Showing posts with label minecraft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label minecraft. Show all posts

Thursday, December 10, 2015

Hour of Code 2015

This week (Dec. 7-11), Shelby County again celebrated the #HourOfCode!  In my entry last year,  I went into detail what the Hour of Code is.   In short, students are encouraged to try programming and coding for at least one hour.

Teachers and librarians across the district have been facilitating student coding all this week.  Here are some highlights!

Beth Jones (LMS at Collins High School) was ready to receive Mrs. Terhune's students:


Vicki Stoltz (LMS at Clear Creek Elementary, who made a Symbaloo last year listing some great coding resources) captured some fifth grade students Minecrafting via the Code.org website.  She particularly praised how these students, like many, worked collaboratively side by side to problem solve their way through the modules:



When I emailed out to the district to talk up the Hour of Code, several other teachers replied with their own pledge to give students this learning opportunity: Tina Eden (East Middle), Teresa Walther (Talented and Gifted), Tyler Harris (SCHS), Julie Webb (LMS at SCHS), Sarah Smith and Meredith Morrison (both from Southside Elementary).

One particular partnership, between Wright Elementary's LMS Sarah Price and our Area Technology Center (ATC) teacher Valerie Ricchio, really caught my attention.  Every day this week, Ms. Price took on a huge challenge of making sure that all of Wright's K-5 students got an hour of code -- as far as I know, the first time in Shelby County that one of our schools got 100% student participation in coding.  In addition, Ms. Ricchio arranged for students in her technical computer program (from Collins and Shelby County High School) to come over to Wright as mentor-helpers.  Using iPads, the Wright students interacted with both Code.org (besides Minecraft, the Star Wars modules were particularly popular!) and the app Lightbot.


And others in our state noticed!

It was wonderful to see our younger and older students have such meaningful interaction (as well as such valuable teamwork between a librarian and a teacher from two different schools).  But cross-collaboration and compassion are not limited to technical assistance in Shelby County.  It's part of our mission statement to "embrace social responsibility."  It's part of our Strategic Leadership strands: globally effective, healthy and responsible students.   So whether it is intermediate elementary students being readers for primary students....or high school students purchasing holiday gifts for elementary students who are less fortunate, or helping them code....or our plans for student-run help desks as our 1:1 initiative simply becomes another part of our daily learning culture....helping is just another day in the district.

What have you done for Hour of Code this year?  Please tell us in the Comments below.
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Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Post-KySTE 2015 Wrapup

It's a week of transitions and reflections here at Edtech Elixirs.  Yesterday, Shelby County kicked off its Thinking Strategies Institute, being held at our brand new Learning Center (the same site where our March 26 Edtech Share Fair will be held . . . hint hint, plug plug).  Today marks my last day at Wright Elementary, and I begin my embedded stay at Heritage Elementary tomorrow.   And last but not least, I have a chance to catch my breath and reflect on last week's KySTE 2015 conference.

As always, the conference was full of affirmation, inspiration, and new edtech tools, and I'd like to share some of it with you.  The following is not meant to cover every beat of every session I attended, but simply a highlight of memorable moments and tools.

Wednesday, March 4
Last month, I had the pleasure of visiting Thomas Nelson High School and learning about their fantastic school culture and staff-wide deep use of Google Drive from Wes Bradley (principal) and Heather Warrell.  (It tells you a lot about Heather and TNHS when you find out her title is "Vice Principal of School Culture and Instruction.")   On KySTE's opening day, Heather had a session about the various innovations of her school. Although I already knew many of the technical ways TNHS is excelling and impacting learning, I still learned new facets at Heather's session.  For example, when the school opened three years ago, they decided not to buy any filing cabinets for teacher classrooms.  The reason was twofold: to encourage teachers to start fresh and not use the same lesson plans from years ago, and to embrace Google Drive as a digital repository, sharing and creation space.  (The integrated use of Google Drive at TNHS is remarkably dense; to take just one example, teachers create lesson plans in Google Slides saved in department shared folders, which can be commented on and viewed in real time by administrators, and are actually presented by the teachers to classes of students for "Scholar Starters," share agendas, and a guide through the day's activities.)   Heather and Wes encourage their staff to #flycloser to the sun -- to dare to dream and not be afraid of lofty goals.  Their academic performance reflects their passion; their composite ACT average has grown from 18.6 to 20.9 in just three years. But their culture is more than scores.  Every Friday they take time at a faculty meeting to celebrate staff accomplishments for the week; college acceptance letters adorn hallways; astronaut pictures (often with teachers' faces Photoshopped in) and aircraft carrier murals make the launching of learning obvious and inevitable.  In short, Thomas Nelson is a fantastic place and worth a visit if you can make it.  If you do, say hi to their purple cow!

Leslie Fisher shared new Web 2.0 tools.  I learned of a few sites I had not heard about before. Quizizz is a formative assessment tool that is similar in flashy style to Kahoot but with one important distinction: the question and answer choices are pushed directly to the device, so a projector is not necessary.   Publicly shared quizzes are available or you can create your own, and reports of student results can be exported.  Screenleap allows you to easily share your screen with others for free; students would only need your "share code" to see your broadcast. Educators can get up to 2 hours a day at no charge, but the free account is limited to sharing with 8 students at once.  (For $15 a month, you can broadcast up to 8 hours and share with 30 students.)

Leslie also pointed out that TodaysMeet now has "Teacher Tools" for $5 a month that puts teacher's posts in a chat room at the top (easier for students to see and follow), and allows password protected chats.

Bret Foster is the CIO of Anderson County, and he discussed the recent upgrades of the school libraries of his district.   (Read the Kentucky Teacher article about the county's renovations.) His goal is to make the library used by students all of the time.  Bret shared a tip to make more space: run a report on checkouts, and donate any books that have not been checked out in five years.  After one of his libraries did this report, they gave away 65% of their books!  Many of the upgrades were inexpensive, like making the tops of some tables dry erase boards by installing shower wall, and adding casters to table legs to make them easy to move for collaboration. In the future, the libraries plan to house their own Minecraft servers for students to locally and privately build their own virtual worlds.   Bret's session really made me think on how we use (and misuse) learning space.

Thursday, March 5
Well, there was this little snowstorm that happened.  Maybe you saw something about it on the news.  I was desperate not to miss sessions as well as scheduled to present one of my own, so I dug out the driveway and backed out into the street . . . where I immediately got stuck and needed neighbors just to push my car back into the garage.

So I tried to temper my disappointment by participating in the marathon 24 hours of #KyEdChat, a side event to the KySTE conference.  After being a participant, I was the moderator later that night on the topic of augmented reality tools, and I was very grateful for the co-moderation help of Jennifer Cox.  It was exhilarating, exhausting, and fun!  We were also extremely thankful that a separate group of Indiana educators joined us who usually use the hashtag #INeLearn.  The party responsible for reaching out across the river is Michelle Green, who was fantastic enough to archive our chat as a Storify here.


Friday, March 6
Half of my final day of KySTE was spent being a presenter.  First, I was able to host my augmented reality tools presentation after all, thanks to someone else having to cancel their session.  Secondly, I took part with a group (Tommy Hurt and Susie Burkhardt) to discuss Shelby County's tech initiative and how the construction of Southside Elementary fits our 21st century goals.

I also sat in on a session by KDE's Marty Park, who shared some of the basics of how to set up Google Apps for Education (GAFE) / Google Classroom with our network sign-in structures.  (For the slides and other resources from his sessions, Marty created a special page for KySTE 2015 on his website.)

Last but not least, what visit to KySTE would be complete without going to at least one session of Donnie Piercey, the Google certified educator and eminent Eminence educator?  He focused on tips and tricks of Google (a well as other useful sites) that were geared toward the K-5 crowd.  I encourage you to check out Donnie's Google doc with more, but here are my top five of his shares:

  • If you type an equation into Google's search box, you can not only get the answer, but an interactive calculator will appear.  (You can just Google "google calculator" as well.) Google can even recognize order of operations and do higher math functions like an area of a rectangle or plotting a line graph.
  • Do you have a class economy with cash, salaries, and jobs...but hate keeping up with the paperwork and the photocopied currency?  Mykidsbank.org can create a virtual economy for free for up to 50 students.
  • In a Google document, you can Insert > Image > Take a Snapshot and use your webcam to take a picture.  Donnie gave an example of students answering a math problem in a shared doc, but if you want them to "show their work," have them take a snapshot of their pencil-and-paper computations.
  • Peanut Gallery Films uses your spoken text and incorporates it as titles in a silent movie.  The final short film can be shared via URL.  Perhaps you can use it for teacher reminders (they would have more fun hearing about a project deadline if a movie is telling them), or for students to do short captures of their understanding ("What did you learn today?" "What was the key facts from today's content?").
  • I knew that Google was archiving thousands of newspapers for accessing online.  (Reminds me of my student days in high school when I went to the library to look at microfiche.)  However, I didn't know this trick: after you find an article, click on "Link to Article" on the right.  Next, click on a headline, and you will get a URL you can share that will take students straight to that newspaper article.





I look forward to KySTE 2016.  Except this time, there better be no snow.

If you attended KySTE this year, share your thoughts below in Comments!  What were some of your favorite sessions?  What new tool are you excited to try out?







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Monday, January 12, 2015

Game-Based Learning and Classcraft

One of the trends in education that is gaining popularity and has growing data to support its positive impact on students is game-based learning.  The concept is not completely new; many older graduates and teachers today have fond memories of Oregon Trail (which first began in 1978!).  The phrase "game-based learning" still makes some shudder, suggesting teachers are letting students play video games all day instead of utilizing real skills or learning content.  But just as "edtech for the sake of edtech" should't be done, I am not suggesting games alone are the key.  As always, it is the way the games are integrated into a classroom that can transform the educational experience:

  • Novel way of learning content.  Which one do you think would be more engaging -- a PowerPoint lecture about the Great Depression, or roleplaying as a young person on a Dust Bowl farm?
  • Immediate feedback and gratification.   By the nature of a typical classroom experience, we are all about the delayed gratification.  You study or research, apply yourself to an assessment or write your essay, turn it in...and wait, sometimes days or even weeks for a grade and feedback.  In a game, you know as soon as you try whether you succeed or fail.  And if you fail...
  • The power of a 1UP.  It's fascinating that the same young people who never want to revise a paper or "try again" are willing to sweat through a game level over and over until they defeat their big boss.  But the philosophy behind the way a teacher assesses and grades is also interesting to note here.  Is it right to only give students one chance with no "do-overs"?  In standards-based grading, reaching proficiency in various areas is a continual process of opportunity, not given only once on that Friday in September.  ("You failed the test, so you can never learn that skill.  Let's move on.")
  • The power of a "Leaderboard."  For many modern video games, there are virtual trophies you earn for achieving certain goals, called badges.  Of course, this leaderboard of badges can be shared socially with other gamers as a point of pride.  Although I used Edmodo my last few years of teaching, I regret not trying out their "badge" system in my own classroom. However, other teachers have totally embraced this approach with their own students (and not just with Edmodo!).
  • Cultivating creative and cooperative skills.  Last but not least, we shouldn't ignore the creative and cooperative juices that get flowing with games.  It takes intelligence to problem solve a riddle or determine when to use the right power at the right time.  To take one popular game example, "modding" in Minecraft is the pinnacle of creativity (and recently in our own backyard, a group of enthusiasts are creating the whole city of Louisville as a Minecraft map).  In team based endeavors, the virtual stakes are high to work together to achieve a goal where all will benefit.
If you still feel ambivalent about gamification of education, see if Jane McGonigal convinces you in her TED Talk that "gaming can make a better world."



In Shelby County, game-based learning is not completely uncommon.  For example, the elementary students periodically play Dreambox to learn math skills.  But a few months ago, I learned of a site for the first time that kinda blew my mind.  The site is Classcraft, and the teacher that told me about it was Tim Oltman from Martha Layne Collins High School.  Which is why Tim gets a well-deserved #ShelbyTUITshoutout!

Setting up an account in Classcraft is free.  Teachers first ask the students what kind of role they want for their character ( Mage, Fighter, or Healer) along with some limited customization of the character's looks.  The teacher then inputs the students and their character choices into Classcraft, grouping them in teams, and gives the students login information.  From that point on, Classcraft becomes something that quietly runs in the background until the teacher has an event occur where students can gain or lose experience points (XP) or health points (HP).  (These events can be customized by the teacher.)   There are also peer incentives to do well in class; for example, not turning in a homework assignment can affect everyone on your team. Over time students can earn class rewards or use XP to get upgrade armor, spells, etc. for their characters; this part is typically done outside of class.   Keep in mind that currently Classcraft is static.  There are no moving parts, no animation, no actual jumping/scrolling/fighting.   In a way, it's a much more glorified and clever system of digital badge delivery.

The following video gives a quick overview of what Classcraft is, how it came to be, and what it looks like:



I recently visited Mr. Oltman at MLC HS, and he was kind enough to submit to an interview.

Tell us about yourself!


Here at MLC I teach the Project Lead the Way engineering classes.  This will be my 4th year teaching.  I learned about integrating edtech in my college classes and enjoyed it because I have always been using technology plus it is a great fit with engineering classes.





How have you integrated Classcraft in your classroom?

In 3 of my classes I have Classcraft running in the background during class and as questions are answered I can quickly add experience points to the characters.  However, they get their main experience points after assignments are added to their characters.  The other advantage I have is we are already 1:1 in the engineering classes [each student always has a desktop computer], so they have their characters running in the background because they love to keep up with their experience points.  You could also do this with cell phones because there is an app also.

Sounds like the students enjoy Classcraft.   Do you think it has improved learning?  In what way?

The students love the game.  They come into class and ask to the daily spin [a random event generator] to see if they get anything that day.  They want to use their powers whenever they can.  It has improved learning because once again the students are more invested in their learning.  [The academic work in class results in rewards.] They can see something they are getting out of it.  The game allows you to alter many of the spells and achievements they get so you can alter the game to fit each of your classes. 

A student's character takes health point damage from a random event.  If the team has a Healer, however, they can recover quickly, adding to the cooperative nature of Classcraft.

In the "dashboard" of the teacher's account, Mr. Oltman surveys the state of the various teams in his class.


Before Classcraft, what did you think about gamification in education?  Had you tried any game-based learning before?  How has Classcraft and other tools changed your attitude toward gamification?

I have always loved the idea of gamification in education.  Being an avid gamer myself I have seen many ways games teach lessons in a way that can work for education.  I have never tried gamification before because I have been looking for the right game to integrate.


What other edtech tools are some of your favorites?

Other favorites I have is Canvas [a free Learning Management System] and of course our 3D printer.  I love Canvas because you can get everything on one place for the students and then let them submit assignments online.  It is also nice because I never have to answer the question what did we do yesterday because they know to go online and look for it.

Mr. Oltman's  first generation 3D printer.


Any advice you would like to share with other teachers wanting to integrate Classcraft into their classroom?

Integrate the game in one of your classes to start with.  It does take some time to get used to and definitely get the students involved in helping to design the game that way they are really part of it.  You will have some students who do not want to play to start with but after a week all of my students have gotten really involved in it.  Remember too you can make it a large part of your class or a small part depending on how the students take to it.


Thanks again to Tim for his interview and insights! How do you feel about using games in the classroom?  Do you already use gamification?  Please share in the Comments below.

 Update 1/23/15:  After publishing this entry, I saw a tweet (embedded below with a great infographic) that led me to a detailed article about the differences between gamification and game-based learning.  I realize now that I somewhat vaguely used these terms interchangeably, which is incorrect.   So please check out Steven Isaac's article on Inservice ASCD.



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