools and increasing participation by women and underrepresented minorities. This resource, unlike pretty much every great educational resource out there keeps getting better and keeps staying free. This puts money-hungry apps like Tynker to shame. At the Middle level, I highly recommend the lab resources:

Swift Playgrounds

"Swift Playgrounds is a revolutionary iPad app that helps you learn and explore coding in Swift, the same powerful language used to create world-class apps for the App Store. Engaging lessons and challenges help students learn the core concepts of coding by writing real Swift and iOS code in an interactive environment designed for touch." (Apple)

Swift Playgrounds includes interactive lessons that use puzzles and experimentation to teach the following core coding concepts, and more:

Commands
Functions
Parameters
Loops
Conditional statements
Variables
Operators
Types
Initialization

Our High school uses Swift Playgrounds with Parrot Drones to introduce robotics fundamentals before moving on to more advanced topics. It also works with Sphero and a varied of other tools as well.

ARIS

ARIS makes it super easy and intuitive to create location-based games and stories / simulations: One can create mobile games, tours and interactive stories with ARIS games. Players experience a hybrid world of virtual characters and media in physical space.

ARIS used to be a lot more difficult to use. For example, you used to have to "script" your dialog. Now the process is straightforward and graphical. In about a week of working during spare moments at school, I was able to create several random rewards in the form of power scrolls and a few field "bosses" (extra projects) that students can complete to earn extra XP, using the images and resources provided by Classcraft.

ARIS Basics: L0 Trailer from Field Day on Vimeo.

The one issue I've had with ARIS is that it only works on iOS devices and my school won't push the client out to our student iPads anymore because account signup asks for a "selfie". It's hard to believe that this one little word has pretty much forced me to throw out this tool because only students with thier own iPhones can test their games.

TaleBlazer

Developed by the MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program (STEP) lab, TaleBlazer allows users to play and make their own location-based mobile games. This is the tool I'm moving to instead of ARIS. Don't get me wrong, If ARIS is the iPad of Location Based Game editors, this is the Linux version. Everything about this requires twice as much effort, looks less polished to the students, and is overall more difficult to get buy-in. However, when you get beyond the crap resources / tutorials, and edu-kitschy look, this is a very robust environment that will allow students to apply what they've learned from Code.org (above) to create custom actions throughout their simulation. This app also has you screenshot your maps and re-embed them, allowing students to use the client off of wifi with only GPS enabled, which is great for our student iPads.

TinkerCAD

Tinkercad is a free online collection of software tools that help people all over the world think, create and make. We’re the ideal introduction to Autodesk, the leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software.

In conjunction with Tinkercad, the folks at PrintLab have developed a great (free!) online course that covers 10 essential tips to achieving quality prints on FFF (Fused Filament Fabrication) 3D printers. From overhanging features and bridges to wall thicknesses and tolerances, you’ll be sure to find some handy tips to help you get the best possible results from your 3D printer.

There are also some great STEAM projects for students who want to prototype something without have to totally come up with the idea themselves, such as How to Design the Best Wind Farm Blade in Tinkercad, while hopefully learning some really cool useful stuff about engineering, problem solving, design, and Computer Aided Drafting.

Sketchup For Schools

I've used Sketchup Make for a long time in my classroom for designing sustainable homes, urban planning, etc. It's more advanced than Tinkercad and allows students to creat whatever they can concieve without the intense learning curve of SolidWorks or similar software. The thing is, that program came out of a focus on buildings because coming out of Google Earth.

Sketchup for schools, on the other hand, resides in GSuite for education, and focuses on skills for 3d Printing. The built in lessons great, but don't count on using them if your school blocks Vimeo. Come on, Trimble, you're killing me! Put these videos on YouTube like all of your other stuff.

Intro to 3D printing in SketchUp for Schools from SketchUp on Vimeo.

Honorable Mentions

Gamestar Mechanic

I can't believe this tool is still around and they haven't taken it away yet! Use it while it's still here! There is no better tool for teaching the basics of game design, period.

"Games are a complex system designed around creating an intuitive, immersive, and satisfying user experience. To be successful as game designers, students must approach this complex system holistically. Skill and drill coding exercises and practice will not help here. Students need a solid perspective on systems to design great games and any great interactive experience. This is as important to STEAM as the ability to write solid code" (Me, 2014). Gamestar Mechanic is not only a great tool for teaching these skills, but it is also fun. Your students will love it.

Code Combat

If you're teaching coding of any kind, you need to be letting your kids play Code Combat at least once a week. We do it every Wednesday.

"CodeCombat is a community project,with hundreds of players volunteering to create levels, contribute to our code to add features, fix bugs, playtest, and even translate the game into 50 languages so far"(Code Combat).

Gamification, Gamer Personality, and Match Making

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Wed, 14 Feb 2018 19:51:00 +0000

Back in 2010, when the concept of gamification was new to most of us, I remember trying to add game elements to my classroom. I remember being further inspired to do so my amazing TED talks from Dr. Jane Mcgonigal in 2010 and Gabe Zichermann in 2011. I remember discussing it with others in a group lead by Jeff Mummert. At that time, we felt like we were building gamification experiences out of duct tape and baler twine. Occasionally, we would discover a tool we could “splice” on to our classroom, but more often than not, our IT departments would block that tool almost as soon as we began using it.

Most gamers today are a combination of player types.

Today, we are blessed to have myriad gamification tools for education available. Some of my favorites are Classcraft, ARIS, and Edmodo’s Badges, but there are a lot more. All of them scratch a specific gamification itch. Some scratch many. None, in my opinion, cover all bases.

The Premise

I’d like to propose that the most successful gamification systems are modelled after MMORPG games or MOBA games. This is not because these games are the most popular with students (most of mine play FPS games almost exclusively), but rather these games create the most loyalty (some would call it addiction, but I’m sticking with loyalty). If you want to see a group of strangers really collaborate in a deep and lasting way, don’t send them to a one-day team building exercise at the local ropes course. Instead, force them to play an MMO together for a month or so. These games create the most lasting bonds and loyalty because they appeal to multiple types of players and multiple tendencies within players.

Richard Bartle, co-creator of MUD (Multi-User Dungeon), the text-based predecessor to today's MMORPGs, formulated the theory that all players of multiplayer games could be broken down into four main types: achievers, explorers, killers, and socializers. The Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology is a lot like a Facebook quiz that tells you which celebrity you are, but in this case, it classifies players of multiplayer online games (like MMORPGs) into categories based on their gaming preferences.

Achievers (diamonds) seek the opportunity to show off their skills and display elite status to others. They love to earn obscure achievements, collect badges, and earn and display unique titles. They also enjoy having the coolest looking gear.
Killers (Clubs), closely related to achievers, revel in the joy of pitting their skills against an actual player-controlled opponent and decimating them.
Socializers (hearts) begin filling up their friend / allies list as soon as they start meeting people in game. They immediately look to join or start a Clan, Guild, or other kinship in order to form friendships and help others. These gamers are on Discord even when they're not playing.
Explorers (Spades) find combat, levels, points, and achievements to be secondary to discovering a new world and solving it’s many puzzles and mysteries. These are usually the same kids who would learn all of your course content if left in the classroom with the text and an iPad.

I'm going to go way out on a thin limb here and say that those of us who are sold on this idea that games and game elements are valuable components of learning design would totally run most of our day to day class activities through an MMO / LMS hybrid of some kind if we had one, but as no one is developing one of these for education, we use gamification tools. Many of us use a lot of them, because nothing exists that appeals to the whole spectrum of Gamer types.

Gamification is not the same as game design, because it adds game-like elements to non-gaming environments. However, there is some overlap between game design and gamification design, and one area in which this is the case is with player types (Kumar, Herger, and Dam 2017).

An appeal for collaboration

As much as I'd like to call on Dr. Jane Mcgonigal to pull together an Oceans 11 style super team with Shawn Young, Gabe Zicherman, Jeff Kaplan, Alex Peters, and an amazing team of developers to make the next awesome massively multiplayer gamified learning management system, I know that is complete pie in the sky. For one the risk is too big and the payoff too small. Something like this would have to be a labor of love. For another, I don't think they have to, per se. What I would like to see is more innovative developers of educational content working collaboratively so that their tools can be combined in a more seamless way. Allow me to give just two of examples of how this can happen focusing on Achievers and Killers:

So, by now you know that I love Classcraft. I've written a couple of posts on it at this point. It's a great gamification app for teachers, and it does its job really well. I know there are others. If you teach Kindergarten, and you want to pretend that I'm saying "Class Dojo" or something else every time I say, "Classcraft", feel free. For now, I'll use Classcraft as my home base.

Kahoot is for Killers!

In the car last night, my son was on my school issued iPad and noticed Kahoot, an app that I'm admittedly not overly thrilled about. He shouted, "You have Kahoot! I love Kahoot! I'm awesome at it!" I thought, "Of course you are. You are a killer." You see, Kahoot is a synchronous game based classroom response system played by the whole class in real time, typically used to administer quizzes, discussions or surveys to smartphones, iPads, etc. It's gamification in that it is a game show-like environment, but it is essentially a timed competitive quiz. Kahoot is as close to PvP (Player versus player combat) as you can get in classroom gamification.

So, here's a crazy thought: What if a tool like Classcraft had an element like Kahoot, or worked with Kahoot, much like it integrates with Google Classroom? Then students could challenge each other, or the teacher (Gamemaster) could hold massive PvP events and have the results reflected in some way in the students' character avatars. I would settle for being able to reflect a student's victories over his or her peers in Classcraft with some kind of PvP rank insignia (more on this in the next section).

We do need some stinking badges!

So, badges have gotten a pretty bad rap lately in gamification circles. Heck, I have maligned them on more that one occasion. Badges and similar methods for reflecting achievement are key to the gamification experience of the Achievers. They not only want to go above and beyond, they want everyone to know that they went above and beyond. Yes, by awarding XP (Experience Points) and gold to students in Classcraft, they can gain new powers and customize the look of their avatars, but eventually everyone in class who is making an effort will be able to do this. There are no elite titles to unlock or rank insignias or special outfits that only can be gained by overcoming a specific optional challenge.

An example of an achievement badge in my class.

A very easy way to add this is through badges. I give my students badges through Edmodo, but most students don't look at them. Most students just compare Classcraft characters. Many have asked if I could give them badges on Classcraft, and I would love to, but that feature is not currently a part of the Classcraft ethos. Integrating with a tool like For All Rubrics or Class Badges would allow students to display different achievements with their character. Many badging platforms integrate with Mozilla's OpenBadges Backpack, but it doesn't always play well with others. For example, it's login process is complicated and it has no integration with any other services, like "sign in with Google".

Pulling Pie from the sky

As I mentioned earlier, if I had my druthers, I would make an awesome massively multiplayer gamified learning management system. Unfortunately, I m not a developer nor am I an entrepreneur. I do see a lot of promising stuff coming about though.

I am in love with this project!!!!

I'm super excited about Tyto Online, a project by Immersed Games. Seriously, if they could get this thing off the ground, it would be beyond epic. There is definitely a lot of thought going into the project and a lot of people talking about it.
Lucas Gillispie has some really awesome stuff going on over ad Edurealms, but let's face the fact that most of us are going to be fighting an uphill battle at best trying to get our schools on board with using commercial games in the classroom.
There are a lot of companies trying to add gamification features to their LMS platforms, but from a very enterprise-centric private-sector perspective. I'd like to see what this would look like tailored for education.
Finally, while we're seeing a ton of educational games of actual good quality emerging, the only real attempts at adding the multi-player element has been by Radix (a project that is going nowhere fast) and Prodigy, a math game my 10-year-old son likes more than any other game on his iPad.

How about it, #edtechbridge community? What are the chances we can look for an MMO / LMS hybrid of some kind in the next couple of years?

What about you folks providing Gamification Platforms? Any chance you might be integrating some of your features in the near future? Have you ever considered having the discussion?

Classcraft and ARIS

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 14:52:00 +0000

Recently, I decided to roll out Classcraft in all of my Seventh Grade classes, and I have found it to be surprisingly effective. Not only do students take the health and experience of their characters very seriously, but they also strive to help their teams and classmates in general. One thing that surprised me was how much students crave XP (or experience points).

What I do with Classcraft has no effect on student grades whatsoever. Yet, I can attach points loss / gain consequences to my behavioral and procedural expectations via XP and HP. While these points don't matter in terms of students' grades, they do matter a great deal to students, who are ultimately more concerned with the game than their grade anyway. They get so excited about equipping their avatar with custom stuff, and many of them are becoming XP hungry. There are many students who are serious gamers and are used to being able to "grind" for XP in a game. In the way that I was using Classcraft, there were no grinding opportunities.

Enter ARIS.

I have a lot of 8th grade students that use ARIS to build place-based games and simulations (think Pokemon Go), and I've always wanted to have a go a creating content using this tool. This last month, I created a place-based companion to the classroom gamification that I'm doing with Classcraft. I used the images and resources provided by Classcraft, ARIS, and a Google Site to basically gamify a bunch of content I wish I could teach but don't have time to. Talk about a teacher's dream. I have students who want to learn more about class content with no actual course grade incentive! I've also built in several random rewards to incentivize students to check it out. Most of these random rewards relate to the use of events in class or provides one-use powers to trigger events or help improve a character.

ARIS used to be a lot more difficult to use. For example, you used to have to "script" your dialog. Now the process is straightforward and graphical. In about a week of working during spare moments at school, I was able to create several random rewards in the form of power scrolls and a few field "bosses" (extra projects) that students can complete to earn extra XP. I plan to build a few full-blown quests that will require multiple steps to complete.

What follows is some of the sample content I've created for students to go beyond my class and gain extra XP as well as some random rewards that allow students to trigger events or help their teams in class.

A Sample Boss

So, I no longer have the time in my 9 week course to have all students make and edit a short film, so I placed this "boss" at our town library. Students who find it are encouraged to make a short film (no more than one minute) that advertises the benefits of visiting the local library for middle school students. I highlight several of the skills we discuss in class, and by linking a Google Site, I'm able to provide video tutorials and other resources to help them accomplish this on their school issued iPad.

Power Scrolls

I've placed several "Power Scrolls" around the campus community that students may randomly find, So far, I've had three turned in and used. These are digital items that ARIS allows students to pick up and put in their inventory. They then show them to me in order to activate them. I "destroy" the item so that it is consumed on use.

Here are some of the Power Scrolls I've placed around the community.

Power Scroll: CHAOS - (Usable once / Class / Marking Period) Activating this power will force the GM to activate seven successive random events, effectively plunging the class into glorious Chaos. This power is so devastating that it may only be activated once per marking period. Use it wisely... (I hid this one under our town Christmas tree and used a gift box icon)
Power Scroll: MAGE ARMOR - Divert up to ten points of damage to another character of your choice.
Power Scroll: DOPPLEGANGER - When you, a teammate, or your team are chosen by the wheel of destiny to receive a penalty from the daily event, redirect it to another player or team of your choice.
Power Scroll: MINDWIPE - Usable once - Activating this power scroll will reset the powers of a target of your choosing, essentially allowing them to retrain and choose different powers.
Power Scroll: SUMMON MONSTER - Summon a boss you've already challenged and failed to defeat for a fresh chance to defeat it.

Setup and Set Backs

Setting this up was a very painless process, and quite fun. As I mentioned earlier, I just used the ARIS tutorials and the media files from Classcraft. I added a few extra touches using Google Sites, mainly because that was easier that trying to deploy all of that info through ARIS. For a less technical subject, I believe ARIS alone would be more than sufficient. I would suggest that one could also make the web links go to your official LMS, such as Schoology, Canvas, or Blackboard. This would connect student back to your class remotely, allowing you to apply a new level of gamification to your blended or online courses.

I have experienced a couple of setbacks is deploying this. I asked to have ARIS deployed to our school iPads, but was denied the request because the ARIS Client asks users to post a selfie with their profile. The developers at Field Day suggest taking a picture of their shoes, but that is not good enough for my IT department as we cannot tell all students to do so before adding ARIS to our app portal. They suggest using Taleblazer as an alternative. I'm not going to get into my critique of Taleblazer here, but if you love Code.org and hate Scratch, you will love ARIS and hate Taleblazer for the same reasons.

RIP: Apps and initiatives that are no longer with us.

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 13:47:00 +0000

Okay, I'm going to need you to bear with me while I rant a little bit, whine some, and cry out for help and advice.

Engaging Middle School students is hard, even in the computer lab. Most of the garbage out there that is marketed to teachers, particularly in the technology department, is not only teaching antiquated skills, but is also incredibly "edukitschy". Every once in awhile you find a gleaming diamond in the rough that is awesome and free. This rarely happens for teachers, and when it does, it becomes all the more heart-breaking when it suddenly goes away. Sometimes we only get to greet these things at a distance, and due to our circumstances never get to enter the promised land before the world has moved on.

Project Spark

Project Spark was a game creation / simple programming environment for Microsoft Windows 8.1, 10 and Xbox One, which was the very beautiful child of it's homely parent, Kodu. Kodu is a visual programming tool which builds on ideas begun with Logo in the 1960s and other current projects such as AgentSheets, Squeak and Alice. It is designed to be accessible by anyone. Don't get me wrong, Kodu is / was an awesome tool, but Kodu looks like education. It's like the kid-friendly, rounded-edges, Fisher Price version of game design. Middle School students hate it.

Spark looked awesome, like a real game! It used the exact same building and programming principles as Kodu, but the games you ended up with actually looked and felt like a game you would actually buy in the store.

I honestly believe that Spark never took off in education because it required Windows 8 or Xbox One. It will run on Windows 10, but by the time IT departments FINALLY moved from Windows 7 (due to Microsoft finally winding down institutional support), Microsoft Studios was ending the initiative. In essence, by ignoring the current platform in most schools, Project Spark totally missed its primary audience. I for one begged for an OS upgrade when it came out, bought an Xbox One for my classroom so that some kids could use it, and waited... and waited... and waited. We moved from Windows 7 to Windows 10 at the beginning of this school year (2017-2018), and I totally missed the Spark boat. Microsoft doesn't even have it available as a download (like they do Kodu), so you can't get it from any reputable source. The sad part is that Microsoft hasn't released anything new in this department, and there's nothing to fill this void. That is unless you count Minecraft Edu. The problem there is that I would imagine that most IT departments, like my own, are afraid of it because it's "Minecraft". It also cost $5.00 a seat to try. Spark was free to install with upgrades available. I hope to get a copy installed to see how this differs from vanilla Minecraft. Does it even scratch the same itch? It may be more of a replacement for the next app I'll be eulogizing. It's certainly not able to provide the range of game styles Spark was.

So, Team Dakota, are you working on anything cool for us? Fellow CSK8 peeps, is there anything out there to replace Project Spark? So far the only thing capable of making games that look that good that I can find is Unity, and my 8th graders are struggling with Unity. I would love to hear your ideas and suggestions below or shoot me a message on Twitter.

Teach with Portals

This was simply the dream of any Middle School teacher of game design (and probably many high school physics teachers). I loved this and used it for many years. This allowed students to study a truly great game (Portal 2), gave them the opportunity to build in a 3d environment without needing a certification in Unity or Unreal Engine, and it made building games that weren't about killing cool and engaging. This sucked in even students who were difficult to reach and engage and was a staple of the game design curriculum in my class.

For whatever reason, Valve decided to end this initiative, and even though we had downloaded the game, and installed it locally to each workstation, it stopped working near the end of last school year. In this era of DRM and apps like iTunes and Steam, a company can just end a project and the content you have already stops working.

Again, I have nothing to fill this gap. This may be a good spot for the Minecraft solution that I discussed above. Does anyone out there have any hidden gems like this that you can recommend? Is anyone talking about continuing this initiative anywhere? How is Minecraft Edu? Comment below or Tweet at me.

Game Kit

Game Kit was an awesome resource from Institute of Play that I often shared with colleagues and folks who attended my workshops over the years as well as students who were designing their own board games. There's really no substitute for this resource, and I wish I had archived all of the challenges to PDF files to use with my students. It had great activities to get teachers and students thinking about the elements of games and game design to make activities more fun. It also had awesome challenges you could use with colleagues or students, such as remixing a board game by modding the rules.

Does anyone have any leads on whether or not Institute of Play has rolled these challenges into their web site or another resource? Did anyone archive the challenge packs? Comment below or hit me up on Twitter.

Danielson is a Hard Core Gamer: Part 1 - Gamification & Classroom Environment

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 22:52:00 +0000

Okay, so I don't know Charlotte Danielson, and I cannot seriously make conjecture on her leisure activities, particularly in the realm of video games. With that out of the way, I wanted to explore some of the ways in which the use of simulations, games, gamification and game design relates to and can exemplify the four domains of Danielson's Framework for Teaching and learning.

Today, I'd like to begin with Domain 2, Classroom Environment. In future posts on this topic, I plan to explore the other domains. For those of you who are being evaluated using the Danielson framework and who also happen to be doing gamification (with or without Classcraft), feel free to steal liberally from the language in this post for your professional "evidence folder".

Gamification, Levelling up my Classroom environment with Classcraft

I've been using Classcraft off and on since last year, but I'm just now really starting to get into a groove with this thing.

I have to admit that despite the amount of time I've spent discussing games, gamification, and game based learning on this blog, I was initially very concerned about the cheese factor. Will my seventh and eighth graders find this cheesy? Will they be too cool for it? That has been far from the case. In fact, my students seem to take more pride in the current state of their avatars than they do in the actual usable classroom "powers" that they unlock.

I'm not going to get into the nuts and bolts of Classcraft here. To get more of an idea of what Classcraft is, go check out my post, "My first real foray into Classcraft" and watch the video, "What is Classcraft?". Now, on to how Classcraft and gamification improves my classroom environment.

Creating an Environment of Respect and Rapport

This is all about our interactions with students and their interactions with one another. In this area I want to call special attention to the use of behaviors, team events, and cooperative powers.

My Computer Science class is all about collaboration, cooperation, and teamwork, but sometimes, even in a class that students enjoy, it is difficult to maintain an environment where 12-15-year-olds "consistently contribute to high levels of civility among all members of the class" (Danielson, 2013). This is where I have found behaviors that encourage cooperation, Team Events, and cooperative powers really shine.

A big part of the day-to-day management of a gamification system, like Classcraft, is the awarding of XP. I strive to make sure that earning XP is largely accomplished through supporting one-another. Once my rules are set up, awarding XP is simple (There is a phone and iPad app) as I walk around and catch students being awesome. Here are some of my "behaviors" that encourage students to "consistently contribute to high levels of civility among all members of the class". You will notice that nearly all opportunities to gain XP are related to helping the class as a whole or helping individual students.

Cooperative powers are class abilities that students unlock in Classcraft that can be used to help others, such as, "Intimidate: The warrior may force the Gamemaster to repeat something that is in the class notes / a tutorial video to any member of the team" or to force others to be helpful, such as "Mind Control: Compel another player from any team to show you how to do something he or she just did".

Finally, Team Events give students a chance to bond with their classmates through brief random and content connected activities. Here are a few of my favorites:

A pirate’s life for ye - A random team has been selected to join a band of pirates. If they successfully speak with pirate accents for the class period, they will earn 150 XP. Also, the rest of the class shall call the Gamemaster "Captain" or they shall suffer -1 HP damage.
A Gypsy's Nightmare - A random team must explain how the concept "less is more" can be applied in design, specifically when it comes to type, color, and images. Teams who can explain this concept successfully will gain 40 xp. Failure means a loss of 20 hp. Discussion encouraged.
Prophecy - ... a one-legged gnome, in the middle of the 12 statues, on the full moon, will bring about the fulfillment of the prophecy. A random team can dance the PPAP before the classroom. If successful, the team gains 90 XP and triggers a new event!

All of these things contribute to an environment of respect and rapport, without feeling forced or inauthentic, because we're having fun together. "The net result is an environment where all students feel valued and are comfortable taking intellectual risks" (Danielson, 2013).

Establishing a Culture for Learning

In my room, Gamification emphasizes the importance of the content, increases students pride in their work and encourages students to assist their classmates in understanding the content, through the behaviors, cooperative powers, and team events discussed above and also through Team Boss Events.

Classcraft has a built-in feature called Boss Battles, which can be used to set up Boss Events for you if you have access to the premium features. I simply set up my own bosses and boss fights on a Google Site that only my students can access. The key features of boss fights for me are:

that they provide formative assessment of essential content
and they are collaborative. Everyone on the team succeeds or no one succeeds.

Here's a brief example from my technical drawing unit:

MiniCat's Prism of Doom!

Minicat by Matthew Inman

Discuss with your team: How do you accurately create measurements in Sketchup?

Think about how you start and end your shapes.
What do you do with your mouse?
What don't you do with your mouse?

BEATING THIS BOSS
This is a Multiplayer Boss fight! Your whole team must defeat Minicat's Prism of Doom for XP to be awarded. Members who don't succeed may die.

The Battlefield - Choose any Feet and Inches template in Sketchup.
The Boss - You must make a 10' x 12' x 9' rectangular prism in Sketchup with
dimension lines.

Hint: think of it as a rectangle that is 10',12' that has been push-pulled 9'.

Setting up events like this, encourages students to "assume responsibility for high quality products by initiating improvements, making revisions, adding detail, and/or assisting peers" in their use of the skills and techniques discussed in class (Danielson, 2013).

Managing Classroom Procedures

I'm a rarity among educators. I'm a Type B teacher. As such, micro-managing group dynamics or even taking attendance tends to be a struggle. I think I was pretty clear on my feelings about the Management of Instructional Groups in my post, "Why you hate group work." I must say, though, since I've fully integrated gamification into my daily routine, these tasks have become much more seamless and simple. Each day, for example, before generating a random event, I ask each team whom they are missing. This takes attendance as well as allowing me to remove missing students from any game effects they may have experienced if they were in class. A typical attendance scenario might sound like this:

Me: Big Sushi Farmer, are you missing anyone?
Student[s]: Anthony isn't here!
Me: Thanks!

Not only does the group or team dynamic make events more fun, but they encourage actual collaboration and cooperation. The benefits students can reap, in terms of XP from having successful group interactions, creates an environment in which "Students take initiative in the management of instructional groups and transitions, and/or the handling of materials and supplies. Routines are well understood and [almost always are] initiated by students" (Danielson, 2013).

Managing Student Behavior

Finally, I want to touch on how Gamification has further simplified managing student behavior. In case you haven't picked it up so far, the use of any Gamification tool such as Classcraft, is really a lot like the premise of "Whose line is it anyway?"

The games are made up and the points don't matter!

What I do with Classcraft has no effect on student grades whatsoever. Yet, I can attach points loss / gain consequences to my behavioral and procedural expectations via XP and HP. While these points don't matter in terms of students' grades, they do matter a great deal to students, who are ultimately more concerned with the game than their grade anyway. Also, the assignment of customizable Sentences from the Book of Laments allows one to attach anything from reinforcement of class concepts to the retraining of key procedures to the consequence of falling in battle. Further, falling in battle has repercussions for one's whole team, so typically, "Students respectfully intervene with classmates

at appropriate moments to ensure compliance with standards of conduct" (Danielson, 2013) .

Closing thoughts and parting shots

J's highly customized character.

For better or worse, games are a part of our collective societal DNA at this point, particularly for the generation we are currently educating. It is quite easy to refer to them as "snowflakes" and any other number of dismissive labels, but the fact is, they are very willing, given the right kind of failure feedback, to work hard to improve their performance, even if it is in the context of a game.

A good example is a seventh grader I had last marking period. We'll call him "J". Students and teachers alike warned me that J tended to be unmotivated, seemed to enjoy frustrating and irritating classmates, and didn't often actually come to class. I found J to be interested, engaged, helpful, and open to help from his teammates. J's character avatar can be seen to the right. It is highly customized, reflecting the amount of Experience Points he received as a result of his positive attitude toward class and his classmates.

I think that a lot of our students are tuned out, for various reasons, but gamification is one excellent way to get them tuned in and excited about what is happening in class. Danielson may not have been thinking about avatars, XP, or Boss fights when she wrote about classroom environment, but I bet she'd agree that if it works this well, it's definitely worth a go.

MS STEAM starter pack pt. 2: Design

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 13:44:00 +0000

This is the second in a 3-part (maybe 4) series on setting up a sweet STEAM classroom in your Middle School. If you want to go read part 1, it's here: MS STEAM starter pack pt. 1: Programming

Design & STEM vs. STEAM

So, this topic is all about putting the "A" in STEAM. It used to be STEM, and for a brief time it was STE[A]M, but these days it's STEAM, and for good reason. Apple did not experience the massive market success that it is known for by making products that were simply functional. For better or worse, human beings are drawn to beauty. We love stuff that looks good, and I believe that any STEAM program worth its salt will cover the basic fundamentals of design.

This is much more difficult than it sounds. Somehow, whether in advertisements, user interfaces, or simple brand marks, the people who understand design wow us and suck us in with their brilliant use of typography, color, and composition. I think most of us have an inherent sense of what "looks good", but most of us have no idea how to recreate the aesthetic that we consciously or subconsciously find appealing. That said, how on earth are we supposed to teach it?

I'm going to share one free tool with you today. Hopefully it stays free, but the web app itself is only a third of the value of this site. What makes this site awesome is that it teaches the principles of design for you in simple interactive lessons. BRILLIANT!

Canva

In addition to their "Design School", that covers a host of advanced concepts, Canva has a section of interactive Tutorials for beginners, and that is where the awesome happens.

You and your students should sign up for Canva (Pro tip: Use your Google account to manage your credentials. One thing I really like about Canva right now is the ability to sign up / sign in with Google. This makes entry a lot easier for staff and students if you have institutional Google accounts.
Go try the tutorials yourself so that you know what it is the students are supposed to be doing.
Assign students the tutorials you've found to be the most useful. Below, I will link the tutorials I have all of my students do.

Getting Started

Less is More

Fonts

Layout

Color:

If you'd like to see some more info on how to use Canva as a design tool, check out my post on Three tools to step up design in your classroom. Obviously, if your district has a license for Adobe Creative Suite (Creative Cloud) and has it deployed to your student workstations, Canva is going to seem a little weak. As you'll see in my post, though, it's built in templates and typography layouts make it a win for those that struggle with design.

Miscellaneous YouTube tutorials

Over the years, I have found some YouTube videos that I think really help all of my students make things look better. Share these with your students. I think you'll find that the combination of these videos and the above lessons from Canva will give students a base understanding of how to design things that just look better.

Next time, we'll look at 3d printing and technical drawing in the Middle School classroom. That topic is a wild ride!

3d Resurrection - Getting your Cube 3 Working again

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Mon, 22 May 2017 17:39:00 +0000

Perhaps, like us, you unwittingly chose a Cube 3d Printer for your school or classroom, either because of it's iOS air printing capabilities or because you were sold on the fantasy of it being seamless and simple. LOL... Then, when 3d Systems announced it was discontinuing its line of consumer machines, you may have felt abandoned and hurt and confused. For us, it was a pretty low blow, considering there was no prior announcement about this and we had just purchased one of these bad boys for nearly $800.00; no small amount for a public Middle School.

We may have gotten a lot of distance out of this machine, nonetheless, as we had stockpiled quite a few of the proprietary filament cartridges. If you've used one of these at all, though, you know the filament cartridges are crap, and definitely the weakest link when it comes to this printer. The filament is terrible and you're constantly disassembling and reassembling cartridges. The filament cartridges are also this printers version of DRM, as the machine will not run bulk filament and measures the amount in each cartridge, using some kind of chip.

Hacking the Firmware

So the solution for this problem was provided by Eychei, over at OpenBuilds, who has basically done all the heavy lifting for you on this one. Here is a link to the first release of the Cube Toolbox for Cube 3 and Cube Pro firmware. "By patching the firmware you can stop the counting process of the filament chip and thus use filament of your choice" (Eychei).

I actually recommend that you Download Cube 3 1.14B *PATCHED* firmware file here, and skip trying to run the exe, as your classroom machines are likely as locked down as mine are. Then, Unzip patched firmware file to usb stick and flash firmware by going to Settings -> Firmware screen.

Hacking the filament cartridge.

I got the inspiration for my spool set up from Gunspinner, also on OpenBuilds. Below are pictures, of the process I used to "hack" one of my filament cartridges.

First, You need some tools for disassembly.

Follow the directions here for disassembly. Note: I used a flat head screwdrive instead of a lego breaker.

Then, use the lighter to remove excess PLA from the print nozzle.

Now grab a power drill with 1.25" hole saw.

Drill a hole right under the little square window thing

Grab yourself some bulk filament.

Feed it through the top piece you drilled and up into the printer with a T20 x 100mm torx tool.

Snap it all back together.

Swap out your cartridge and print like the boss you are!

MS STEAM starter pack pt. 1: Programming

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Fri, 28 Apr 2017 12:30:00 +0000

This is the first in a 3-part (maybe 4) series on setting up a sweet STEAM classroom in your Middle School. I will link all three parts here when they're finished.

MS STEAM starter pack pt. 2: Design

The Premise

I am a middle school computer science teacher. It's what I do. I LOVE my job. I also often speak at universities, blog, tweet, and just generally build as many relationships in the education world as I can. In my travels, I have heard the following scenario at least a dozen times (probably more, but I am prone to exaggeration, so I'll stop at a dozen).

Hi, Clint. I'm a Librarian for Generic Area School District in Upper Generic County. My school is phasing out the Library curriculum and turning our Libraries into [ultimate action-packed / STEM / cafe-related / Multi-media adjectives] Centers. I'm being asked to teach a Middle School [Coding / Game Design / STEM / STEAM] Class, and I know nothing about this stuff. I think they're trying to get rid of me.

(Random teacher)

I often point said teacher to my class website and give them my email and twitter handle, typically to never hear from them again. I get it. It's overwhelming. In this series, I hope to give all such teachers some very practical guides to rolling this out now. I'm only going to focus on tools and curriculum resources that are:

Free - Some will have Freemium features, but I don't use those.
Are web-based or require minimal resources to install
Are appropriate for 6th-9th Graders (for Sr. High kids, go check out Kyle McAllister).
Are easy to deploy tomorrow even if you have no idea what you're doing.

Part 1: Programming (and BONUS: game design)

I'm going to include game design development with programming because I consider programming to be akin to learning Arithmetic (basic math facts) and game development similar to applying said concepts in Algebra or Calculus. Game design would then be using said applied concepts to make something beautiful and fun to use with said concepts, similar to how an engineer designs an automobile.

Programming Basics - Code.org

You have to hand it to Hadi Partovi. He and his team have put together the absolute best resource for teaching programming concepts by a long shot. It's also the most accessible, having little to no "freemium" features. This tool should be the backbone of your programming basics course. So, let's get started!

The Steps described above are:

Sign up for Code.org as a teacher (Pro tip: Use your Google account to manage your credentials).
Set up a class.
Have your students sign up (Pro tip: Use your students' Google apps account to manage their credentials).
Deploy your class code, and have students begin your selected curriculum.
Mix in occasional fun activities from the Hour of Code resources.

Final note: A great opening activity to get students excited about what you're doing is to show one of Code.org's introductory films. Here is a playlist you may want to check out.

Game Design Basics - Gamestar Mechanic

"Games are a complex system designed around creating an intuitive, immersive, and satisfying user experience. To be successful as game designers, students must approach this complex system holistically. Skill and drill coding exercises and practice will not help here. Students need a solid perspective on systems to design great games and any great interactive experience. This is as important to STEAM as the ability to write solid code" (Me, 2014). Gamestar Mechanic is not only a great tool for teaching these skills, but it is also fun. Your students will love it.

The steps described above are:

Sign up for Gamestar Mechanic (Pro tip: Write this down in a Google doc. GSM has no account recovery options other than a list of generic multiple choice questions).
Sign up for the teacher program.
Play the Quest, Addison Joins the League. You won't be sorry. It really helps to run through this before your students do.
Visit the Teacher Page and the Teacher Blog for ideas and curriculum resources.
Help students sign up (Pro tip: Have students write their credentials down in a Google doc. GSM has no account recovery options other than a list of generic multiple choice questions).
Have fun watching your students learn the basics of designing complex systems for end-users.

Putting it all together - Programming and Game Development with Tynker.

Tynker is a cool app. It works on iOS, it allows students to use the same blocks-based commands they learned on Code.org. It has a level editor, similar to Gamestar Mechanic. At first blush, though, it looks like a very expensive replacement for Code.org, which it is. There are a lot of Freemium features, and if you have the money, you could just buy this and not bother with other tools, but I'm assuming that you have a zero-budget operation, so I'll focus on what you can do for free.

The steps described above are:

Sign up for Tynker as a Teacher (Pro tip: Use your Google account to manage your credentials).
Set up your class code.
Have your students sign up (Pro tip: Use your students' Google apps account to manage their credentials).
To help students get started combining their programming and game design skills, introduce them to the level editor and have students complete the tutorial, Design Your Own Adventure-Filled Platformer.

Brag - Twitter / Facebook / Pinterest

Seriously, you need to take pictures. Tweet your tuckus off, and let everyone know the awesome things your students are doing through your district's social network of choice. Also, consider using Edmodo to allow students to share their projects with each other and communicate all of this awesomeness directly with parents. They will LOVE what you are doing.

Finally, hang in there. I'm a full-blown sold-out hard-core computer science teacher, but I am no replacement for a research librarian. I can't help but believe that schools will soon begin to feel the loss of their librarians in a big way. Until then...

Good luck and don't forget to be awesome.

My first real foray into Classcraft...

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 19:27:00 +0000

I’ve been blogging here about gamification for years. I’ve read and watched just about everything Gabe Zichermann and Jane McGonigal have said about human motivation and how games motivate us*. I've spoken at conferences, workshops, and in-service events about gamification. Despite all of that, I have not tried Classcraft until this school year.

Classcraft bills itself as a game-based approach to teaching, but it is basically a gamification tool (see my Gamification / Game Based Learning / Game Design disambiguation here). It was designed to encourage participation, good behavior, and collaboration and at first, seemed like the secondary version of Class Dojo. In some ways it is, but it does a lot more. Basically, Classcraft’s goal / premise is to help me manage, motivate and engage my students by transforming my classroom into a role-playing game, which should be right up my alley. Anyone who has spent any time reading my blog knows that I love RPG’s. Heck, I even joined the OP Teacher Community at one point. So why haven’t I tried Classcraft before this year?

Why so late to this party then?

For one thing, I really didn’t think I needed a “tool” to bring gamification to my classroom. I already had an established system for using game-like precepts in my grading and projects. In my own cocky way, I saw Classcraft as a tool to help people who wanted to introduce gamification but had no idea how to really do it. Another reason I didn’t try Classcraft was my complete lack of clerical speed and accuracy. The idea of creating accounts for all of my students was daunting, even if I could upload a spreadsheet. Finally, I used to be a bit confused by the cost structure. When I first checked it out, Classcraft had a free, a premium and a “freemium” tier. The freemium option unlocked some more features that normally wouldn’t have been open to me (teaching is a zero-budget operation these days), but gave students the ability to pay to customize their avatar's appearance. This seemed like a worm-can that I would likely get into trouble for opening, if not from my administration, then certainly from parents.

This summer, when I was preparing to present on the topic of Gamification and Game-based-learning in the classroom for the “Technologies for Online and Blended Teaching Institute”, sponsored by Millersville University, I took another look at Classcraft while preparing my presentation. First, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Classcraft is now integrated with Google Classroom, allowing teachers to simply add their Google Classroom groups to Classcraft. This way students can just sign in with their Google apps accounts and set up their characters. Also, the aforementioned freemium account was removed, adding more features and flexibility to the free accounts.

I decided to roll out Classcraft in all of my Seventh Grade classes during the first week of school this year, and I have found it to be surprisingly effective. Not only do students take the health and experience of their characters very seriously, but they also strive to help their teams and classmates in general. One thing that surprised me was how popular the random events are! The class loves them.

Create a Positive Class Culture from Classcraft on Vimeo.

When students can gain XP on any given day by talking like a pirate and referring to me as “Captain” or by Dancing the PPAP dance, that is some first rate community building right there. Honestly, due to schedule constraints, I often don’t get to do a random event every day, but the students definitely miss it and ask me to do them when it has been more than a day.

Successful Gamification = Stay Positive

I’m not going to say that this tool was effortless to integrate into my classroom or that I’m using it perfectly, largely, though, I would say that the overall effects have been positive.

On that note, I think the key to this whole thing is staying more positive than negative. This may seem like a no-brainer, but let me explain. If I were to give every student a Classcraft character and then spend the entire period taking hit points away, then the whole game wouldn't be very fun. It would just be another way for me to punish students. What causes the students to care about their characters and their hit points are all of the times where they gain experience, unlock new powers, and feel a sense of success and pride in what they are doing. Should there be challenge and opposition? Definitely! Be prepared, though, to recognize successes and reward them.

Parting thoughts / Disappointments

I would love to try out some of the premium features like giving students gold to customize their character's appearance as they level up, but trying to convince the school district to spend money on this makes me feel like a poor steward of our resources. I'm still working that one out.
We live in a glorious time when School Districts around the US are finally unblocking / whitelisting YouTube! We can now bring most official tutorial content straight to our students. Classcraft has a lot more content on Vimeo, which is still pretty much universally blocked by all districts due to its prolific and very accessible adult content.

UPDATE: Classcraft hit me up on Twitter and let me know that they're still uploading videos to to YouTube and we can hit them up to request ones that aren't there yet.

Thanks, @classcraftgame for being so responsive on Twitter!

Footnotes:
* I don’t want to throw Zichermann and McGonigal in the same basket. Mcgonigal told the New York Times in 2012, "I don't do 'gamification,' and I'm not prepared to stand up and say I think it works. I don't think anybody should make games to try to motivate somebody to do something they don't want to do. If the game is not about a goal you're intrinsically motivated by, it won't work." That’s a valid point, but Zichermann also points out that, “If an extrinsic motivator is found to be meaningful, pleasurable and consistent with a person’s worldview, he/she can adopt it as though it were intrinsic.” That’s what I’m looking for. I don’t want to manipulate my students. I want to motivate them.

New Post on the GSM Teacher Blog: Game of Sprites

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Fri, 02 Dec 2016 19:28:00 +0000

Hey, all. Go check out my latest post on the Gamestar Mechanic Teacher Blog!

Game of Sprites – An epic adventure in STEAM learning.

The Holidays are upon us! The students are restless… It’s time for a new challenge! Starting November 18th, the awesome team at Gamestar Mechanic began releasing a series of brand-new Challenges for your students to play through. These challenges will not only allow your students to unlock new sprites and gear but also provide them with a great lead up to a new Contest that will task them with creating their own... More

3d Printing IRL

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 14:32:00 +0000

So, I wanted to share my reflections on my first month with a 3d printer. I recently wrote about our experiences choosing, ordering, and setting up a 3d printer here at Spring Grove Middle School. I'd like to share some thoughts with you for the good of the cause on what having a 3d printer is like "in real life" (IRL). If you're considering adding a 3d Printer, these are some ideas, experiences, thoughts, and issues you might want to consider.

Know you will have issues

3d Printing is not ready for prime time. No matter what mainstream manufacturers would want you to believe, 3d printing is for makers and enthusiasts. It is not a seamless, out-of-the-box plug-and-play casual consumer experience. You can buy the "Fisher Price" of 3d printers and still end up tearing stuff apart and fixing it on a regular basis. Have tools, and be prepared to use them.

Unfortunately, the fantasy & the reality of owning a plug-and-play 3d printer didn't line up.

Honestly, we ordered the Cube 3 with the thought that paying a little extra for filament cartridges and giving up the ability to use open-source software, we were being rewarded with an Apple-like simplified end-user experience that was deigned to "just work". Thank God for the following videos, which helped me tear down and fix numerous problems that came up with our cartridges over the last month:

3D Systems Cube 3 PLA Cartridge Clog (Cartridge Jam) by Kn3rdG@sm
How To Fix A Jammed 3D Systems Cubify Cube 3 3D Printer Cartridge by Kn3rdG@sm
Ekocycle Cube Clogged Head Repair by Transformersfang138

I have probably torn down each of my included PLA cartridges five times. I have a lot of broken filament pieces laying about the 3d printing room. That's filament that is not being used in prints. The bigger issue I see, though, is what if I wasn't handy with tearing this stuff down? We purposely avoided buying a "kit printer" to avoid this regular tinkering. Now, I am wondering if a kit wouldn't have been a great idea. Then, at least, the students and myself would have a more intimate knowledge of what we were tearing apart and how to fix it. I'm not saying the Cube 3 is a bad machine. I'm saying that I can't find a machine reviewed anywhere on the web that doesn't say you're going to have to tear down, fix, or replace something.

Plan on it.

Plan the Work and Work the Plan

So, 3d Printing is cool. I'm not going to lie. It's a guaranteed way to capture students' attention. It is definitely the "best" way I have found to get students interested in technical drawing and drawing in 3d.

Unfortunately, 3d Printing is still a new technology with a lot of hype surrounding it. Chances are, at some point, you've seen something like the video below that has you feeling all squishy about 3d Printing:

A lot of this information is accurate even though it is grossly over-simplified. The big issue with adding a 3d Printer to the mix of any classroom is the need for a plan.

What are students going to do with this?
What constitutes an acceptable and unacceptable use of the printer?
How do we avoid putting the school in debt buying filament?

Out-sourcing, student choice, and PBL

Students should first think of a product that fills a need or has a niche.

So, I'm pretty big on Project Based Learning, Problem Based Learning, and student choice. I can get a way with it too, because I don't teach a tested content area. In my class, a student simply needs to display technology fluency. Whether she does this by developing games, designing a fashion brand, or drafting a LEED certified home makes little difference to me. My first key to success, therefore, is to...

Make sure that 3d Printing is a choice.

The next step is to make sure that students know what they are choosing. If a student is 3d Printing in my class, it isn't a stand-alone "3d printing project". It is most likely in the context of something like a Product Design, Game Design, or Video project. The printing, therefore, exists to solve a problem, prototype a product, or create something entirely unique. This prevents students from trying to print key chains for their friends, little rectangles with their name on it, and other random items connected to nothing.This brings me to my next key to success:

Put the context before the printer.

Finally, it is important to understand that not every student is good at or will even like every part of a project. I don't encourage "group projects" in my room, per se, because they're rarely successful and everything is really a group project. My students freely outsource the work they need done. If a budding videographer needs a new shooting rig, she can ask another student to make and print it for her. If an inspiring inventor needs a logo and package design for the cool prototype he just printed, he can have a student who is doing a graphic design project make that for him. In the end, everyone has cool stuff to add to their portfolio of awesomeness, and no one is bogged down in miserable monotony. This goes back to making sure that 3d Printing is a choice.

Reward Awesomeness

When a student does something awesome, invite the Principal over. Post it to Tumblr. Tweet it. Make sure that other students are seeing the possibilities. Make sure that the community is seeing the possibilities.

The Software Landscape

Ugh. Okay, so the software landscape is a bit challenging. Many companies have their own proprietary design apps, which should work seamlessly with their printer, but most are at least $40.00 + per license.

Here are the apps that we use in my class.

Tinkercad

tinkercad.com

Tinkercad is a browser-based 3D design and modeling tool. It has the most gentle learning curve, and it's built in tutorials are very intuitive for students. It doesn't require an install, so you don't have to bug your IT department. It renders very basic models, but they're made for 3d printing. In other words, solid parts of your parts are automatically rendered with an internal lattice to provide strength while using less filament.

Sketchup Make

sketchup.com/products/sketchup-make

Sketchup Make has a gradual learning curve but is still very powerful, allowing students to build very detailed parts with very accurate measurements. Unfortunately, the company wants you to fork over 695.00 USD for Sketchup Pro if you want to 3d Print natively. Luckily, there are plugins. I have had a lot of students be very successful with printing from Sketchup Make with the plugins. Unfortunately the model is not constructed as efficiently and you have to manipulate its structure slightly in whatever slicing application comes with your printer.

Solidworks

solidworks.com

From what I understand, Solidworks is the best program for building quality 3d parts. I just can't figure out how to use it efficiently. I've done the tutorials, but I don't get the logic of the application enough at this point to create something from scratch. I have students that figure this program out, but most of them don't try. We pay for this thing. Yeah, this is the one with the steep learning curve. Good luck. The tutorials on the Solidworks web site were definitely made by developers. They are convoluted, difficult to follow, and, worst of all for may students, are vey uninteresting. No eighth grader gets excited about making this, whatever it is... If anyone has a good tutorial series (that's free... no Lynda paywall junk) for this, please post it in comments.

Parting Shots... er Thoughts

If I have any other suggestion, it would be to find a community of folks to help you. It will be a lot easier if you can talk to others who have done / are doing this. Also, watch as much user-generated content on "making" and 3d printing that you can find on YouTube. Geek out on it. Then pick a low-end printer and figure out what the issues are before expanding your operation.

Good luck.

DFTBA

Three tools to step up design in your classroom...

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 13:40:00 +0000

Even if you know nothing about design!

Designed in Canva... in 1 minute.

Okay, graphic design is a classically snobbish topic in most of our minds, and historically most of our students really had little opportunity to experience it or interact with it. Today, we live in a visual landscape that is constantly getting more competitive. Everyone has a connected device, including most of our students. They see great design all day on web sites, apps, user interfaces, advertisements, and even E-cards from their middle school bae.

The visual elements of most of our classrooms, though, from educational / inspirational posters to handouts to our Power Point Presentations (do people still use Power Point to make presentations?) look like amateurish garbage made by a well meaning but under-skilled octogenarian trying to design a bake sale flier for the local Rotary club. We can get away with die cuts, glitter, and Karen's Kids clip art until about fourth grade. Soon, though, kids are going to start to notice that everything at school looks like an extremely dim cheap reflection of everything in the "real" world... or at least the real world that they inhabit.

In previous posts, I have shared

Today, I want to ignore theory and focus on three great tools that do the heavy lifting for you. I do not "endorse" these tools in any official capacity. I have no business relationship with any of them, and I have basic "free" accounts with all of them. Don't pay for this stuff. I don't.

Weebly - for a sweet class web site.

weebly.com

For starters, just look at this quick compare and contrast of websites your students are used to seeing vs. a typical teacher's web page. Try to see and enjoy the humor here and not feel attacked or offended. Remember, it is good to laugh at ourselves.

...

Video Hostingweb sitesReal web sites vs teacher pages...originaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1383height 740originaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1314height 612originaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1577height 873originaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1121height 707originaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1595height 804originaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1574height 871originaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1254height 818originaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1615height 836originaldate 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AMwidth 1632height 911

There are a lot of great services out there for free web design and hosting. I decided to focus on Weebly because it is really easy to use. If you're an advanced user, you may be able to get more out of Wordpress or even Wix, but Weebly is a pretty simple platform that makes a pretty sweet professional looking site.

Weebly's site builder offers some sweet themes that are fully customizeable.

Adding elements to the page is a pretty intuitive, drag and drop process. Anyone who has tried to use a service like Schoolwires to make their web page will understand the benefit of this.

Just drag elements from the left onto your page where you want them. They don't have strange names, like the ones you find in education CMS tools, like Schoolwires.

Haiku Deck - for sweet presentations.

haikudeck.com

I've spoken before about how to design good looking slide decks, but assuming that is still a challenge for you, you can always let Haiku Deck do it for you. I'm a lot less in love with this app than I used to be. It still produces the best designed slides, period, but they've gotten greedy. In their quest to monetize their product, the developers have locked down most of the expected features (like being able to export your presentation) and have made the route to "signing up for free" convoluted and camouflaged. I'm also disappointed that you cannot sign into this with a Google account. Mine is connected to my twitter account, but not everyone is comfortable with that option.

Look for "Continue Free" on the right.

Once inside, though, the interface is pretty simple and intuitive. Themes are across the top, your slide sorter is at the bottom, and all of your layouts, keyword image search, and notes are on the left.

Okay, I have to add another small disappointment and a word of warning. They've added some old-school bad layouts in the section titled, "Slide Type" (probably by popular demand). Do your best to pretend these aren't here. Just use the default "Slide Type" and customize it in the layout section. Your students, colleagues, and anyone forced to sit through your presentations will thank you.

NO! Just no...

If you aren't into this tool, that's fine. Just go check out some of the presentations on their site and learn how to make yours look better.

Canva - for sweet everything else...

because yes...

canva.com

Okay, so Weebly and Haiku Deck have very specific applications. What about everything else you design for your classroom, like handouts, posters, banners, tickets, passes, signs, certificates, headers, and more? Canva is a super-simple web app that has a lot of free designs and options to create powerful visual content. This site is a winner, until they monetize it to death, like Haiku is trying to do.

One thing I really like about Canva right now is the ability to sign up / sign in with Google. This makes entry a lot easier for staff and students if you have institutional Google accounts.

The great thing about Canva is that it has pre-made templates, much like MS Publisher, for those who are completely design-impaired, but unlike Publisher, those templates are not ugly and ridiculous looking.

On the other hand, Canva also allows you to create a totally custom blank document, which you can edit with a host of custom elements, many of which are free:

I love all of these tools, but my favorite remains the Text layouts, which are beautifully designed and easy to use / customize.

Parting Shots: WARNING!!!

These are tools. Just using them is not going to make you into a design genius. Resist the urge to get too creative... Seriously, these tools can only help you look better if you use them the way they were intended to be used. You must discipline yourself, at all costs, to:

Avoid changing Fonts
Leave the color scheme alone
Use the provided high resolution photos instead of uploading clipart or google images.
Stay away from distracting animated GIFs at all costs.

Honorable Mentions.

Here are some tools I did not cover specifically that are awesome.

Easelly - Design your own infographics
Piktochart - again infographics...
Infogr.am - interactive infographics
Mailchimp - For awesome email newsletters.
Wix - Again, this one makes sweet websites.
Lucidpress - Slightly more advanced desktop publishing... if you're not advanced, stick with Canva.

The Paradox of Choice in 3d

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 19:43:00 +0000

I recently found myself in the very lucky situation of needing to select a 3d Printer to purchase for my students. I know right? I was pretty stoked, too. Then things went quickly from giddy anticipation to confusion and eventually to paralysis. You see, there are a lot of choices out there, and I mean, a lot. Go ahead, Google "3d Printer".

Asking around

MakerBot Replicator Mini-Essentials

I spoke to folks in my IT department, at the high school, and some neighboring districts. Back when everyone was getting on the initial bandwagon, they were getting MakerBot brand printers. I decided to check out their web site, and I was pleased to find that they had apps for iOS (we are a 1 to 1 iPad building), and a package for their entry level printer, called Replicator Mini Essentials, which included the MakerBot Replicator Mini Compact 3D Printer, a Smart Extruder (I had no idea what this is or what it was for), and a 10 Pack of MakerBot PLA Filaments.

This seemed like the obvious choice, and I was ready to go with it. Then, everything blew up.

The Current Situation

The much maligned "smart" extruder

So, I had pretty much landed on MakerBot's Replicator Mini Essentials package. I would have ordered it too, but I was asked to see if it was available from Amazon. This is when I discovered that what has been historically good in the past is not necessarily the best choice in the present.

Unfortunately, the Makerbot brand has suffered a bit in 2015, and I only discovered that by looking at Amazon's famous Customer Reviews section. This lead me to begin a bit of an investigative search of recent reviews across the internet (Yay for Google Advanced Search). What I found is that the current generation of Makerbot printers are, for lack of a better word, complete crap... and poorly supported crap at that. I also found out what the deal with the extra "Smart Extruder" in the essentials package was. It turns out that this part frequently fails, needs frequent replacement, and costs 175.00 a pop. I also realized that this is one of the few entry level printers on the market that is only compatible with PLA filament and not ABS. Further, I found that the current generation of MakerBot PLA is crap (or packaged incorrectly) and causes frequent print fails.

the Zortrax M200

So, I found myself at square one. What do I do? I began reading reviews again, and I got completely overwhelmed. Given unlimited an unlimited budget and absolute autonomy, I would probably have purchased an Ultimaker 2 and a Zortrax M200. Both of these units have great reviews but are far from cheap and "entry level". If we ever "move up" to a more advanced model, I'm totally going to ask for the Zortrax M200.

Cutting through the confusion

Finally, I ended up kicking it old-school. I made a chart with all the criteria my principal and I discussed for a 3d Printer. We wanted it to by iOS compatible in a simple and straightforward way. We wanted it to be "plug and play" (no assembly and constant part swapping required). We wanted it to be able to print in ABS and PLA. Finally, the more affordable the better.

Cubify Cube

With all that in place, the obvious choice that was left was the Cubify Cube. The Cube has a Dual extruder, which means it prints in two colors. You can print designs wirelessly from a PC or iOS device using the free Cubify app.
It is compatible with multiple materials, including PLA, ABS, and Infinity Rinse-Away support material (not sure what that is yet). Finally, the Cube is certified-safe for children 8-years-old and up. I am not a fan of injuring students or causing lawsuits, so this was a plus.

Set up

Behold the test print...

Dave, one of our awesome IT peeps, and I got together this afternoon to set this sucker up. Unboxing the printer was pretty straightforward, as outlined here and here. I was surprised at how light weight and compact this printer was. If Apple made a 3d Printer, it would look a lot like this.

While downloading and installing the Cubify software, we hit our first snag. Apparently, all of the graphics cards in my building are just old enough that they will not run Open GL 3.0. The tech department ended up getting a Surface from the tech center and installing Cubify on that.

Set up proceeded along nicely after that minor snag and activating the warranty was a breeze.

I hope to make some future posts on actual prints my students have done. For now, here's the wiki for the associated project.

Now I'm left with the tough question, what 3d printer do I get for my house?

References:

Note, as of the writing of this post, all MakerBot Replicator Mini printers on Amazon contained zero customer reviews. Last week there were tons of negative reviews. This week, no reviews. hmmm... Here are the reviews for the full size Replicator while they last : (http://www.amazon.com/MakerBot-Replicator-Desktop-Printer-Generation/product-reviews/B00SNM8VIK)
http://nicklievendag.com/makerbot-replicator-5th-generation-review/
http://nicklievendag.com/replacement-smart-extruder-for-makerbot-replicator-5th-generation-costs-175/
https://www.3dhubs.com/3d-printers/makerbot-replicator-5th-gen

STEM Video Game Challenge: A Quick Start Guide

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 19:44:00 +0000

New post on the Gamestar Mechanic Teacher Blog:

STEM Video Game Challenge: A Quick Start Guide

Go check it out!

Designing Fun: New post on Gamestar Teacher Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 16:01:00 +0000

Hello friends,

It has been awhile. I do have some new posts in the editing queue for this blog, but for my most recent post, go check out:

Designing Fun: There’s more to game design than programming

It is posted over at the Gamestar Mechanic Teacher Blog.

A big thanks to the folks at Eline Media for the opportunity to blog for them.

Infographic: Cognitive Flow & Game Design

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Sun, 30 Mar 2014 18:33:00 +0000

Here's an infographic I made for my game design students and future blog posts because I didn't like any of the graphics currently available. I'm open to improvement suggestions.

I used Easel.ly

https://s3.amazonaws.com/easel.ly/all_easels/13957/Flow/image.jpg

Edtech tweeps, if you're writing about Game-Based Learning, Gamification, or Game Design, and you want to use this in a post, permission granted. If you have ideas on how it could be better, comment below or hit me up on Twitter.

STE[a]M, App Flows, and Common Sense.

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 13:16:00 +0000

A few months back, I did a series of posts titled, "Hey computer teachers, stop wasting students' time". There I laid out the the basic premise that computer class, if it is to have value, should cover Computer Science topics.

I wanted to follow those posts up with some really practical posts for computer teachers, particularly those of us from the BCIT certification, who tend to lack of hard-core Information Technology experience. It's easy, after all, to say we need to spend more time teaching students coding, programming, dynamic systems design & analysis, and end-user experience and less time teaching keyboarding, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, but how do we make that transition?

Today I'm going to introduce one tool that is relatively new, but growing quickly in popularity.

Common Sense Media App flows

Rather than attempt an lengthy explanation, here's the video from Common Sense Media.

Game Design Flows

Game design, in this context, does not necessarily equal game development or programming, per se. Game Design is concerned with studying the concepts behind the basic elements of a game, and how the balance of fun and challenge in games creates flow. It is also concerned with the iteration feedback loop and how games are a complex system designed around creating a satisfying user experience. Game design is a great jumping off point for introducing STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) learning through the lens of systems-thinking and user-centered design. Working with these complex concepts requires creativity and critical thinking in generous amounts. Basically, students have to figure out how a user is going to interact with a system that hasn't been invented yet. Further, the iterative feedback loop requires collaboration. Here are some app flows to get you started with Game Design in your CIT class.

Intro to Game Design (designing engaging end-user experience)

In this app flow, I show you how to use Gamestar Mechanic and Edmodo to set up a student driven workshop in Game Design and end-user experience.

Iterative Design with the Portal 2 Puzzle Maker

In this app flow, by Steven Isaacs, students will learn the basics of game design as they create their own levels in Portal 2 and work with peers to peer test and iterate on their design.

Coding & Programming Flows

Careers in Computer and Information Technology are growing and are well compensated. Software developers, for example, make an average of $90,530 per year or $43.52 per hour, and that field, like most in CIT is growing at 30% (much faster than the national average, a measly 12%). This is why so many industry leaders, politicians, and celebrities have gotten behind projects like Code.org. Let's take a look at some app flows on the development side of things.

Coding & Programming: An introduction

How to set up a self-paced student driven workshop in Programming Concepts

Introduction to Computer Programming

Marcello introduces students to programming and the career of being a programmer.

Other STE[a]M / Maker Flows

Here are some other Flows from Anna P. that you may be interested as a Computer Technology teacher.

Simple Circuits

Students will explain what electricity is, build simple circuits to light a bulb and turn on a motor, and persuade others to conserve electricity.

Conductors and Insulators

Students will learn about the properties of conductors and insulators, test materials for conductivity, and extend their thinking of what a conductor can be

Parting shots... er thoughts.

Again, you can always check out more App Flows at Graphite. There's a lot there for classroom teachers as well. Also, consider getting involved with great communities, like #CSK8 on twitter to grow your PLN and expand your horizons. Good luck, and DFTBA.

Games, Gratitude, & Undergrads

noreply@blogger.com (Clint Walters) — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 15:46:00 +0000

Receiving a "buff" out of the blue... w00t!

On February 17th, I made the trek across the river to Millersville University. Jenn Shettel had invited me to lead a Middle Level Game Literacy Workshop with some undergrad pre-service education block students. We spent two hours talking about games, gamification, game based learning, and game design. More importantly, we talked about kids. We talked about teaching and learning. We talked about what works and does not work in the classroom. I had an awesome morning working with these students, and I got some great feedback from my host. I must admit, though, you're never 100% sure how a group you've worked with feels.

Thank you notes

This weekend, I received an envelope from Millersville University. Having already been paid for the workshop, I wondered whether I had neglected to fill out a form for the tax office. It turns out, despite the opinion of many of my more jaded colleagues, the younger generation is not made up entirely of thoughtless technology zombies. The envelope contained a collection of hand written thank you notes. Here are a few that I felt exemplified the group.

Some of my favorite comments were:

Thanks for opening my eyes to the true epicness of integrating games into our lessons. (Justin)

Your presentation blew my mind. (Amy)

Seth thanked me for sharing a +10 Wisdom Skill. W00t!

Reflections

Hanging out with these pre-service teachers was amazing. They were all so enthusiastic about what they were going to be doing in the classroom, and really looking for how the resources we were discussing could be used to benefit students. There was not a pessimistic cynical soul in the room. I not only enjoyed the enthusiasm of these teachers but also the seriousness of the questions they asked. It was clear that they were thinking deeply about the discussion and soberly considering how it may or may not fit their subject, teaching style, and future students.

I can only hope and pray that the financial situation of our schools improves soon. Our students deserve an opportunity to have these amazing teachers. Thank you, Jenn, and Millersville, for the opportunity to share my morning with them.