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District Gamification Version 1.0 | Donovanscience

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District Gamification Version 1.0 | Donovanscience

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One of the ideas that I have been interested in a lot over the last couple of years has been gamification. As someone who grew up as a gamer with the original NES and as someone who loves to play tons of board and card games, I think there are a lot of ideas in gamification that can help with PD (not to mention in the classroom). Luckily we had the chance to have a district-wide professional development day this last fall and we wanted to use some gamification to increase engagement and sharing.

There are a lot of ways you can do gamification when it comes to professional development but our goal was to acknowledge the work that our teachers are doing and to have some fun with it. We created badges and a scoring system to help with this but one thing that I really wanted was to make this as easy for teachers as possible. To improve participation, it has to be easier for people to do it. We made use of Google Forms, Google Sheets, and a Google Site (with Awesome Tables) in order to make it so teachers did not have to learn a new username or password. I created the badges using Credly but hosted them on a Google Site so I could get them to show up in our Awesome Table.

We had some good participation during and right after our professional development day but we are working on some revisions to improve it and keep it going. We will consider this version 1.0 and hopefully will have version 1.1 ready to go soon.

The part that many may find confusing if you watch the video below, deals with the equations I used in my spreadsheet. In order to make the spreadsheet do most of the work with me only having to enter a little bit of info, I had to make use of some of my favorite equations (vlookup, concatenate, if/then) as well as host the badge images on an external Google Site. You can not host images in your Drive so I would upload them as attachments to a Google Site on my personal account and just use that to host them. I highly suggest you look at the copy of the spreadsheet to see the equations working and note that there are some hidden columns. The heavy amount of work that I did to set up this spreadsheet means there was a lot less work later while keeping it all in our system using Google Apps.

You can watch the video below to see how I got everything to work. You can also to the site we have for our PD ( https://sites.google.com/a/ames.k12.ia.us/acsd-workshop-spring-14/home/acsd-tech-game) and you can also see a copy of spreadsheet to get an idea about the formulas I used ( https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dQzZBjBJdYJTG8oicVEqgdnQus6I4oMK0hXpOo2I5nk/edit?usp=sharing)

in Ideas and Reflections. Tags: gamification

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One of the ideas that I have been interested in a lot over the last couple of years has been gamification. As someone who grew up as a gamer with the original NES and as someone who loves to play ...

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Gamifying PD - Home - Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk Blog

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Gamifying PD - Home - Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk Blog

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Thursday, August 22, 2013 at 06:36PM

Teachers cannot expect to teach in ways they have not experienced as learners. Or willingly and proficiently, anyway.

That's why my brilliant district tech integration specialists, Marti and Tracy, have:

1. Created formative online assessments to help us differentiate our staff development efforts (Who wants to sit through training on using GoogleApps is one is already a proficient user?)

2. Placed staff development technology "classes" in Moodle, our CMS. (How can I create online activities when I've never participated in one?)

3. Made liberal use of self-created instructional videos so professional development classes can be flipped and the instructors can "clone" themselves and work with three or more groups of teachers at one time. (Oh, now I see how setting up learning groups in my classroom might work.) And can learn independently of F2F classes.

This has been done all in the last 18 months or so. I am so blown away.

But teachers, like all of us, may need a little extra motivation for learning independently, pushing our knowledge of and abilities with technologies, especially as we move to the MR levels of the SAMR model. You know, the scary parts.

I've been reading a lot about gamification in education, although I certainly don't consider myself any kind of expert. What does seem prima facie is that games seem to be universally loved by people of every age and help us all learn. So what I'm thinking about is gamifying our technology PD. Sound like fun?

Here are some things we are considering...

1. Identify the technology skills and uses we think would be useful to teachers and create ways they can demonstrate the mastery of these skills. I believe we already have about 40 separate online activities teachers can work on in 10 areas, each with Substitute, Augment, Modify and Restructure levels.

2. Create a means for teachers to report completion of each activity and mastery of the skill. Design a badge for each area of mastery and assign points. Badges could be put in e-mail sig files or on webpages.

3. Re-design each activity as a "quest" with hints, clues and maybe even humor. I'm thinking that something like the old graphic adventures like Zork might provide a model.

4. Create levels of overall mastery based on the number of points earned. For fun, let's call them Apprentice, Magician and Wizard levels.

5. Run a tournament among buildings to determine which building has the highest percentage of staff at each level. Update it weekly. Give prizes???

What do you think, readers? Do you know other districts doing this from whom we could learn as we design and implement?

One of my favorite "inspirational" posters is the one that begins this post. It universally gets a laugh when teachers see it. If we are going to restructure the learning experience for our students, shouldn't we be restructuring the professional learning experience as well? And if we want to bring a little fun into the classroom how about a little fun in our PD activities?

Just a thought.
(Not 10 minutes after I posted this entry, I picked up ISTE's September/October Leading & Learning with Technology and read Christopher Like's great article "Mission Impossible: Using Gamification to Increase Engagement in 1:1 Professional Development." Just goes to show great minds think alike, I guess.)

www.edudemic.com/2013/08/game-based-learning-infographic

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Gamifying PD - Home - Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk Blog

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Thursday, August 22, 2013 at 06:36PM Teachers cannot expect to teach in ways they have not experienced as learners. Or willingly and proficiently, anyway. That's why my brilliant district tech integration specialists, Marti and Tracy, have: Created formative online assessments to help us differentiate our staff development efforts (Who wants to sit through training on using GoogleApps is one is already a proficient user?)

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Voting period for this idea type has passed

While educators utilize innovative and media rich materials in the classroom, professional development remains largely trapped in the traditional, static models of pedagogy. Cathedral Catholic has transformed their PD program to incorporate the techniques of gamification to motivate their faculty to take their teaching skills to the next level. By leveraging the power of iPad and iTunes U, teachers take ownership of their own learning, collaborate with one another, and enjoy taking risks to expand their instructional repertoire. Teachers execute challenges, level up, and complete episodes to earn recognition, in-house certification, skill advancement, and even money! Badges and prizes are also awarded. This presentation will explore the creation and implementation process of such a program, highlighting not only the successes but also discuss the mistakes and pitfalls to avoid.

Learning Objectives

1. Why did we make the change to gamification of professional development? What are the advantages to using gamification techniques in professional development? - This model allows teachers to work at their own pace, provides extra motivation and makes many more resources available.

2. How does gamification work and how do I get my faculty to buy into participating? What does it look like? Can I see the challenges, levels, and episodes? What badges were awarded? What prizes can be won? What resources are available to help me begin such a program at my school? - All of this and more will be shared.

3. Did it work? What are the results? Are teachers more motivated and have we seen greater positive change among faculty as a result of this process? Was it worth the effort? Should I do this with my faculty? - Video feedback from program participants will be shared.

Speakers

Organizer

Matt Baier, Director of the Center for Innovation, Cathedral Catholic High School
Show me another

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While educators utilize innovative and media rich materials in the classroom, professional development remains largely trapped in the traditional, static models of pedagogy. Cathedral Catholic has transformed their PD program to incorporate the techniques of gamification to motivate their faculty to take their teaching skills to the next level.

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About - Bettendorf Gamified Professional Development

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About - Bettendorf Gamified Professional Development

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About - Bettendorf Gamified Professional Development

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mrmatera.com | Building a better world through hard work

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mrmatera.com | Building a better world through hard work

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Credly is the end-to-end solution for creating, issuing and managing digital credentials. Thousands of organizations use Credly to recognize achievement.

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How to Gamify Professional Development in Your School – A.J. JULIANI

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How to Gamify Professional Development in Your School – A.J. JULIANI

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Sometimes we act like professional development is hard. It doesn't have to be. Sometimes we treat professional development like a chore. It should be fun, engaging, and wanted.

As a K-12 staff developer I've spent the past two years giving professional development and receiving a lot of professional development. I've seen the different needs of administrators, teachers, and students. I'm lucky to work with another great staff developer, Dianne Krause. And since the beginning of this year we've been saying...there has to be a better way to reach more teachers.
Because if you reach more teachers, you reach more students.
We were kicking around ideas to "flip" our PD this entire year, but the lightbulb moment came during an actual professional development session that we took from Philip Vinogradov at our local IU.

Phil gave a session on Gamification, and let me tell you...this guy is a Google Certified master gamer! Dianne and I left the session knowing that we had to use this "gamification" process to boost our professional development within our district (by the way check out his Gamification Helpout here).

If you've read my blog before, you know that I don't spend too much time "thinking" about making a change, I try to jump in and "do it". Sometimes that backfires, but usually it gives me clarity to start working and creating as soon as the idea hits.

In the three weeks since Phil presented on Gamification, Dianne and I have been able to gamify and flip professional development sessions in our district...and are preparing to launch next week.

I want to walk you through the seven steps we took to Gamify PD in our school, so you can jump in and do it too.

Step 1: Make Sure There is a Why?

We are running a 1:1 initiative at our school. It has brought a lot of change. Combined with the usual instructional changes (think Common Core and new curriculum), and a new schedule change, our teachers have a lot on their already filled plate. Yet, I think this has made PD more important than ever before. Our job is changing, and we need new methods of keeping up and innovating.

Our "why" is based on the fact that two technology staff developers struggle to adequately work with 700 teachers. We also want to help push towards real innovation in the classroom. In order to do that, we have to make sure all of our teachers have a base level of knowledge so those that want to innovate have the tool set at their disposal. Therefore, our Gamified PD pathways are all "101" learning opportunities where teachers can get the base level of knowledge. The next level will come in the form of a meeting and planning with either Dianne or myself.

Another WHY is that it allows administrators and department members to see who can help as well. If a new Math teacher is looking to do Flipped Lesson they can see which one of their peers are already doing this successfully and ask for a classroom perspective and some help moving forward. In essence, we are building capacity for PD to be a school-wide effort...not just the effort of two people.

Step 2: Break Down the PD Sessions You Do Frequently

Once you've identified your WHY (which is arguably the most important step), it's time to break down the PD sessions you do frequently...or what to give frequently. For us that centered around:

Microsoft Office

Google Apps

Smartboard/Smart Notebook

Screencasting

Flipped Classrooms

Wikispaces

Windows Movie Maker

Common Core

Lesson Planning

These were the basis of most of our meetings and planning sessions. And for us to move past teaching these tools, to using them for deeper learning opportunities, we needed to build learning pathways around the tools - so our meetings could be better spent planning for innovation.

At this point Dianne and I knew we needed to create online learning pathways in the simplest (and easiest to access) way possible. Although we could have built out this Gamified PD Process in a learning management system, we chose to use Google Forms as the tool of choice. I'll explain why in Step #3.

Step 3: Build a Simple Learning Template

For each of the above PD Sessions, we typically showed our teachers what the tool could be used for, and then tailored our PD for their specific classroom use. In order to "flip" this learning experience we had to build a "simple learning template" that would go over the basics of the tool/concept and then allow for a more individualized learning task.

After looking at some different models and talking about what would work for are purposes (this is important) we decided on this template for each pathway:
Section #1: Let's Learn - This is where we provide videos, tutorials, articles, and other ways to learn about the tool and/or concept as it can be used in the classroom. Section #2: Prove Your Understanding - A simple task (sometimes a quiz) that would show us that they watched the videos/tutorial and read the articles for a base level of understanding. Section #3: Performance Task - This task is the teacher actually creating something they could use in their classroom with the tool/concept and then sending us proof of their work.
The framework allowed us to change it up depending on the tool/concept but also kept a structure that the teachers would become used to and know what to expect. We planned for each pathway to take around an hour of work. Some might be a bit longer and some might be quicker.

Finally, we built out this template in a Google Form, and Dianne made a folder in Google Drive where we could build all of our pathways (more on that in Step 5).

Step 4: Create a Pre-Survey

The purpose of the pre-survey was to gauge where each teacher was on an individual basis. When Dianne and I meet with teachers for the first time we can go through this survey, or they can go through it together, and we'll see the results.

It will help us not only see what each individual teacher needs, but also see where as an entire staff we can focus on. We built the pre-survey using a Google Form:

When it was finished the final form looks like this, starting with their basic information like Name, Building etc:

We then ask teachers to go through the tools/concepts that we built our pathways around and see where they are. They can choose from a Scale from 1-5 that start's with "it's confusing" and goes to "I'm a master". Again, using Google Forms will allow us to see data on the back-end and see which tools our teachers have already mastered.

After they've finished the survey of the tools, they've earned their First Badge. We also let them know that Dianne and I are always available for questions about any of these missions/pathways. We are here to support in any way possible. Once they submit here, we'll take them to the list of all the other missions/pathways that they could earn a badge:

...and although it doesn't look too pretty on Google Forms with all of the URLs, it works. Now they can choose any pathway based on their survey, and what THEY WANT to learn. We are not forcing, but instead giving a number of 'on-demand' opportunities.

Using Google Forms to build this was super easy. As you can see from the screen shots, it is filled in with all of the pathways finished, but we created the pre-survey before actually building the pathways/missions. Then we linked in the form on the final survey page.

Step 5: Build the Learning Pathways with Real Tasks

This step took the most time. We had to build out each learning pathway with the best resources we could find (or create ourselves) and then create real tasks that the teachers could do to show mastery.

I eagerly told Dianne I'd be finished my pathways in a week...and of course I wasn't even half-way done by the time she finished building her pathways! It was a back and forth collaborative process. We'd build a pathway, share it with each other, and then talk about what worked. Dianne is a MIE Expert Trainer (we are in a Microsoft 1:1 initiative) and she took the Office pathways, I took Google Apps, and then we split some of the other pathways. But the entire time we could look and help out on what the other was building.

Because we had created the template structure for the pathways ahead of time, it was simple to make each of the "missions" look similar. Now that we have them finished, we can constantly go back and tweak based on the feedback we get from our teachers on how much time it took to complete etc.

Again we built the pathways in Google Forms. Here is what a pathway looks like for the teacher:

Then they start the learning process:

Section #2 is all about proving your understanding:

And finally section #3 is the performance task:

The final screen brings them back to the area where they can choose another PD learning pathway and earn another badge:

So, it did take some time to build all of these pathways/missions...but completely worth it. Google Forms allowed us to connect it all together in an easy way.

Now we had to Gamify it!

Step 6: Gamify the Process with Badges, Certificates, Leader Boards

This is where Phil's session helped so much. We want to make this type of Flipped PD fun and engaging. We also wanted to reward teachers who are taking the time to improve their craft, learn a new tool, and use it to create a lesson for their class.

We planned on giving "Learning Badges" for each pathway. For this, we used ClassBadges.com and also Dianne made a nice template in PowerPoint for us to create some custom badges with our tools.

After a teacher completed the pathway, two things would happen:
First, we would check for completion and then send them the Badge through email (or our LMS) that they earned. Second, we would update the "Leader Board" by putting another badge by that teacher's name.
The "Leader Board" is only accessible if you want to see it, and we are keeping in on a District only document that they can access. We are also planning on sharing out each marking period who has acquired badges.

The reason for the badges and the leader board is to Gamify it in a way that supports learning and doesn't attack those that aren't going through the pathways and missions. I don't want any negative peer pressure to effect this gamified PD. In fact, that's why we are not making anything about this process "required". It's also why we are giving so many options. Choose what YOU want to learn, and if you have any questions or need any help...we'll be here.

We've got a couple other ideas. One is offering Level 2 and 3 learning pathways for each tool/concept. When you've successfully earned your 3 badges, we'll present you with a District Certificate of Mastery.

Another idea is letting those who earned certificates be trainers, or giving some other PD privilege (open to ideas). The leader board might also be imported into our learning management system as we move forward.

At this point we feel badges, the leader board, and certificates give us a lot of room to grow and improve the Gamified part of this professional development. It's always going to be a work-in-progress! Here's what some of the badges look like:

Step 7: Launch it the Right Way

Ok, so now we've got everything set up and ready to go! Next step is launching it at our school. This is where Dianne and I have had to hold back a little bit. We want to launch this Gamified PD the right way. Here's what we did.

1. Showed the pathways to different teachers in our district and got their feedback.

2. Soft launched the idea to teachers about the gamified part and took their feedback.

3. Showed the entire pathway process to our Tech Director and got his feedback.

4. Meeting with administrators to explain "the why" and how it will work in terms of professional development time etc.

5. Plan to launch fully at a staff meeting with all stakeholders present.

The key here is to bring everyone into the fold. If the message of "the why" gets twisted, then people could take this type of PD the wrong way. If everyone is not on board to launch together, then it can also get messy. Finally, real teacher feedback is essential to building pathways that will actually help.

This idea of flipped PD, learning pathways, badges, and leader boards are going to be completely new to most of the people in our schools. Yet, if they understand the "why" chances are they will give it a shot.

Timing is also perfect because we can launch it this Spring and make some tweaks for summer. Then the plan is to use the feedback we get from the survey (and which pathways teachers complete) to make our "back-to-school" in service sessions extremely helpful and useful.

If you've read down this far then I hope you can try to take this idea to your school in some shape or form. We surely aren't the first school to Gamify or Flip our Professional Development, but I want to keep my readers updated on how it goes this Spring and into next school year. Would love to hear your feedback in the comments below!

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How to Gamify Professional Development in Your School

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Sometimes we act like professional development is hard. It doesn't have to be. Sometimes we treat professional development like a chore. It should be fun, engaging, and wanted. As a K-12 staff developer I've spent the past two years giving professional development and receiving a lot of professional development.

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Take PD to the Next Level with Badges - Gamify Professional Learning

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Take PD to the Next Level with Badges - Gamify Professional Learning

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A few weeks ago I had the privilege of speaking at the 2015 Technology in Action Conference (TIA) held in Denton, Texas. The conference is always great and led by a stellar team in Denton ISD. It's a local conference for me, and a great time to connect with other educators in my area. During my time there, I noticed something outside the teachers' doors: badges! I had heard about this amazing, gamified professional development plan implemented in Denton ISD, but to see the badges outside the door really brought it home. I snapped the picture below that day and posted to Instagram and Twitter. It became a very popular share, and other friends were asking me for more information and links. So I decided to highlight my friends in Denton ISD in this post, AND their fantastic idea!

Gamification and the use of badges is nothing new, and many of us have found ways to use these in adult learning and professional development. In my experience, teachers love badges! The Instructional Technology Team in Denton ISD, ( Dwight Goodwin, Ross Garison, Leslie Taylor and the other amazing team members), created a Google Site of self-directed PD for teachers. Through this program, teachers are rewarded for stepping outside their comfort zones with fun badges to display outside their classroom door.

The Badge Website

The first thing that teachers see when visiting the is the video below, a creative little to explain the purpose and process of the badges.

Badge Site Introduction Video

How it Works

From here, the teachers have CHOICE in their learning. They can choose from topics around Google, Apple, Assessment, Communication, Miscellaneous, Flipped Class and Social Media. Within each section, they can choose what they want to learn AND how they want to learn it: through a self-paced course or video, or they can request a face-to-face training. Voice and choice make this a powerful, differentiated professional learning experience.

What I love is that they didn't reinvent the wheel. They linked to online courses in the Google training center, and video tutorials that are already out there. That makes something like this so much more doable! And considering how fast technology changes, we have to share our resources! Share is caring, right?!

The badges for each option have to be earned and applied for individually. These badges were created with , one of my favorite Google tools. (Check out my infographic on 10 Ways to Use Google Drawings in the Classroom .) Badges do not have to be complicated and time consuming; they just need to reflect the accomplishment! Looking for other options for badges? See my post on 5 Awesome Resources for Badges in the Classroom .

The other thing I absolutely love about this program is that teacher badges are printed and displayed outside their door! No one ever said badges had to be displayed digitally. I love this because the accomplishment is recognized by other teachers and staff, and I'm sure the students notice these as well! (FYI, I'm also a big fan of printing badges for students. They can be displayed on a bulletin board, the cover of their notebook or locker!)

This professional learning idea can quickly transfer to the classroom with student-centered challenges and badges. Make it meaningful and be sure it is aligned to your learning goals. It's a win-win!

The bottom line: Choose what works for you. If you spend all your time reinventing the wheel and designing the perfect badge, you will never get it done! Go for it!

Tweet: If you spend all your time reinventing the wheel and designing the perfect badge, you will never get it done! Go for it! - @ShakeUpLearning

What are you favorite strategies to shake up professional development? Please share in the comments below!

© Shake Up Learning 2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog's author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning with appropriate and specific direction to the original content on ShakeUpLearning.com. See: Copyright Policy.

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Take PD to the Next Level with Badges - Gamify Professional Learning

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Gamification and the use of badges is nothing new, and many of us have found ways to use these in adult learning and professional development. In my experience, teachers love badges! Through this program, teachers are rewarded for stepping outside their comfort zones with fun badges to display outside their classroom door.

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Game Face On: Gamification for Engaging Teachers in PD | Edutopia

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Game Face On: Gamification for Engaging Teachers in PD | Edutopia

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Creativity, contentment, awe and wonder, excitement, curiosity, pride, surprise, love, relief, and joy. These are the ten emotions that game players experience, according to Jane McGonigal in Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Change the World. Do teachers report feeling any of these emotions when they describe professional development? No (except for maybe relief when it's over).

Conquering Technology

My colleague Kathy Garcia and I decided to create a professional development program that inspired teachers to feel these emotions while learning and developing skills toward more effective use of technology tools. We created a professional development game, accessed through the iTunes U platform, called Conquering Technology. Our teachers learn skills like taking advantage of the iPad's accessibility features, digital workflows, creating their own iBooks, using Google Apps, and authoring their own iTunes U courses.

The critical component for success was for teachers to become self-motivated in advancing their skills. For inspiration, we incorporated badges, awards, levels, gift cards, and public recognition, as everyone is uniquely motivated. Our focus has remained on positive motivation rather than a fear of negative consequences.

Conquering Technology was created for the novice-to-advanced user. Starting with basic skills, faculty members progress through challenges with support resources available any time, anywhere. While some challenges develop general iPad skills, our focus revolved around using the iPad effectively and creatively in our 1:1 iPad educational environment. We didn't have too much difficulty creating a list of skills in which our faculty should be proficient. Our challenge was determining how faculty would demonstrate their knowledge. We called each skill-learning unit with assessment a challenge and grouped them into levels, which in turn were grouped into episodes.

Motivation and Recognition

Each level has an associated badge that is displayed within faculty profiles on the Cathedral Catholic High School website once all challenges have been completed. We wanted faculty to be publicly recognized for their hard work, so when they pass all the levels in an episode, they earn a $50 gift certificate. In addition, they receive an award that is presented to them either in front of their class or at an all-faculty meeting. Public recognition is a key component -- not only do we want to publicly acknowledge our pride, but it's also critical in motivating some people.

All faculty members are expected to complete one episode per year. As an iPad school, we find that iTunes U is the perfect tool for delivering our professional development game. iTunes U is an outstanding platform for delivering a wide variety of content to an iPad. Videos, links, apps, documents, audio -- anything from the iTunes Store, App Store, or iBook Store can be easily added. Even more importantly, any training content that we create ourselves can be easily delivered to our learners.

We use a private course with our faculty but have made the first two episodes public. The third episode is still in development and should be published before the 2015-2016 school year begins.

The first episode focuses on how teachers can use the iPad for themselves. The second episode focuses on how the teacher can use the iPad to manage his or her classes and engage students. The third episode will focus on how teachers can help students to use the iPad to create. The fourth will focus on helping students connect to the wider world (e.g. publish content, connect with other learners or professionals, etc.).

Accessible Resources

As technology trainers we saw several positive outcomes.

First of all, there was a marked increase in teacher motivation to participate in our technology training. Even reluctant learners were willing to take part, and many of them reported that they appreciated the opportunity to have all of the necessary resources available to them on their own time. We saw much more buy-in than we expected across our whole faculty. We cannot seem to publish episodes fast enough for our most motivated teachers. This is a great problem to have.

In addition, teachers worked on the game on their own time. Even though we have professional development time set aside once a month, teachers were working on their own during prep periods, after school, and even on the weekends.

Another benefit is that more teachers would actually use the resources that we created. Kathy and I have made many tutorial videos and screencasts that unfortunately were not used as widely as we hoped. Now that they are part of Conquering Technology, they are being used more frequently by teachers.

Anyone can do this. Many of you probably already are. Let's share and collaborate! Our courses are public and available for free in the iTunes U catalog. Use your iOS device to subscribe to Episode 1 and Episode 2. We're proud of our work but are always eager to see what's working in other schools as well. Please let us know about any technology-conquering PD you've used or created.

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Game Face On: Gamification for Engaging Teachers in PD | Edutopia

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Creativity, contentment, awe and wonder, excitement, curiosity, pride, surprise, love, relief, and joy. These are the ten emotions that game players experience, according to Jane McGonigal in Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Change the World. Do teachers report feeling any of these emotions when they describe professional development?

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educational technology education technology companies technology and education how important is technology in education educational technology tools learning educational technology educational technology in schools educational games educational games for kids free educational games for kids free educational games educational games online classroom games online classroom games halloween classroom games 5th grade classroom games classroom games for students games to play in the classroom kindergarten classroom games learning games for kids learning games free learning games kindergarten learning games free kids learning games

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Breakout EDU gamifies learning to create an engaging and empowering experience for students of all grade levels.

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Learn four critical pieces for gamifying your classroom or professional development for deeper engagement.

Gamification is one of the big buzzwords right now in education. It is the art, and sometimes the science, of applying game theory in non-game contexts like business or the classroom. Why would educators want to do that? Engagement. Active users are more engaged with the content and so retain more of what they are learning or doing. When education is gamified, students see a connection between their work and positive feedback, and so they become more eager and willing to learn and contribute.

There are four critical pieces in order to be successful at gamifying your classroom or professional development session. Try adding one, two, or all of these:

Accelerated feedback cycles - Everyone wants to know how well they are doing, whether it's in a race or diagramming a sentence. Providing more rapid and scheduled feedback can help the learner to be more engaged by knowing exactly where he/she stands. The feedback can be badges, points, or silly hats; the reward itself isn't important. It's how regular and often the feedback is provided that really matters. And keep in mind that feedback doesn't just have to come from the teacher or session leader; it can also come from other learners.

Clear goals and rules of play - To be successful at a game, you have to know the rules. So, in the classroom or the workshop, be very clear about expectations and rewards and where the journey will take them.

A compelling narrative - We all love stories. Make the learning into a story by personalizing it with goals that relate to the narrative. Are we learning about adding fractions so that we can help a prince rescue a princess from a tall tower? Are we creating examples of differentiated lessons so that the ogre will release all of the students he is holding captive? What is the story for what is happening?

Tasks that are challenging but achievable - There should be short-term goals along the way for players to reach. Don't make them too easy, as the gamer won't work for them. But also, don't make them out of reach so that he or she becomes discouraged and quits. Make sure that the tasks are scaffolded, moving from simpler to more complex, allowing the player to grow his skills as he moves through each assignment.

To see a great example of educational gamification, check out what sixth grade teacher Michael Matera did. He divided his classroom into houses, guilds, experience points, and badges in a competitive gamified environment and saw engagement and learning skyrocket. He explains how he did it and a few of the problems he encountered on his website on gamification. And here's the way a high school biology teacher gamified his classroom with Class Dojo, Google Sites, and Sheets.

If you want additional ideas, check out the book The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game or this free-to-members webinar on September 23. And our quarterly magazine TechEdge was devoted to game-based learning in the May 2014 issue; feel free to read it online here for more resources, tips, and tricks.

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Gamifying Your Classroom or PD - TechNotes Blog - TCEA

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Learn four critical pieces for gamifying your classroom or professional development for deeper engagement. Gamification is one of the big buzzwords right now in education. It is the art, and sometimes the science, of applying game theory in non-game contexts like business or the classroom. Why would educators want to do that?

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Gamify Your PD: Badges and Level Up - Teacher Tech

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Gamify Your PD: Badges and Level Up - Teacher Tech

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If you are providing a professional development workshop you may want to consider trying to gamify the event. I have created a template using Google Sheets that allows you to create a list of activities the PD participants will engage in. Assign a difficulty level, XP points and a badge to each task. As the participants complete the activities they can check them off and level up!

CLICK HERE for the template

Prior to the PD event you will want to make a copy of the template and rename the title to something specific for the event. Break down each of the agenda items that you want to cover into smaller tasks. This will help the participants to keep on task. Having more things to check off will help them to realize how much they are accomplishing.

One way to provide differentiation in a professional development session is to provide the participants choices. For each task rate the difficulty numerically; one for easy, three for difficult. Automatically this will be translated to difficulty stars. Providing a variety of tasks at different difficulty levels can allow participants to self select activities that will challenge them.

The badges tab of the template has some default badge images. If you would like to create your own badges try saving the images to a Google Sites page. After saving the page edits, right click on the image and choose "Copy image URL." Paste that URL into the badges tab. You can add badges to the list or override the badges provided.

Make sure each badge has an agenda number associated with it. If the badge is not being used, assign it agenda item zero.

By replacing the word edit in the URL with the word copy this will prompt each participant to create a copy of your PD gamify spreadsheet. Create a short URL using http://goo.gl or bit.ly or tinyurl.com. This short URL is what you want to share with participants. They will each have their own copy for them to mark off what they have accomplished.

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Gamify Your PD: Badges and Level Up - Teacher Tech

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If you are providing a professional development workshop you may want to consider trying to gamify the event. I have created a template using Google Sheets that allows you to create a list of activities the PD participants will engage in. Assign a difficulty level, XP points and a badge to each task.

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Who Moved My Classroom - A Model to Gamify Your Professional Learning

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Who Moved My Classroom - A Model to Gamify Your Professional Learning

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The award winning iPad educators site brings you feature articles, app spotlights and exclusive interviews with both innovative educators and app developers.

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Take PD to the Next Level with Badges - Gamify Professional Learning

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Take PD to the Next Level with Badges - Gamify Professional Learning

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A few weeks ago I had the privilege of speaking at the 2015 Technology in Action Conference (TIA) held in Denton, Texas. The conference is always great and led by a stellar team in Denton ISD. It's a local conference for me, and a great time to connect with other educators in my area. During my time there, I noticed something outside the teachers' doors: badges! I had heard about this amazing, gamified professional development plan implemented in Denton ISD, but to see the badges outside the door really brought it home. I snapped the picture below that day and posted to Instagram and Twitter. It became a very popular share, and other friends were asking me for more information and links. So I decided to highlight my friends in Denton ISD in this post, AND their fantastic idea!

Gamification and the use of badges is nothing new, and many of us have found ways to use these in adult learning and professional development. In my experience, teachers love badges! The Instructional Technology Team in Denton ISD, ( Dwight Goodwin, Ross Garison, Leslie Taylor and the other amazing team members), created a Google Site of self-directed PD for teachers. Through this program, teachers are rewarded for stepping outside their comfort zones with fun badges to display outside their classroom door.

The Badge Website

The first thing that teachers see when visiting the is the video below, a creative little to explain the purpose and process of the badges.

Badge Site Introduction Video

How it Works

From here, the teachers have CHOICE in their learning. They can choose from topics around Google, Apple, Assessment, Communication, Miscellaneous, Flipped Class and Social Media. Within each section, they can choose what they want to learn AND how they want to learn it: through a self-paced course or video, or they can request a face-to-face training. Voice and choice make this a powerful, differentiated professional learning experience.

What I love is that they didn't reinvent the wheel. They linked to online courses in the Google training center, and video tutorials that are already out there. That makes something like this so much more doable! And considering how fast technology changes, we have to share our resources! Share is caring, right?!

The badges for each option have to be earned and applied for individually. These badges were created with , one of my favorite Google tools. (Check out my infographic on 10 Ways to Use Google Drawings in the Classroom .) Badges do not have to be complicated and time consuming; they just need to reflect the accomplishment! Looking for other options for badges? See my post on 5 Awesome Resources for Badges in the Classroom .

The other thing I absolutely love about this program is that teacher badges are printed and displayed outside their door! No one ever said badges had to be displayed digitally. I love this because the accomplishment is recognized by other teachers and staff, and I'm sure the students notice these as well! (FYI, I'm also a big fan of printing badges for students. They can be displayed on a bulletin board, the cover of their notebook or locker!)

This professional learning idea can quickly transfer to the classroom with student-centered challenges and badges. Make it meaningful and be sure it is aligned to your learning goals. It's a win-win!

The bottom line: Choose what works for you. If you spend all your time reinventing the wheel and designing the perfect badge, you will never get it done! Go for it!

Tweet: If you spend all your time reinventing the wheel and designing the perfect badge, you will never get it done! Go for it! - @ShakeUpLearning

What are you favorite strategies to shake up professional development? Please share in the comments below!

© Shake Up Learning 2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog's author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning with appropriate and specific direction to the original content on ShakeUpLearning.com. See: Copyright Policy.

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Take PD to the Next Level with Badges - Gamify Professional Learning

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Gamification and the use of badges is nothing new, and many of us have found ways to use these in adult learning and professional development. In my experience, teachers love badges! Through this program, teachers are rewarded for stepping outside their comfort zones with fun badges to display outside their classroom door.

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Game Face On: Gamification for Engaging Teachers in PD | Edutopia

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Game Face On: Gamification for Engaging Teachers in PD | Edutopia

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Creativity, contentment, awe and wonder, excitement, curiosity, pride, surprise, love, relief, and joy. These are the ten emotions that game players experience, according to Jane McGonigal in Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Change the World. Do teachers report feeling any of these emotions when they describe professional development? No (except for maybe relief when it's over).

Conquering Technology

My colleague Kathy Garcia and I decided to create a professional development program that inspired teachers to feel these emotions while learning and developing skills toward more effective use of technology tools. We created a professional development game, accessed through the iTunes U platform, called Conquering Technology. Our teachers learn skills like taking advantage of the iPad's accessibility features, digital workflows, creating their own iBooks, using Google Apps, and authoring their own iTunes U courses.

The critical component for success was for teachers to become self-motivated in advancing their skills. For inspiration, we incorporated badges, awards, levels, gift cards, and public recognition, as everyone is uniquely motivated. Our focus has remained on positive motivation rather than a fear of negative consequences.

Conquering Technology was created for the novice-to-advanced user. Starting with basic skills, faculty members progress through challenges with support resources available any time, anywhere. While some challenges develop general iPad skills, our focus revolved around using the iPad effectively and creatively in our 1:1 iPad educational environment. We didn't have too much difficulty creating a list of skills in which our faculty should be proficient. Our challenge was determining how faculty would demonstrate their knowledge. We called each skill-learning unit with assessment a challenge and grouped them into levels, which in turn were grouped into episodes.

Motivation and Recognition

Each level has an associated badge that is displayed within faculty profiles on the Cathedral Catholic High School website once all challenges have been completed. We wanted faculty to be publicly recognized for their hard work, so when they pass all the levels in an episode, they earn a $50 gift certificate. In addition, they receive an award that is presented to them either in front of their class or at an all-faculty meeting. Public recognition is a key component -- not only do we want to publicly acknowledge our pride, but it's also critical in motivating some people.

All faculty members are expected to complete one episode per year. As an iPad school, we find that iTunes U is the perfect tool for delivering our professional development game. iTunes U is an outstanding platform for delivering a wide variety of content to an iPad. Videos, links, apps, documents, audio -- anything from the iTunes Store, App Store, or iBook Store can be easily added. Even more importantly, any training content that we create ourselves can be easily delivered to our learners.

We use a private course with our faculty but have made the first two episodes public. The third episode is still in development and should be published before the 2015-2016 school year begins.

The first episode focuses on how teachers can use the iPad for themselves. The second episode focuses on how the teacher can use the iPad to manage his or her classes and engage students. The third episode will focus on how teachers can help students to use the iPad to create. The fourth will focus on helping students connect to the wider world (e.g. publish content, connect with other learners or professionals, etc.).

Accessible Resources

As technology trainers we saw several positive outcomes.

First of all, there was a marked increase in teacher motivation to participate in our technology training. Even reluctant learners were willing to take part, and many of them reported that they appreciated the opportunity to have all of the necessary resources available to them on their own time. We saw much more buy-in than we expected across our whole faculty. We cannot seem to publish episodes fast enough for our most motivated teachers. This is a great problem to have.

In addition, teachers worked on the game on their own time. Even though we have professional development time set aside once a month, teachers were working on their own during prep periods, after school, and even on the weekends.

Another benefit is that more teachers would actually use the resources that we created. Kathy and I have made many tutorial videos and screencasts that unfortunately were not used as widely as we hoped. Now that they are part of Conquering Technology, they are being used more frequently by teachers.

Anyone can do this. Many of you probably already are. Let's share and collaborate! Our courses are public and available for free in the iTunes U catalog. Use your iOS device to subscribe to Episode 1 and Episode 2. We're proud of our work but are always eager to see what's working in other schools as well. Please let us know about any technology-conquering PD you've used or created.

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Game Face On: Gamification for Engaging Teachers in PD | Edutopia

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Creativity, contentment, awe and wonder, excitement, curiosity, pride, surprise, love, relief, and joy. These are the ten emotions that game players experience, according to Jane McGonigal in Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Change the World. Do teachers report feeling any of these emotions when they describe professional development?

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