Hunger Games - Education Gamification Brainstorm Idea -

Hunger Games Gamification

My whole purpose with this project is to entice and promote writing, reading, and thinking. Even more important to me is to demonstrate to teachers, parents, and other students how awesome kids can be when we create the right environment to learn and challenge ourselves

Options: I will always have three options available based on themes of book. These will be based off essential questions

Essential Questions:
• When is adversity an advantage?
• When is silence the best force against adversity?
• What weapons work against ultimate control?
• What do you do when you know you cannot win?


Badges

• Training Badge - tutorial of Edmodo, Google Docs, and Wikispaces
• Group Work - not sure of tasks(struggling with this aspect)

Level Up/XP

• Survival of the Fittest - district that survives to the end
• Survival of all Spectators - high level spectator will enter Arena at a given point in time.
• Create a leaderboard
• STILL DON’T KNOW HOW TO LEVEL UP PROPERLY

Overview:

Here is what I am thinking

Week 1: Signs and countdown timer to create excitement within the school

Week 2: In school announcements explain the story and backdrop and provide link to the project website. Students will then apply to join the spectacle if they so choose.

School will be broken up into 12 districts. 9 districts for each house. We are a middle school so each grade level is divided up into 3 houses. Students will apply to be a character for their house.
Another district will be made up of teachers. This leaves me with two more districts. I have considered add my 5th grade ELP class as the 11th district. Perhaps I could have an admin district. Another idea would be a mixed district of three grade levels(6,7,8). I still need to finalize how to structure the last three districts.

I will have a lottery system to announce the people chosen. I will either broadcast this live via Ustream or create a video to allow teachers to show during our TA(homeroom). These people will then have a meeting with me one day before or after school to go over the process.

The people not selected for the Arena will then become Spectators. Spectators will have voting power via polls to eliminate teams, add items, disturbances, etc. They will still have a role. Spectators will earn XP points as well. At some point in the game the highest scoring spectator will enter the arena.

Each week or every few days a district will be eliminated. We will utilize a Survivor TV show approach where the highest level District will not be eliminated. This will give them another week to survive and hopefully entertain the other districts to work hard to earn points to take the lead.

Districts will earn points through their writing of the story. We will develop our own situation/version of Hunger Games. Each character will create their own profile via Fakebook and will be uploaded to our Hunger Game website. There will be side quests to earn additional XP points. Spectators will earn XP points through writing, the side quests, and also giving feedback to the writing. Spectators will be just as involved, but just not part of the actual storyline. They are more like news reporters.


Here is where I need help
I will create videos along the way as President. 

I still need to develop disasters, disturbances, and elements to spruce things up.

I still need to think of side quests or ways for people to earn additional XP points.

I still need to figure out which website will work best to host all this info. At this time I am thinking wix for the beginning phase and overall gameplay, but the leaderboard, character profiles, quests, videos, etc. will be done on a wiki? 

Not sure about this yet.

What do you think? I would love any suggestions, ideas, and help. When I get this up and running I will share with all to use, follow, monitor, steal, etc.

The greatest thing is that I believe I can prove how awesome kids are without the threat of grades, detentions, common core, etc. This is going to be epic!

Textbooks need to go and so does our current way of teaching

I just read this post that contained a letter from a former high school student about how textbooks are not the answer. It was weird reading this as I just had a conversation with a colleague about how we teach is the way we learn and how we were brought up. We talk about our frustrations with students acting unmotivated or not caring about what we are teaching. At what point do we as professionals look at our teaching methods and realize we are out of touch? It is time to realize that our students are wired differently than us. It is time to realize that they learn differently than us. Our fears in schools(blocking sites, cellphones, etc.) are the tools and daily life of our students(and our own). Funny how some of use are not ready to get on board with students using the cell phones, iPads, tablets, etc. to conduct their learning through their own means when during inservice and big faculty meetings you see those very some people on their phones checking Facebook, email, etc. It is time for us to catch up before we get too far behind(if we not too far behind already).

Here is a link to the letter from the former student


Weird how while composing this I came across this very video as I was sorting my emails that I send myself.

Don't Focus On Technology Because....

if you put all your marbles into the latest greatest technology tool and forget about the essential teaching one day your "latest greatest" technology will be old news like this electronic globe that speaks from 1996 where probably about 1/5 of the countries, cities, landlines don't exist anymore.

Hard to believe 1996 was 16 years ago. This was an amazing tool that kids loved at one point. When is the last time you saw a kid use a globe? It is no longer relevant to their lives when they can hit up Google Earth and see things in real time.

Educational Ideas To Investiage Over The Summer Part 2

6. Open, Collaborative Test - I just love this concept. For my extensions this would be amazing to try. The key is to adapt the idea to what is being taught. This too will be done in my classes this year.

7. Use of Edmodo

Source of Idea: http://mgleeson.edublogs.org/2012/04/29/the-power-of-social-networking-in-education-with-edmodo/

8. To entice class reading and discussions: Young Adult Reading Class.....but my class would be for the middle school kid so it would make it even more interesting

Source of Idea: http://www.wordforteens.com/2012/01/im-taking-class-on-young-adult.html

9. This whole concept has my brain thinking of new ideas

Source of Idea: A Teacher Went into Class with a 5-second Video Clip - What Happened Next?
http://www.davedodgson.com/2012/04/teacher-went-into-class-with-5-second.html

10. I am presenting at ITAG in the fall and I am going to do this. Sharing this might not keep me ahead of everyone, but why not share the wealth? This one is already being tackled by me as we speak

Source of Idea: Do it before everyone else does: Create presentation slides with iPad drawing app Paper
http://thenextweb.com/lifehacks/2012/04/22/do-it-before-everyone-else-does-create-presentation-slides-with-ipad-drawing-app-paper/?awesm=tnw.to_1E88g

Educational Ideas That I Need To Explore This Summer

As I continue to organize my notes, emails, booksmarks, etc. from all these amazing people in the field of education on my social network I decided to compile a list of things that I want to explore further this summer when I have some downtime. I will post the idea and the source of where it has come from as well.

If you have other topics or ideas that I should check out please let me know.

1. Solo Taxonomy

Source of Idea:
The Secret SOLO'ist Part 4 - SOLOstations!!
http://reflectionsofmyteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/as-i-venture-through-my-trial-of-using.html

2. I love this. It makes so much sense. I don't teach the 5 paragraph essay, but it has forced me to think of new ways of teaching kids how to write and express themselves for the real world.

Source of Idea:
Good Riddance to the Five-Paragraph Essay?
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2012/05/good_riddance_to_the_five-paragraph_essay.html

3. Maker Faire - I have plans to incorporate a BMS Maker Faire next year. Not sure how it is going to happen, but it will happen. The idea is planted in my head. Let it grow and watch out!

Source of Idea:
Maker High: Why Every School Should Be a Maker Faire
http://gettingsmart.com/blog/2012/05/maker-high-why-every-school-should-be-a-maker-faire/

4. Ustreaming My Classroom - This too will happen next year. I have talked about doing this for the last year. Next year it is going to happen after watching the Egg Drop.

Source of Idea
Period 5 Egg Drop (Broadcasting live at ustre.am/2MBz)

5. Technology Upgrade - I am ready to get back in the technology game. I am ready to get myself and my students one step ahead of everyone else in my district. Reading this post motivated me to get going!

Source of Idea: http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2012/05/gaia-3d-finally-ed-product-that-doesnt.html

Part 2 will be up in a day or two. This is a good start.