Guest Blogger on Classcraft! (Creating an RPG adventure for your classroom)

I have been a fan of Classcraft ever since Tim Oltman introduced me to it in his Collins classroom.   A few months ago, on the behest of some of our Shelby elementary teachers, I even created an online "primer" on how to get started on Classcraft.   Of course, Classcraft resonates strongly alongside my interest of gamification and game-based learning in the classroom.

Knowing this interest, Stephanie Carmichael (the head blogger for Classcraft) reached out and asked if I would be interested doing a guest blog entry for their site.   I was flattered, but what would be something new I could talk about?

Then, it hit me.  Roleplaying games in education.

The first RPG I ever played was TSR’s Star Frontiers back in the mid-1980's, and from there my fate was sealed.  Soon I was tumbling polyhedron dice for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and Marvel Super Heroes (TSR), James Bond 007 (Victory Games), Car Wars (Steve Jackson Games), Ghostbusters and Star Wars (West End Games) . . . the list of games rolled on and on, including customizing and making my own. In short, I'm a huge fan, although I lament that I have far less time to play nowadays.

So, I took the RPG lens to the classroom and wrote about several free edtech tools: Habitica, Lone Wolf Online, Inklewriter, and more. Please check out my entry on Classcraft's blog, and keep those dice tumbling!

Update 12/17/18: Almost two years after I published this entry, I read an article from District Administration on teachers who have integrated "adventure-based learning" (specifically, Dungeons and Dragons) into their classrooms ("Dungeons & Dragons storms education" by Matt Zalaznick, December 2018). If Classcraft strikes your fancy, it's definitely worth a read. The second link to share is from that same article, and is a wealth of resources for teaching with Dungeons and Dragons from teachers who have actually done so.