Snorkl

As a former high school English teacher, I always felt pressured to provide useful, personalized feedback quickly.  Digital tools like the Comment feature in Google Docs became popular just as I was leaving the classroom, and certainly shifted the paradigm when it came to giving "just in time" quality feedback.

Now, thanks to artificial intelligence, we are on the precipice of the next generation of digital feedback that can transform teaching.   For some time now, genAI chatbots like ChatGPT already offer an augmented opportunity to comment on student writing -- if you are willing to engineer a prompt for what you are looking for, then copying and pasting each student essay into the tool, then copying and pasting any AI feedback you wished to share back with a student.  (You can even include your rubric in your prompt, so you can get your feedback with a suggested assessment score.)  This is free and helpful, albeit time consuming and clunky.

But now we enter what I am calling the "refurbished" phase of AI.  In these newest AI tools, the programming is more hidden under the hood, while the interface is much more user friendly and less dependent on prompt engineering.  And that leads us to the tool for today's entry: Snorkl.  While its strength in providing feedback for solving math problems seems obvious, its potential for analyzing reflection and metacognition in multiple content areas is also apparent.

How does it work?

You can sign up free with a Google or Microsoft account.  Snorkl will ask you whether you are a teacher or a student -- I'm not sure how easy it is to change this if you answer wrongly, or are wanting to see what the other side is like before trying to return to your standard role, so choose wisely.

Your home page is intuitively organized with several options.  A "Getting Started" box provides light tutorials for how Snorkl works. Some videos to watch are in "Resources."  You can explore premium plans; although a free account gives you unlimited classes and co-teachers, you have "limited" activities -- an actual number is not specified.  Last but not least, you can create a class where you can then make activities for students (a share link for your activities makes it easy to get students jumping in).

Your Home tab.  Note the tabs across the top for Classes and Library (see below).

What does Snorkl feel like for a student? In the pre-made "Try as a student!" section, several prompts are given so you can experience Snorkl for yourself, and reveal its potential for a wide range of content.  For example, there's one for "Trig Ratios," and another that asks you to "Identify the author's feelings about New Orleans in this 4th grade ELA assignment."  I was intrigued by the "Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich" activity -- a classic writing prompt I used years ago with students to show the importance of details when describing "how to" instructions -- so that's the one I chose.

When I opened it up, I first encountered the "Response Whiteboard."  

The activity's instructions are in the upper right, which can also be read aloud to the student.

As you can see from the toolbar at the top of the whiteboard, there are several buttons that allow you to insert text, pictures, and formulas for your response; while you can use the mouse/trackpad to draw, it's probably not as natural as using your finger or stylus on a touchscreen device. (This is the same whiteboard interface the teacher uses when creating the activity prompt for students.)  However, "Record Screen + Voice" is where the real magic of Snorkl resides.  While you can write or draw to your heart's delight before hitting this button, you really can't submit your response unless you make a recording.  That's because Snorkl takes what you say and converts it to text for the next step of the process. Of course, like any screencast, you could draw and type as you talk.  (The first time you do this, you'll be prompted to give permission for Snorkl to use your microphone.)

Once you submit your response, Snorkl uses AI to, in effect, analyze your thinking out loud and tell you how well you did.  The first time I responded I didn't doodle and simply talked through how to make a PB&J.  After several seconds, I got back this screen:

The comments on the right are timestamped; click on the time and you can go straight to that part of the recording.

I have to admit, this had me pretty slack-jawed.  You can play back your recording, with a running transcript in the form of captions.  Snorkl provided some simple overall feedback ("Correct," "3/4 Strong") followed by impressively detailed commentary.  Even the tone seemed appropriate -- Snorkl celebrated my strengths ("Great job on giving a detailed explanation...I love how you even included the part about opening the bread bag") while also providing me ways to improve ("Have you tried using the same knife for both the peanut butter and jelly?").

If you like, you can do another response, with either a clean whiteboard or pick up where you left off.  These additional responses become a history that you can revisit and review, to see your growth over time.

The Portfolio tab shows how Snorkl can be a place for artifacts for learning; for example, imagine a student pulling out a response during a student-led conference with their parents. 

Of course, teachers can review and play the videos of these submitted responses.  Once several responses have been submitted, Snorkl's website suggests that a teacher will be able to see some class-level insights, such as "top exemplars" and "common misconceptions," but it is also possible such insights are only fully available as a premium feature. 

Snorkl calls itself "a versatile tool for all subjects, used from elementary through college."  As an additional nod beyond the "try as a student" examples indicated above, the platform also provides some pre-made activities in several content areas and grade levels in its Library.

The library bank already covers many grade levels, with more "coming soon."

Finally, for a video on getting started with Snorkl, watch the following (3:24):

How could you use it?

Students could be assigned a Snorkl task:

• as a more interactive type of "flipped learning" homework
• during class as part of a blended learning station rotation
• at the end of class as a formative assessment exit slip to determine if they understood today's content (and give the teacher data on what misconceptions to address for tomorrow's class)

Downsides?

Snorkl offers some powerful features for free, so it is hard to find faults with the tool itself beyond just how many activities you can create at no cost, or the possible limitation of the drawing features if you don't have a touchscreen device.  From a teacher's perspective, it truly can become a powerful "instructional aide" (not teacher replacer!) in your classroom.  A more likely negative is about the potential for a teacher to overuse the tool, or use it without also checking student work in person.  As always with edtech -- especially with AI -- practice moderation, oversight (it's not always right), and balance.

Have you used Snorkl, or a similar AI tool?  Share your stories in the Comments below!

KyEdRPG Spotlight: Lexie Bewley-Gilley Bringing Role-Playing to Reaganomics

Lexie Bewley-Gilley is a high school social studies teacher at Bullitt Central High School (Bullitt County Public Schools in Kentucky).  After attending some sessions on game-based learning at KySTE 2024 -- and in particular, how tabletop role-playing could be a part of a classroom -- she was excited to attempt a new lesson near the end of her own school year.  KyEdRPG friends like Chad Collins and Michelle Gross definitely were an inspiration!

@CollinsClassSC @michellegross
This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen! Helping students reach mastery by keeping them engaged and motivated! I cannot say enough how much I love this! #KYSTE24 #TeacherNavigators #GameBasedLearning pic.twitter.com/hOUjY9XwHx

— Lexie Bewley Gilley (@MrsGilleyUSHis) March 13, 2024

Recognizing that student energy is flagging in May, and that her U.S. History unit about the end of the Cold War and Reaganomics was a bit dry in the past, Lexie found an angle to gamify the learning.  She took the element of "rolling up a character" in a TTRPG and had students create a person living in the 1980's.  Lexie leaned into Canva for its presentation and video creation capabilities, alongside AI tools for image generation.  Kicking off with an ElevenLabs-narrated video in full Valley Girl speak, Lexie made a slide deck to guide the students through a series of d20 rolls on random tables, starting with determining their socioeconomic status.  Each random table roll brought a new financial crisis or opportunity that, in effect, shaped the life of their character.  Students collected the narrative along the way on their character tracker sheet.

From a Bullitt County PD session led by Lexie, sharing her lesson.

At periodic moments, Lexie prompted the students to stop and have discussions.  From the perspective of their characters (and those who felt comfortable doing so in first person), students considered and debated how their person would react to the latest event.  The lesson took several days, and culminated in the students individually writing a reflective narrative/essay on the story of their character, making connections to the final days of the Cold War. 

Today in US History!
I’m trying something new and my rock star students are really showing up and out with their abilities! We are gamifying Reaganomics into a simulation (modified Elemental TTRPG) 🙌🏼
Day 1 has been GREAT! #DeeperLearning #ProductiveCollaborator #BCPS pic.twitter.com/KiQPiDokvs

— Lexie Bewley Gilley (@MrsGilleyUSHis) May 6, 2024

I have seen and shared the idea of using a character sheet from a popular published TTRPG for a deeper demonstration of learning (for example, filling out a sheet from the perspective of a historical person or literary character, then defending your stats and choices).  However, Lexie's commitment of several academic days for this character generation lesson fostered an academically rich opportunity for students to really gain an empathetic POV of a person from another time period. 

Today I visited @bcpsky teacher @MrsGilleyUSHis at @bchs_cougars! Students did a "Reaganomics & Role-Playing" multi-day activity where they rolled up a character in the 1980's and discussed how economics impacted them. Awesome #ttrpg in education! #kyedrpg #KYDL #MovingForward pic.twitter.com/ImvMBEeUJi

— Adam Watson (@watsonedtech) May 7, 2024

Lexie talked about expanding on TTRPG inclusion next year in U.S. History.  Perhaps the students could roll up a time traveller at the start of the course, and several times throughout, the character plays through a scenario in a new historical period -- a little gaming, with a little "fish out of water" reflection!  But for now, it's great to see teachers like Lexie try something new for her students.  I can't wait to see what she'll do next!

Gemini for Google Education: Highlights of their Latest AI Release (May 2024)

It's been a big month for generative AI updates!  Back on May 13, ChatGPT announced ChatGPT-4o (as in "Omni"), a "new flagship model that can reason across audio, vision, and text in real time."  In various short videos, that new "reasoning" was demonstrated in pretty remarkable ways.  Fire up the app on your laptop, and it actively listens and even participate in your meeting (providing insights and summaries), or it can tutor you on understanding a math problem.  Open it on your phone, and it can translate between two speakers in real time, referee two people playing rock-paper-scissors, or even make a new song while harmonizing with a second ChatGPT AI.  Additionally, the lag of input to output is reducing down in time so much that interacting with ChatGPT will start to feel like a human in natural conversation. 

It's another example of ChatGPT seemingly leapfrogging its competition.  Since November 2022 when ChatGPT first broke through to the general public, other major generative AI platforms have come forward, but without as much fanfare.  Microsoft's Copilot has an attractive user interface and, among other features, can generate accurate images inside of itself, allows voice-to-text input, and provides hyperlinks in responses, yet I hardly hear it as a person's first AI platform of choice.  Google's AI went from Bard to the renamed branding of Gemini and was much like Copilot in its features.  While Gemini and Copilot allows uploading of images, you can upload both text and image files to analyze or alter in ChatGPT.  (A quick disclaimer: as you likely already know, AI is sometimes wrong and hallucinates.  When it comes to inputs, I highly recommend trying prompts in multiple genAI platforms and comparing the results.)  

But that was then, this is now.  Gemini may have finally played its ace card with its latest upgrade, announced in a live webinar yesterday.  (By registering, you can get access to the 45 minute archived recording.)  Finally, Google seems poised to lean in on two of its major assets: its near-monopoly of education with its variously tiered domains,  and having the world's most popular cloud-based productivity app suite.

Here are some of the highlights from the webinar.  (Images are screenshots from the webinar unless otherwise noted.)

There is now a premium version of Gemini AI, one that can be incorporated across some of the core Google apps: Docs, Gmail, Slides, Sheets, and Meet.   With the upgrade, AI help is just a button click away.  This integration is likely a game-changer.  Why pop open a new tab for another genAI when Gemini could be built right in?

From the Google course "Get Started with Gemini for Google Workplace."

However, for educational domain customers, Google recognizes there are special needs.  Gemini will now offer, free of charge, several assurances: the data inputted from students and teachers will not be human reviewed, not be used to train AI models, and not be shared outside of their domain. (These three highly sought features are coming "soon," a phrase used several times in the webinar and in its various promotional material graphics.) For educators with privacy concerns, this alone might be a compelling reason for a school district to recommend Gemini over other genAI tools.  Vivek Chachcha, Product Manager of Gemini Education, promises that the AI tool will help "save time," "make learning more personal," "inspire creativity," and help students "learn confidently" (by "empower[ing] students with guided support").  

The webinar included several video examples of Gemini at work in various Google apps, and some shorter excepts of these videos are available separately on its Google for Education YouTube channel.

Although this video shows examples from higher ed, they could apply to anyone needing to increase their productivity and effectiveness (2:58):

In this clip, an instructional coach uses Gemini to draft a professional development session agenda in Sheets (35 seconds):

In this last clip, a teacher inside of a Doc creates a first draft of feedback on a student's poem (47 seconds):

In a related tool revealed earlier this week, Google also has a "side panel" feature that will incorporate Gemini.  This will basically allow the AI to look across your various apps and files in Google Drive in order to complete the task.  (Currently, access to this side panel requires being enrolled in Google Workspace Labs, which will likely need the approval of your domain's admin.)

An example of Gemini's side panel, inside of my personal Google Drive.

Yes, yes, you may be saying, but what about the price?

First, it may be helpful to compare the current free Gemini chat AI (accessible in a separate tab, at its own URL) versus the new paid Gemini for Workspace:

Next, note that these paid licenses come at two different tiers of pricing.  (The upper "Premium" license includes Gemini being able to have "advanced meetings" in Google Meet, a potential nod to the ChatGPT meeting summary/interaction feature mentioned at the start of this blog entry.) The good news: there is no minimum number of licenses you can purchase for users, and there is a discount if you order with a yearlong commitment before August 23, 2024.  The bad news: these premium features do not come automatically with any current upgraded Education domain tier, although Education Plus customers can qualify for a bit more of a discount, again if ordered before August 23.

While the integration of Gemini across your Google apps does cost, it is easy to see how powerful the AI could be for Google Suite learners.  If nothing else, it certainly gives Gemini an opportunity to jump to the front of the genAI competition line!

I'll end this blog entry with some Gemini resources:

• For tech and IT friends, read this blog entry from "Workspace Updates" (5/23/24) for an official Google breakdown of Gemini for Google Workspace for Education's coming upgrades.
• If you're interested in more of a general audience narrative of what's happening with Gemini in education, here's an entry from Google's blog on 5/16/24.
• Looking for even more ways to use Gemini for Google Workspace in education, from Google itself?  Check out these Slides from April 2024.  The resources and tips include advice on writing better prompts, multiple visual examples of how to use Gemini in various apps, and help for domain admin.
• Google offers some free online courses.  Here's one I just completed myself, and I highly recommend for a low-stress walkthrough: "Get Started with Gemini for Google Workspace."  (It requires logging in and allowing ExceedLMS to access your Google account, but again, it's free!)

One last thing: have a great summer and enjoy some time off!

GAMA Expo 2024 and KySTE 2024

As I previewed in a previous entry, I attended and presented at two conferences in March, but I've been busy since then and haven't taken the time to write a reflection on what I saw and encountered! So in today's entry, I'll share some highlights.  

GAMA Expo

The international GAMA Expo was at the recently renovated Kentucky International Convention Center, the first of its three scheduled years in Louisville.  I attended the day of my own presentation and the following day.  Not surprisingly as it is mainly a closed-to-the-public industry trade show, the majority of sessions involved game publisher announcements, or ways for gameshop owners to improve their sales, marketing, community partnerships, and so on.  In terms of help for education, it was mainly found on the exhibition floor where I walked the booths of various vendors and game publishers and discovered resources such as the following:

• Academy Games have several historic board games, such as the 878 Vikings: Conquest of England and One Small Step (a "Space Race" simulation).  From a classroom perspective, I was heartened to see many of them advertised as requiring "15+" number of players.  Some of their games also offer a companion teacher's guide for sale, such as the Colonial Trilogy (first, second, and third) and Freedom: The Underground Railroad.  It was this last game in particular that compelled me to initiate a long talk with Uwe Eickert, Freedom's designer.  Players are abolitionists helping enslaved people escape to the North (meaning it avoids the problematic issues of players enacting the role of an oppressor or the oppressed), and as Uwe walked through the game's mechanics, "Freedom" seemed conscientiously honest in how it approaches, as Academy's catalog describes it, the "horrors and heroism" of the topic.
• Beach House RPGs has Tim Beach as a Director, who wrote second edition D&D modules and expansion materials in the 1990's.   Tim wanted to design a TTRPG ruleset that has a much easier entry point for a beginning player, and the result is Start Here.  While the starter set has a default fantasy setting, other books include resources for sci-fi and other genres.  Start Here could offer teachers a great opportunity to adapt a simple, flexible game mechanic for their classrooms!  Materials will begin shipping in June 2024. For more information on acquiring the game, click here.
• Liftoff 2.0: The Epic Space Race Simulation is a well-reviewed board game that has been around for over three decades (the first edition came out in 1989).  It is grounded in real science content and historical accuracy, and offers enough roles for several teams of students to simulate the American and Soviet Union's race to the moon.  According to its designer Fritz Bronner, Liftoff has been used in many classrooms.  However, be warned: perhaps fittingly for its realistic take on managing a space program, the game seemed complicated with lots of token pieces, tables of outcomes, and rules.
• I talked with Andy Hand and Mike Johnson from Limitless Adventures.  They are huge fans of educators, and their "Limitless Encounters" card sets based on D&D fifth edition rules (such as The Blood Queen's Defiance, which Hand and Johnson were kind enough to gift me to review) offer an opportunity for students of an extracurricular club to "self-DM" a Dungeons & Dragons adventure.  Teachers might also use these card sets as inspiration on how to automate their own classroom academic TTRPG modules.
• I briefly spoke with Matthew Orr from Wet Ink Games.  Wet Ink is a local Kentucky game publisher, and it's exciting to know the Bluegrass has such designers in its own backyard!

KySTE 2024

After missing the conference in 2023, I was excited to make it back to KySTE, as it returned to the Kentucky International Convention Center after years at the Galt House.  Ironically, I presented in the same lower level room as I had at GAMA the week prior!

The attendees for my KySTE 2024 session.

Like GAMA, I attended KySTE on the day of my own session as well as the following day.  While there were several standout sessions, I'll spotlight three.

In my last entry, I wrote about Chad Collins and his digitally infused, game-based design of the Spencer County Middle School "Academy Team" elective.  Chad and Michelle Gross offered an expansive and detailed explanation of that course with their session "Play to Learn: Building a Class with Game-Based Design."  Plus, they gave away what was easily the best swag I encountered at KySTE: bags with a d20 die and example "treasure cards" they use in their classes!

@CollinsClassSC @michellegross
This is easily one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in teaching! Helping students not only reach mastery, but creating a motivating environment that makes them WANT to! #KYSTE24 #GoBeyond #TeacherNavigators #DeeperLearning #DNDclassroom pic.twitter.com/poRvLBmbQ3

— Lexie Bewley Gilley (@MrsGilleyUSHis) March 13, 2024

Keith Barnes, a Bullitt County digital learning coach, gave a thought-provoking presentation imploring us to "Go Beyond Using AI like a Magic 8 Ball."   He reminded us that the students should do the thinking even as the AI may do the "work."  In particular, the session centered on an intriguing perspective from a white paper by Drs. Ethan and Lilach Mollick that posited seven approaches for using artificial intelligence with students, with AI as Mentor, Tutor, Coach, Teammate, Student, Simulator, and/or Tool. 

.@bcpsky digital learning coach @kytis01 sharing how #ArtificialIntelligence tools can play different roles to help a student! #kyste24 #KYDLC pic.twitter.com/91sgBrpZ8I

— Adam Watson (@watsonedtech) March 14, 2024

William King (Director of Technology) and Megan Marcum (Digital Learning Coach) from Bowling Green Independent district used the running metaphor of space missions to describe their PD facilitation of a digital learning teacher cohort in their session "Teach2Transform, a Field Guide to Building Better PD."  Initially, William and Megan shared that only 47% of BGI staff thought the relevance of their PD was "very good" or "good," with relevance and continuity cited as the biggest barriers to BGI PD being effective.  With these survey results in mind, William and Megan found success by creating a cohort meeting six half-days throughout the year during the school day, with the focus being succinctly summarized as giving teachers "time, resources, space, and help."  Stipends were given for teachers to spend on resources for their classroom, although interestingly, they found stipends were not a primary motivational driver for the cohort.  The participants' own personal goals were paramount, as well as William and Megan using high quality frameworks for contextualizing the digital learning (in this example, it was the McLeod/Graber "4 Shifts" and Hebern/Corippo's EduProtocols). 

How do we "break from gravity" from the way we've always done PD? @MrsMarcumBGISD and @wkingbg share their #moonshotthinking! #kyste24 #KYDLC #KYDL #UnitedWeLearnKY pic.twitter.com/uaBPbXEV8v

— Adam Watson (@watsonedtech) March 14, 2024

I'll end my highlights of KySTE 2024 with a great overview video, shot and edited (as always!) by STLP student engineers who also were the "IT help desk" throughout the conference:

Again, while these nearly back-to-back conferences made for a very busy March, I was glad for the opportunity to learn from so many people from so many places.

KyEdRPG Spotlight: Chad Collins and "The Academy"

Chad Collins has been with Spencer County Public Schools (KY) since 2013, first as a middle school social studies and ELA teacher, and currently as the campus Gifted and Talented Teacher for Spencer County Middle School (SCMS) as well as Spencer County Elementary School.  He is also one of the SCMS Academic Team Coaches, which led to the start of the journey that is the basis for today's blog entry.

Not long after Chad began at SCMS, principal Matt Mercer wanted to try something different during fifth period schoolwide: Mercer envisioned all students receiving extra time for reading and writing enrichment.  Chad and the other Academic Team coach and SCMS science teacher Sarah Parnell pitched the idea of having an Academic Team elective class for its team members during the same period.  Mercer agreed, and the course was born.  This elective would eventually not only grow to include students who are not Academic Team members, but also in sheer numbers; in 2023-2024, the roster is over eighty students, split by grade level into three classes, and SCMS math teacher Michelle Gross joined Chad and Sarah to become the third teacher to lead a section.

As the years went on, Collins, Parnell and Gross all felt the Academy Team class needed to be a deeper learning experience, but how?  In the summer of 2023, Collins had an epiphany.  He had learned about the work of KyEdRPG educators, particularly John Brewer of Jefferson County Public Schools.  (Here's a fortuitous X exchange between the two!) While not a tabletop roleplay gamer himself, Chad has played video games since he was a child, and recognized the DNA of the latter was built on the former: “While I don’t have much experience with these types of tabletop games, and definitely not running that type of thing in my classroom before, I’ve been playing video games that use many of the same systems that are in these games since I was the age of my students or before."  With that in mind, Chad was the architect behind the new structure of the elective course: The Academy.   In the following YouTube video (where the previous quote came from!), Chad explains in more detail why and how The Academy was created (19:17):

We should also give credit that Sarah and Michelle didn't hesitate to embrace the course design for their own grade level sections, and since the launch of The Academy, have added their own content materials and revisions.

But...what is The Academy, and how is it different?  Storywise, the premise is that students have been transported into another world where they are enrolled in "The Academy," a place similar yet different from their own.  Each quarter, students choose one of several "classes" (in the TTRPG parlance of the term) in order to pursue their studies: The Bard (arts & humanities), The Beastmaster (language arts), The Magician (math), The Ranger (science), or The Knight (social studies).   Each of these classes has a corresponding Google Site as first designed by Chad, which consists of unique, personalized paths of learning.  These pathways have a series of Main Quests (must do’s), Side Quests (should do’s), and Feats of Strength (aspire to do’s).  In actuality, these Quests and Feats form various Mastery Checks of learning that are assessed by the teacher, and if the student does not meet the requirements, are asked to revise and resubmit.  Successful completion of the Main Quests earn Experience Points (XP) and this total amount earned is what eventually determines the student's grade for each quarter.  This progression of XP can be monitored by students and parents alike in real time on, fittingly titled, Progress Trackers (Google Sheets) embedded in the Google Sites.   Successful completion of Side Quests can earn "coins" that can be used to purchase items from an in-class "market."  Lastly, completion of most Feats of Strength are for learning enrichment and the "honor and glory" of helping the whole Team, as opposed to coins or XP.

Chad was kind enough to let me copy and create sample snapshot versions of each of The Academy's class Google Sites midway through the school year, which you can preview below:

Arts & Humanities	https://sites.google.com/view/scmssampleclassartshum/home
Language Arts	https://sites.google.com/view/scmssampleclassela/home
Math	https://sites.google.com/view/scmssampleclassmath/home
Science	https://sites.google.com/view/scmssampleclassscience/home
Social Studies	https://sites.google.com/view/scmssampleclasssocialstudies/home

Chad would be the first to acknowledge the pedagogical structures that undergird and inspired The Academy.  For one, it's a brilliant example of competency-based education, with tenets such "meaningful, positive, and empowering" types of assessments; students having different learning pathways; and mastery of learning, not seat time, is the metric of progression allowing students to "move when ready" to new content or higher levels of complexity.  Secondly, the language of structures like must do's/should do's/aspire to do's, Mastery Checks, and Progress Trackers come from the Modern Classroom Project.

Many digital tools are employed in The Academy, both in the design of the course as well as students' day-to-day instructional interaction.  Chad used several artificial intelligence tools, such as Eleven Labs (to create a narrator voiceover for a video introducing students to The Academy), Midjourney for images, and ChatGPT for monster and scenario descriptions.   For content delivery and note-taking work, he uses Edpuzzle; for Main Quest Monster Hunts, there is Quizziz.  For "sparring sessions" (where students review content via some friendly competition), Chad rotates through several tools, such as Gimkit, Blooket, and Quizalize.

The display case outside of Chad's classroom.  Note the d20 dice, the examples of "Treasure Cards," and the "Roll for Prizes" chart.

In my in-person visit to Chad and Michelle's classrooms back in November 2023, I was a delighted witness to some of these sparring sessions.  Since most of these head-to-head digital tools embed a leaderboard indicating ranking of winners, this allows an incentivization protocol where the top three student finishers use a d20 die to roll for prizes and therefore draw from an indicated jar.  Some of these tokens include stickers and candy, but a premium item is a "treasure card" worth an "upgrade" in class.  Here are some examples:

In Michelle's class, I recorded a video of students happily rolling for their goodies:

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A post shared by Kentucky Educators for Role Playing Games (@kyedrpg)

The student agency was palpable in these classes, as was the joy of learning.  From the perspective of TTRPGs, there were so many wonderful elements present, yet the only thing really "missing" was the actual playing of a role-playing game!  Chad shared that he was looking to have more cross-content, collaborative opportunities for his students, so creating some group mini-RPGs modules may be in the future.  I'm excited to see how The Academy will "level up" in the years to come!

Speaking of the future, Chad may now be a Gifted and Talented Teacher with new responsibilities, but part of the agreement for taking his new position is his ability to still teach his section of the SCMS fifth period Academic Team elective.  With that in mind, Chad shared that he would appreciate any feedback on his structures and ideas, especially as other teachers attempt to incorporate them into their own courses.  Or share them in the Comments below!

Be sure to check out Chad's guest turn on a recent Modern Classroom Project podcast episode (Episode 177, "Gamification," 2/18/24, 61 min long).  Also, for those who will be attending KySTE 2024 in March, Michelle and Chad will be presenting a session about The Academy ("Play to Learn: Building a Class with Game-Based Design") on Wednesday, March 13, at 11:30 am.

Announcements for February and March 2024!

 Hello friends!   This blog entry is fairly short, but since I had several upcoming appearances, I thought I would put them all in one announcement.

Last weekend, I had the good fortune to virtually meet Melody McAllister and be her guest on the Growth Over Grades podcast, produced by SpacesEDU.   The focus of our talk was on game-based learning -- in particular, tabletop role-playing games in education, and KyEdRPG!  The 41 minute episode went live on February 29; the link to the podcast on Spotify is here, plus you can watch it on YouTube.

TTRPGs in education continue for today's theme.  Next up, I'll be presenting at the annual international industry convention for game publishers and gameshop owners, the GAMA EXPO, coming to Louisville on March 3-7.   My session is "Teaching with TTRPGs: How Publishers and Hobby Shops Can Help."  I'll be presenting on the morning of Tuesday, March 5.  (The conference can only be attended by GAMA members; no general public is allowed.) This is the first of three years that GAMA will be in Louisville, and I'm excited and proud that our city is hosting this prestigious event -- especially in the year of the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons!

The last announcement:  I'll be presenting at KySTE (March 13-15), also in Louisville.  My session is "Dungeons, Dragons, and Digital Tools: Tabletop Role-Playing Games in Schools & Classrooms" and it will be on Wednesday afternoon, March 13.   I hope to see old friends and make new ones!

Thank you to Melody, GAMA and KySTE for the opportunities to share with, and learn from, others!

Update 3/3/24:  The links for the Growth to Grades podcast were added once the episode went live on February 29.

Credit Discovery, Not Recovery

Recently, I was flattered and honored to be the guest of Season 2 Episode 2 of Education Perspectives, a podcast hosted by Liza Holland.  Our talk ranged from edtech to game-based learning.  You can listen to the episode on your favorite platform from here.

On the podcast, one of the topics I briefly discussed was the need to shift from a "Credit Recovery" system to one of "Credit Discovery."  I wanted to extrapolate on that subject for today's blog entry,

Credit recovery, as educators well know, is a pretty common hallmark of the traditional educational system.  For a semester or a school year, a student attempts to get a passing grade in a class.  The student is marched dutifully through a curriculum.  For a variety of reasons -- likely aggravated by absences, low grades or missing assignments that creates a statistical hole the student cannot climb out of -- the student reaches the end of the timeline, only to fail.  In some cases, the student may have an opportunity to spend time in the summer "making up" for the class, somehow achieving in a few weeks what the student could not do in months.  In other cases -- especially if there are several such classes to make up -- a student may be put into a program where they can tackle several credits side by side, thanks to an online course platform that asks students to watch a video, take a quiz, watch a video, take a quiz, then take a multiple choice test.

There are, of course, well meaning variations to the above.  Perhaps the student completes a PBL in the summer, knocking out credits for a few classes simultaneously.  Perhaps the online course platform has some interactive tools to make the learning more engaging.  In the end, however, credit recovery is mostly a seat-based solution to learning that rarely takes mastery or personalized interests into account.  It is also an inefficient approach that closes the door after the cow has already left the barn.  Last but not least, it saves the innovation of learning until the end.  If somehow a novel way of teaching can really work in just a handful of weeks -- in a PBL, or through a digital platform --  why would you waste the prior instructional months in frustration just to arrive at failure?

If we don't like such outcomes of a traditional system, let's start something new by changing the questions. What if we instead turn a reactive, post-mortem, negative approach to learning into a pro-active, diagnostic, positive one?   What if students were allowed to discover a way to earn their credits, with their input front and center from the start?  What if the rigor of learning was raised, right alongside the joy?

Breaking away from Carnegie Units and fixed seat-time scheduling is not easy, but it is not impossible either.  I've blogged before about William Smith High School in Colorado, and how its courses (created with teacher passions and student input in mind) ingeniously blend traditional credits into PBL classes that are high interest with a complex, authentic performance assessment as a final product.  Back in November, Cory Steiner, superintendent of Northern Cass School District of North Dakota, visited OVEC educators (he'll return next month to talk to our regional district leaders).  He shared the many innovations of Northern Cass, but one that particularly jumped out for me was the studio classes being put into place at its secondary schools.   From the beginning, these inquiry-based "courses" are co-designed between students and advisors in order to complete credits the way students want to earn them, through independent mastery-based projects.  (For more on Northern Cass and its "microschool" program, read this Getting Smart article from May 2023.)

As educators, we can be commended for all the energy we spend trying to save a student who has already "failed."  But this may not be the best way to focus our time, and certainly suffers from framing a student in a deficit mindset rather than an asset-based one. Instead, let's invert the model.  Let's spend at least the same amount of energy empowering our students who often are the victims of a failed, traditional, outdated school system.  Let's help our students discover their own greatness, and be the exploring pioneers of their own learning.