Taking the big leap into the edublogosphere. Herewith my first post. No idea what I'm doing really, but needing somewhere to whitter on and organise thoughts on gamifying my classroom.
So here goes.
My focus for this blog, and the Personal Learning Environment I'm building, is on gamification of the classroom. By which I mean treating the whole classroom as a gaming experience, not simply the use of games in learning.
Gamification appeals to me because I know how well it works for me and my own children. We are prepared to work at seemingly inane tasks in order to proceed to the next level. How much more powerful could that be in children are playing to improve skills they might believe they need for real life? Great games design provides the right tools at just the right time for the player to advance - sounds like Vygotsky and the Zone of Proximal Development to me.
I am looking for intrinsic motivation in my pupils, but I also recognise that a little help wouldn't do any harm.
I'd like to tie all this in with cross-curricular links, 'slow education', self-directed learning and edutech - making use of the great tools out there to improve learning.
However, to begin with, I'm planning to start small. As a Primary teacher, I cover most curriculum areas and I don't think I can cope with changing everything - particularly not midway through the year. Reading is a whole-school focus for us anyway, and my first step is to investigate how I could use gamification principles to improve reading in my Year 5/6 classroom.
One of the attractions is that I have not yet solved the problem of evidencing my assessment of reading - aside from giving reading comprehension tests. So I'm hoping to persuade my class to challenge themselves to provide that evidence in a self-directed way, in return for some form of game-like rewards.
Which is about as far as I've got this morning. All ideas gratefully accepted.
Collo
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