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.

After all, regurgitation is easy, but putting knowledge into practice is the difficult challenge.

Source of idea: http://www.hightechhigh.org/unboxed/issue8/wild_about_cramlington/

Can you remember what they were?” Immediately, the students name every single one. After all, regurgitation is easy, but putting knowledge into practice is the difficult challenge.

This is just a quote from the link shared above. I have given much thought to teaching practices and how we teach our students. I always reflect on how I teach and if I am truly doing things right.

This statement just stands out to me. How many kids can simply memorize terms, vocab, formulas, definitions, dates, etc. yet one week later probably could not pass the test they just aced?

The question I pose is, "What good does this type of learning do for our students?"

Nothing. They are simply jumping through hoops. Have students understand momentum and physics. Have them understand the basics. Then have them put the knowledge to use. Our 8th grade teachers had students build trebuchets and other projectile flying devices. Not only did students have to learn the field of physics, but they had to apply it. Now the students had to build an apparatus that demonstrated their learning. They had to tweak this, change that, rebuild this part, etc. This caused them to bring their learning to a whole new level. This forced them to put their knowledge to practice.

Knowledge is not as needed as it once was. I use my iPhone to find any answer I want in seconds. The key is what I do with that information. I can read about building a garden box for my kids at home to plant their own garden. It is easy to find instructions. It is something else altogether for me to actually build it and make it look good for my kids to use.

This is a reason why I love Project Based Learning. It does as the quote states. It puts knowledge into practice.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this and what you do as an educator to make sure that students are just simply regurgitating information.