Reviewing Content with Shiny Bosses

By far, the greatest successful addition to my game this year was the Boss Battles. Piloted at the end of last year, and fully implemented this year, I've even had students present this form of testing during Student Exhibition Nights. This boggles my mind since the Boss Battles are in reality nothing more than the normal tests and quizzes I would normally have, but as we all know, beating the Boss, and even better, adding each to our collection of "perfect bosses", is so much better than simply taking a test.

My boss battles have undergone a couple of minor tweaks over the course of the year, with the addition of the first hit and first perfect hit, and Google Sheet's new (to me) shuffle question order, but other than that they have remained the same as when I first created them. 

With CASP dates approaching, I started to think about pulling questions from this already created "bank" of questions to create new battles for review. However, I did not love this idea simply because, I did not think this far along in the school year when I set up the individual student sheets, and thus did not leave myself extra places for more than a couple extra bosses. The other issue I had was that each unit is tied to a race of aliens we encounter through our narrative so it would not make much sense for a "robot" boss (matter) to suddenly ask questions about earth systems, for example. 

I was pondering this one morning while on my daily Pokemon Go walk (yes, I still play) when the idea to make shiny bosses came. If you are unfamiliar with the term, a shiny Pokemon is a variant of a regular Pokemon that has a slightly different coloration. It does not give anything new out nor does it have any special attacks, it is simply different. So I set about trying to figure out how to make that happen without having to recreate (copy) a multitude of forms and sheets and do a bunch of work with changing cell references in my evergrowing leaderboard. Most importantly, I did not want to touch the student ranking sheets. So here goes - Fullscreen link

If you are presenting the shiny boss battles as a stand-alone thing for review, you are done, but if like me, you were already pulling data into your leaderboard, you will need to make some other adjustments. 

 As with most of the gamification set-up tasks, the joy for you may be in creating the first shiny boss, and the rest of the process may become tedious, but remember, once done you do not have to do anything other than enjoy your students as they confront the shiny boss. As you see below, the figuring things out ends up being done by Google Sheets so there is no time wasted in looking up individual students to see if they got the shiny boss or not.

What do you think? Any other ideas to make review a part of your game or narrative? I'd love to hear about them.

Beat the Teacher - Back to School Edition

On many occasions during the game-based learning and gamification Tweeter chats I participate in, we've talked about game skins (#games4ed, #XPLAP). For those of you that may be unfamiliar with the term, a game skin is a cosmetic change to a game that does not change the basic gameplay. Much like what I shared when I talked about my FLUXX Mod project, or what @MrPowley shared in his Skin in the Game post the idea is not to create a new game from scratch, but simply to change the topic of the game adapting it to specific situations.

As I was going through my collection of board games thinking about what I could do to start the 2018/2019 school year I happened upon the Spin Master game called "Beat the Parents". As I remembered, the gameplay was pretty easy, but being a full-on trivia game it did not make my family's game-night rotation too often. However, after dusting it off, I figured that it would be perfect to mod as a Back to School game, giving my class the opportunity to review expectations, policies, procedures, and locations of classroom items, while allowing me to get to know my student's trivia and preferences.


Thus, I started by creating the board (click to open the file), which I plan to project to the class, using post-its as tokens (mover pieces) so that the whole class can play at once.
Normally, I would have created and laminated the necessary cards, but I decided against it for this skin since I want the students to come up with their individual "getting to know you" trivia questions. The plan is to provide each student in my 5 periods with a couple of index cards where they can write questions like "What is my (the student's) preferred nickname?", "How many siblings do I have?" or "What is my preferred sport/book/content area?", really anything that would be traditionally asked in a student interest survey. On the other hand, I prepared a file with the teacher questions that are specific to my class (sharing to give you ideas in case you also want to try this out).

Since I was not going to create physical cards, I then had to figure out a way to create digital wild-cards. These became the numbers 1-20 at the top and bottom of the board you see above, and the plan is that when we land on a wild card, I will roll a 20 sided dice and click on the corresponding card. The wild cards linked on the board are simply links to individual slides in this slide deck.

I tried to make the wildcards somewhat generic, but if you find that they are too specific or you are interested in creating your own set, just remember that you can obtain the links to individual slides in any slide deck as explained here.

The gameplay itself is exactly as the original (Beat the Parents instructions), except that there will always be only one question per turn (in the original there are up to three). The game is so easy to play that once you have the board, you can have students create questions for a topic at any point during the school year for an impromptu review and quick game of Beat the Teacher.

While I am certain that the students will beat me when I present this as part of my getting to know you activities, before knowing the new students very well or at all, I think they will get a kick out of beating the teacher, and who knows, maybe I'll surprise them.

Appsmash your narrative

One of the biggest struggles I've had in the whole gamification business has been the narrative aspect of the gamified classroom. As many before me have suggested, a good narrative engages the students and helps drive the game forward. (The importance of narrative in the student-centered classroom - Adam Powley). The narrative gives meaning to the whole idea of why we are collecting points and/or struggling to reach the top of a leaderboard.

As my games have evolved through the years, I've used different themes and attempts at narratives. We've trained dragons, explored idyllic islands and even survived a zombie apocalypse, however, in all of these my narrative has been a secondary consideration, mainly due to not having figured out a way to deliver that narrative consistently. In fact, it was not until the end of the zombie apocalypse (last year) that I re-discovered the mini-videos I had created to accompany the original narrative. In the day to day business of teaching they had been left behind and by then my students had lost interest in the story they had pushed for when we started. They saw the leaderboard and acquisition of privileges as the only end goal of the game, and though this was enough for some of them, for others it became nothing more than "regular" school with a few bells added.

In an effort to remedy this, I started looking for ways to have everything I needed to move the story forward from the beginning. Now, this meant that I needed not only a changeable storyline, a place to hold everything, and a way to hold myself accountable (lest I forget again) but at the same time keep the story hidden from students with enough crumbs so that if I did forget they would ask about it.

The changeable storyline was easy. I had already decided that we would be space explorers giving me the ability to add or remove planets to explore through the different units I teach. Star Trek and its "continuing mission" being the obvious choice for this. You land on a planet, meet a new civilization perhaps capture a couple of aliens in our Boss Battles, and on to the next one. Best part, you can always revisit a planet or remain there longer if needed. With this in mind, and using LunaPic (as illustrated by Mr. Powley in his ClassroomPowerUps blog), I started a Google slide deck to house the complete story. Each slide is a mission log, has a quick recap of events and hints at what's coming next as the ship moves through its assigned sector. The idea is that it would read like a serial comic book of sorts (or like the logs entered by the different captains in the series).

I was busy with this for a few days, but the main issue remained... How could I publish only the portions of the story that have been visited ("the story o far") while letting the students know that there is more to come. After much Googling, I found that there is no easy way to password protect only portions of a slide deck, there are many ways to prevent people from editing, but not from moving forward on a deck. That being the case, I transformed a slide into a Google drawing, and that was strike two. Not only can you not directly password protect the drawing, you cannot open it directly when published to the web, it will always be a download. Not being one to give up, I finally came across a handy tutorial appropriately called "How to Password Protect ANY File in Google Drive" from Flipped Classroom Tutorials, which uses Google Forms' response validation to ask for a password and deliver a link if correct. Although using this, I still had to have individual artifacts for each part of the story, at least now I could hide them in plain sight.

As it usually happens, I got distracted with something else and left this alone for a few days, as the back of my head considered where to house all of this in a way that would be consistent with the space narrative. I considered places like Deck Toys or Symbaloo's Learning Paths which would give this a "gamy" look, but I wanted an even more engaging feel to it that would also not require students to log in to read the logs (other than what they already had with Google). Serendipitously, I came across Roberto Fantini's VR Tour "Space conquest" on Thinglink 360. Now, if you've read my posts before you know that I avoid using paid for stuff, but I have Thinglink premium already so I took it as a sign that this should be an avenue to explore. So I finished up most of the narrative for one grade level (still debating whether we will come back to earth or not) and "remixed" the image to come up with this:

The first "hidden" part of the narrative is item 3, and in case you would like to see the story the passwords are:
3) hydrogen
4) lithium
5) sodium
6) potassium
7) rubidium
8) cesium
9) francium
10) beryllium

The added benefit of this is that I can also add Easter Eggs and links to directed side quests to the narrative slides, or add elements to the story as needed, which gives me the flexibility I was looking for in my narrative.

I am happy with this solution, but wonder whether there is a less time-intensive or totally free way. If you've found it, please share. In the meantime, I' still have to do this for three other grade levels :)

Individual Rank Sheets - Google Sheets to the Rescue

Over the last couple of years, as my game has grown, so has my need to add elements that improve the sharing of ranks, perks, and standings with my students. Up until now, I have published our leaderboard two ways:

• a "combined" leaderboard that displays the Top 15 students among all 170 of them.
• each grade level gets their own, which ranks all 34 students for that particular class.

I also publish a Badge Sheet for each class, where students can go and see which of the badges they have earned. All of this already populates automatically from the "master leaderboard" I shared a while back (Leaderboard and Badging with Google Sheets).

This works well to inform the students of their standings. However, it requires that students navigate between several web pages and do some scrolling, often complaining about not "finding themselves" within the data. I also often worry about the students who are at the bottom of the leaderboard since these placements within the ranks are public to all my students. As I pondered these problems, I also thought about a way to give students some control about what information is shared with all and what is "just for each one".

In searching for an answer, I came across two blog posts that should be mentioned as the inspiration for the sheets I came up with, @MrMatera's "Standards Based Grading Gamified and Googled" and @MrPowley's "XP Grading: Video Blog". As always, these two masters of the gamified classroom had already come up with solutions that better informed the students of their progress - The Individual XP Sheet. With a name in hand, and knowing that it was possible to share individually with students, I set about creating one that made sense for my classroom, using a combination of IMPORTRANGE and conditional formatting so that everything would auto-populate without me having to open up a whole bunch of individual sheets. Remember I have 170 individual sheets to maintain.

Just like in the VLookup post I published a few days ago, I would love to simply give you a template to use tomorrow. Unfortunately, even if you use what I share in the set-up procedure that follows, the references for the cells will need to change as soon as you create a copy.

Before I go into explaining the set-up and scare you (it is time-consuming, but you only have to do it once!), let me show you the magic. In the following mini-video you see my leaderboard, my "Teacher Master Sheet" spreadsheet, and a Student Individual XP Sheet

Now that you've seen it in action, let me explain what to do to set this up. It all starts with the Leaderboard, where I need to be very consistent in the placement of the information, especially student names and Emails so that things do not become complicated down the line. In order to accomplish this, the first three columns on the Leaderboard sheet are the only ones where I actually type names and e-mails. The first three columns (A:C) in every other sheet on the leaderboard, where I will type in or import scores, get:

=arrayformula(index(Leaderboard!A3:C36))

With that in place, it is time to create the Teacher Master  Sheet template. I created mine using Alice Keeler's TemplateTab so I would not have to duplicate each student tab myself. If you open the Teacher Master  Sheet template, you will notice that it includes 4 tabs instead of Alice's 2. The Heraldry and Standing tabs, which are imported from the Leaderboard using TRANSPOSE(IMPORTRANGE) and IMPORTRANGE respectively, were necessary for my purposes since I wanted to display elements of both but limit the delay it could cause as I was importing the other elements.

The mini-leaderboard is set to always display the owner student in the middle and two students above and below. It combines some manipulation of conditional formatting and If- Match statements in order to not get errors when the student is at the top or bottom of the class leaderboard. This is why I had to add the Standing sheet.

Once my template was done, I used IMPORTRANGE to add the names to the roster and ran Alice's TemplateTab script. Since I ran the script after I had added the Heraldry and Standing sheets I ended up with a couple of sheets that were mislabeled. If this happens to you, simply discard them and/or duplicate and rename what you need. You will only run the script once for each Teacher Master sheet.

Then comes the onerous task of referencing each of the correct cells from the Leaderboard, as C3 will need to become C4 and D3 will become D4, etc. I wish there was some way to automate this, but I have yet to find it. However, it more painstaking than anything else, and just like the script, I only need to do this for the set-up, and never again. I opened the leaderboard, and for each name, I found the row where it was located and changed the numbers accordingly.

Once I had finished all of them and had the Teacher Master (sharing one where all the numbers have been changed for 34 students, though if you use it you would need to change the leaderboard reference), it is time to create the individual sheets. One would think that you can just open up a spreadsheet and copy/paste, but that does not preserve the format that I painstakingly created, plus I want them to all update automatically, so instead there are a couple more steps.

To preserve the formatting, I first created a new spreadsheet (I called it Student Template). Then I chose one of the student sheets in the Teacher Master. I clicked on the arrow next to the name and chose duplicate sheet. It asked where you want it, and of course, I selected Student Template. Once it is duplicated, I went to the Student Template and saw it had added a tab called Copy of "Name". I deleted Sheet 1, and instead of selecting and deleting the cells in Copy of "Name", I selected and cleared the cells. This preserves all formatting, including all conditional formatting.

Of course, since the referenced sheets were no longer there, it looked like there was an error, but I knew what the final step was...

I made a copy of the Student Template, renaming it with the correct name for my first student (Name 1 in the example), and went back to my trusty =IMPORTRANGE formula.

=IMPORTRANGE("URL of TeacherMaster","'Name 1'!A1:M14")

Notice that Name 1 includes single quotes, this is because the sheet name has a space between name and 1. This is not needed if there are no spaces in the Sheet Name.

After doing this final step 34 more times, I had my first complete set of Individual Student Sheets.

I use the same basic sheets for all my 5 classes, but I do have five leaderboards (where the badges differ) and also like to keep the Teacher Masters separate. This means that I had to change the leaderboard URL to create each of the Teacher Masters before running the Alice's TemplateTab script.

The last step is to share each Individual Student Sheet with the student "owner", which I accomplish the regular way (share, type e-mail, can view). 

Those individual links can also be added to a spreadsheet or blog post where names are sorted alphabetically and since only the student "owner" and myself have access, the risk of oversharing is minimized. Now, for those students that perhaps do want to share their badges or rank insignia, there is always the possibility of creating mini-sheets within their individual sheet. Using =arrayformula(index('Name of student sheet'!C2:E6)) you can select specific cells to share. If you publish just that mini-sheet to the web, students can then get the embed code and publish in their blogs or e-portfolios.

Assign XP automatically using Vlookup - Google Sheets

My last couple of posts ended with a question, "How can I give the XP generated by sidequests or Boss Battles automatically to students?" This is a key question in both instances because:

• In true gamification style, it is imperative that students' can instantly see their progress in ranks. The immediacy of the auto-updating of progress serves as a motivator, and there is nothing worse for my students to have to wait until I manually input the data.
• I really do not want to have to input values manually, it is time-consuming and prone to error, especially when you have multiple submissions by the same student.

Much like I ask my students to do when attempting to solve a problem, I first asked what is it exactly that I need. So in simplest terms, "I needed a way to have sheets look-up an e-mail (name) in one workbook (Boss Battle or side quest results) and input the value that accompanies it into another workbook (leaderboard). I set about finding the answer and after several attempts, I found the answer is a combination of Vlookup/import range combination. 

As much as I would love to provide you with a template that you can simply copy and start using, it is not as easy since the workbook and cell references need to be changed in order for this to work. What I can do is provide you with a skeleton and an explanation of what needs to be done. 

1. Have your leaderboard set up with the e-mail addresses of your students - e-mail is necessary since the other sheets will match the e-mails auto-collected in the corresponding forms. Here is the one I used to set this up. For a full explanation of how just the leaderboard works you may wish to visit "Leaderboard and Badging with Google Sheets".

2. Have your boss battle sheet(s), each set up with a pivot table that sorts the data by e-mail and "sum of score". I am sharing a blank one, just remember that this one is tied to a specific form. To recreate a boss battle sheet with your own question set, look at my post Boss Battles with Google Forms/Sheets. 

You can use the process I am describing with any form responses/quiz you create on Google sheets. What needs to be done is to have a form that collects e-mails automatically. Once you have your form responses sheet, add a pivot table. I remane mine "scores".

3. It is now time to connect both sheets. On your destination sheet, in this case the Mastery Quest sheet in my Leaderboard, add the following formula to the first cell where you would like your imported scores to appear.

=IFERROR(VLOOKUP(A2,IMPORTRANGE("1O5AhXP4qJhbcNbjzDOI7-trYDjSDBQtN4iA2MIDzfeo","scores!A3:B"),2,0), 0)

The big string (1O5AhXP4qJhbcNbjzDOI7-trYDjSDBQtN4iA2MIDzfeo), which must remain in quotations, is the URL for the sheet the scores are coming from.

Important to note:

• Depending on the sheets version you are using, you may first need to allow both sheets to connect. If you paste the formula and it does not seem to work, add =IMPORTRANGE("long sheet identifier","scores!A3:B"),  anywhere on the destination sheet. A little box will appear asking if you want to connect the sheets. Once they are connected, delete the formula. This is just to give it access.
• If you rename your Pivot Table anything other than scores at any time, you must manually change it in the formula.
• The 2 that shows after the parenthesis in your formula identifies the column where the data you want to bring is found. If you add any other values to your Pivot Table, or you rearrange them in any way, you must change this number to whatever number column your data is in.

4. Finally, it is just a matter of copying the formula down the column in your target sheet (in this case the leaderboard sheet). In order to accomplish this quickly, and to save you from the carpal tunnel syndrome that would inevitably arise from all that Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V, simply position yourself on the cell you want to copy down, and drag the little blue box that appears, down.

Once you have copied down the formula, it is a good idea to double check that the references changed correctly. 

When you are setting this up, all the values will be zero. The same is true if there is no Email match between the quiz/form and the destination sheet/leaderboard. This is helpful if you are running a boss battle or if you have absent students, as you can quickly see who has not done the work at all. However, once your students have submitted their quiz, your leaderboard scores will be auto-updated to reflect this "change".

 This same process would need to be repeated for each quiz/form you want to Vlookup, but really once you have done it a couple of times you will find that it is not as cumbersome as it seems. It simply boils down to creating a pivot table to aggregate your data, copying the Vlookup formula and changing the reference to the corresponding sheet. You can also modify it to assign XP only for max score changing that final column reference in the formula, or if you add another value column you could even use averages. Whatever makes the most sense for you and your students.

Also, it is important to note that you do not have to have a pivot table other than to summarize your data initially. For example, I use Alice Keeler's Rubrictab to grade my students' work. Using the same process described above, with the corresponding modifications to the references in the formula, I can have the roster sheet I create from her template each time I grade linked to my leaderboard.

=IFERROR(VLOOKUP(A2,IMPORTRANGE("1VVD83QukeZ6P3pMmpoJnxEt9cgg8tv2LnnirkM71Vso","roster!B2:E"),4,0), 0)

where

"1VVD83QukeZ6P3pMmpoJnxEt9cgg8tv2LnnirkM71Vso" is the workbook identifier

"roster!B2:E" is the sheet name and cell references (Email Address through Score)

4 is the number of the column where the score is found, starting the count from column B

For more ideas on the use of Vlookup, you may want to read Mr. Powley's post "The Magic of VLOOKUP: G.Sheets, Boss Fights, and Badges".

As always, if anything seems confusing or you have questions, leave a comment or drop me a Twitter question @MarianaGSerrato.

Boss Battles with Google Forms/Sheets

For a long time, I've been thinking about how to do more than just award experience points (XP) to my students who complete a mastery quest (quiz/test). I've been toying with the idea of making them a bit more interactive and wanted a way to show students how the Boss would lose hit points (HP) as they answered.

Adam Powley (@MrPowley) wrote a piece on Dreadsheets a few months ago, detailing his system, using a very elegant mix of Google sheets, group roles, and dice, kindly sharing all that is needed to implement his system. Make sure to read his post, as it is truly masterful.

His system works really well when you have all those elements in place, but I sadly am not there yet. However, this did not deter me from continuing my pursuit, so borrowing some of his ideas, but trimming it down to the game elements that I do have, I came up with a simpler version that works for me. Before I get down to the nitty-gritty, let me show you how it works.




These boss battles use the simple quiz version of Google Forms and its corresponding Form Responses spreadsheet. You can obtain the folder where I housed both here, though you may just need to make a copy of the Boss Battle Share (Responses).
Also, although I have deleted the data and created several copies, you may find that if you use a copy directly it still carries over some of the "extras". If this is the case, simply create your own Quiz as you would normally do, and once you have the corresponding Form Responses spreadsheet, add a Boss Battle sheet where you copy/paste everything that is included in cells A1:L16. If you do this, you will also need to create a new tachometer, which is a simple gauge chart; if you do not know how to do this, here are some instructions (Stop at slide 8 since you will not need to embed it anywhere else)

Elements of the Boss Battle Sheet (although embedded below, you may want to open the link if it is not quite as clear as you wish it to be.)

Finally, I set the quiz to automatically collect email adresses, release grade immediately after each submission, respondents can see missed questions, and, depending on what I want, either limit to one response or not. 

With all of this in place, it is just a matter of sharing your quiz with students, and displaying the Boss Battle sheet to the class using your projector and screen. As students complete the quiz and submit their responses, they can see the "damage" they inflicted on the boss, until eventually, they defeat it.

I usually provide individual XP after a boss battle like this one to encourage students to actively participate. The XP for each student can easily be obtained from the Form Responses sheet. Also, once the boss has been beaten, you can use the information from that same sheet to determine which questions were missed most often and/or sort it to find out how many responses each student submitted as well as their specific answers. 

Now, I do realize that one student can answer 50 times (simply memorizing answers), while another student can decide to not even try once. This can be somewhat deterred by limiting the number of responses so that the reluctant student has to answer in order for the whole class to beat the boss. You can also make use of the shuffle answers and the shuffle questions options on the form. This at least "forces" the students to re-read the questions and not just memorize answer placement. You could also make the quiz much longer (this 10 question quiz is just an example, with questions that are not particularly insightful). I do have to say that when I did the latter, making a 25 question quiz, my middle-schoolers complained that it was way too much. They like that relatively immediate "hit" and looking up to see the boss "transformation" 

I would love to hear what you think about all of this. 

_________________________________________________________________________________

I thought you may be interested to know what my students had to say about this format of "testing". I presented them with a 10 question and a 20 question format, and as you can see, their response was positive, although they all agreed that a shorter quiz was more engaging than a long one.

If you would like to know how to automatically add these scores to your leaderboard or grade book, I invite you to take a look at "Assign XP automatically using Vlookup - Google Sheets".

Side quests - with semi automated XP

If you are new to the idea of side quests, consider visiting Explore Like a Pirate and GamificationEDU.

The past few weeks I have been mulling over the idea of adding more sidequests to my game. Up until now, sidequests have been few and far between for a couple of reasons. The biggest hurdle is that I have felt that it is up to me to develop the side quest, complete with resources for the students, and this simply takes too much time. Another issue is that I honestly have never put in a system for awarding XP for sidequests, so whenever a student has actually completed one that I planned for we are both dissatisfied with the XP assigned. If this was not enough, I hate the idea of prepping all of this only to have one student actually complete the side quest that may have taken me days to craft. Yes, it is a me problem.

However, my gamification #PLN often mentions sidequests as a great way to engage students, and provide in-class time for struggling or less interested students to catch up, while more advanced students happily toil on the sidequests. This got me thinking about how I could shift more of the responsibility of side quests to students by providing a board of activities with some assigned XP for attempting/submitting, but still have the choice to add either XP or items on top of that if the end product warrants it. With that in mind, I turned to Westphal's "Differentiating Instruction with Menus", and the internet, and came up with a menu of 15 ideas that could be used as a sidequest. The menu includes a general side quest rubric and explains that the base XP value of a side quest type decreases the more times it is attempted. My motivation for placing this limitation is simply that I would rather a student attempt different avenues to explore the content and not fall into a routine of recreating the same thing for different concepts. The menu also includes a space for complete student choice for my more adventurous students.

With that hurdle taken care of, the issue of how to collect the work, keep track of who did what, avoid repeats and assign XP needed to be taken care of. I toyed with the idea of writing a Google Sheets script, but that is, at the moment, beyond me. What I came up with is a Google Form whose response sheet would:

1. Provide a place to submit the work (if the work is a physical product, the students will have to take a picture and submit that. I wanted to avoid the "I created a mobile and left it in your room, but there is no XP!"
2. Ensure that duplicates of a file are not counted for assigning base XP. (I have middle schoolers who are prone to clicking submit over and over in hopes of rigging the system)
3. Automatically count the number of times a specific side quest type has been submitted and assign base XP accordingly.
4. Automatically add up the XP a student receives.

This is the sheet/form I came up with, and you are welcome to make a copy of both. The folder and its contents are shared with anyone can view. To make a copy, click on file/make a copy for each of them, placing them in the same folder. Depending on your district's permissions you may be able to make a copy of the response sheet and have the option to create the form, or you may need to copy both and link them yourself.  For those of you that may need to recreate the form from scratch, I have included comments on each sheet explaining what it does and the formulas that are attached. Brief recap of how this works:

• FormResponses1: Is where the data from the form is collected, and the query to check for unique URLs is created.
• Unique: Counts the number of unique URLs and type of product by student e-mail.
• PivotCount: Creates a pivot table that adds the values for each product type.
• BasePoints: Uses the data from the pivot table to assign base XP values.
• BaseXP: Creates a pivot table that adds the base XP earned by each student e-mail

I am sure that there is a more elegant way of doing all of this, and I welcome any feedback or suggestions.  If you would like to know how to automatically add these scores to your leaderboard or grade book, I invite you to take a look at "Assign XP automatically using Vlookup - Google Sheets".

Easter Eggs with Mini-Game Creators

In recent conversations with my gamification PLN, the use of Easter Eggs has come up. As a non-videogame gamer, I was unfamiliar with the term. Doing some digging I came across this Storify of #XPLAP's chat published in @MrMatera's blog. With a little bit more knowledge, and after talking with my personal source of all things gamer (my teenage son), I was ready to think about some ways that I could create Easter Eggs within my hyperdocs and project pages.

Hiding the Easter eggs is relatively easy. In a hyperdoc, you can simply type whatever you wish (perhaps a reminder to yourself of the title of what you linked) and hide it by making the font the same color as the background. In a project page, Google Drawing or Google Slide, you can insert a shape and make both the lines and background transparent, of course linking the shape to the website that hosts the Easter Egg.

Once the issue of how to hide Easter Eggs had been resolved, the question became what to hide. Of course, you can hide Youtube or Edpuzzle videos, links to websites, simulations, interactive sites or documents for the students to read and interact with. However, in true gamer fashion, I like to hide mini-games that are specific to the content and/or vocabulary the students are learning. That is where the mini-game creators come in.

Sugarcane  

This site from IXL Learning,  offers the possibility to create 18 game types from one data set. This means that once you have your content, in the form of text and/or images, you can reuse it, getting a new link each time. It has the added benefit of providing the students with points at the end of a game, which I then just add to my students' XP total giving an immediate incentive for playing the mini-game.

LearningApps  

At first glance not as pretty as Sugarcane, but LearningApps gives you more/different mini-game options (20 total, including hangman, cloze, group puzzle and crossword). It also gives you several options to embed your mini-game in other platforms, which for some may be a plus.

ReviewGameZone 

Much like the now defunct Zondle, you are able to create multiple choice review question sets that appear as part of a mini-game. You can link to a specific game or you can give students the link to the question set and have them choose which mini-game to play. Their games do require Flash, so you may want to check that out before creating your Easter Egg with them. Also important to know, the site now runs one ad at the top of the screen, which may be non-negotiable in some settings.

Quizlet 

This site has been around for a long time, so it is easy to find ready-made question sets. On the flip side, they only have a couple of "gamy" options (match and gravity), and some of their functionality is restricted (adding images and voice) requires that you upgrade to a Teacher account (currently $2.92/month)

Now, what does this look like in the end? Below is an "assignment page" that includes three Easter Eggs. Can you find them?

Any thoughts to share about how to create Easter Eggs? Leave a note in the comments.

Game Based Learning in a Gamified Environment

In an effort to increase student engagement, gamification and game-based learning have been gaining traction in the education world for the past couple of years. Because of this, there have been some great blog posts that explain the difference between the two:

• Games vs Game-based Learning vs Gamification
• Game-Based Learning vs. Gamification: Do You Know the Difference?

There have even been some Twitter discussions about the merits of each, almost asking one to choose between the two as if there were mutually exclusive. Much like you Project Based Learning and Maker Ed are not the same thing, but can both occur at the same time in a classroom, you can have a game based delivery in a gamified environment. 

I've talked before about how I've gamified my classroom. If you are interested in how to add game elements to your delivery I invite you to visit my gamification page on this blog, and/or follow the gamification experts - @MatthewFarber, @mrmatera, @mpilakow, and @christibcollins.

If you are looking to find or create games to add to your game based arsenal, you may want to look into:

TeachersFirst's Game-Based Learning Resources

iCivics - specifically for Social Studies

Legends of Learning - specifically for Science

PhetColorado - math and science simulations

LearningApps and SugarCane - for those of you that are interested in creating your own mini-games

I also invite you to the weekly #xplap (Tuesdays at 7:00 PST) and #games4ed (Thursdays at 5 PST) Twitter chats. Both of these are super fun and informative and will put you in touch with the many other educators that are interested in bringing play into their classrooms.

Grades in the Gamified Classroom

https://twitter.com/mr_isaacs/status/885658805002018816

In a recent #games4ed conversation we were talking about gamified grading, and the two tweets above came up. This resonated with me for several reasons:

1. As I am sure it is true in most cases, at the end of the day (term, school year), I have to submit regular letter grades. 

2. I have been guilty of falling for the above-mentioned pointification, or simple substitution of traditional grading for an XP-like system and leaderboard. While the change did infuse some excitement in my classroom, the students quickly discovered that it was simply "a rose by another name" and rebelled accordingly - Gamification - Don't Fake It

Simply changing the grades to points does not change the student's mindset. At its core, gamified grading can be a visual representation of competency-based grading, which as Matt Townsley reminds us is different than standards-based grading.

"Competency Based Education is a system in which students move from one level of learning to the next based on their understanding of pre-determined competencies without regard to seat time, days, or hours.

In a competency-based system…

• Students advance to higher-level work and can earn credit at their own pace. (In a building, district, or classroom using a standards-based grading philosophy, this is not necessarily the case. Students are likely required to complete x number of hours of seat time in order to earn credit for the course.)
• Learning expands beyond the classroom. This may or may not take place in a standards-based grading philosophy. For example, in a competency-based system, a student who learns a lot about woodworking over the summer may earn credit when he or she returns to school the next year. Similarly, students are encouraged to learn outside the classroom so that they can demonstrate competencies at their own, rapid rate.
• Teachers assess skills or concepts in multiple contexts and multiple ways. (This may or may not be the case in a standards-based grading classroom; however, it is non-negotiable in competency-based education.)"

How does this translate to a gamified environment?

1. Explicit criteria and targets are made available to students ahead of time. The students in a gamified classroom know exactly what it takes to "defeat the boss" (AKA demonstrate mastery). Basically, everything is assessed using rubrics. The rubrics are created using objective measures, provide actionable feedback and are presented in kid-friendly language. 

2. There are multiple opportunities to gain XP (practice the standards). Every piece of work submitted results in XP, even incomplete or half-correct work! Let's think about this from the gamer standpoint. A player going through the third level of Mario falls and must restart the level. The XP he gained does not go away, and he/she will try the level again using what he/she learned from the previous attempt in order to pass the checkpoint and proceed to the next level. This cycle continues throughout the game. This is also true in the gamified classroom. That half-correct work is re-done based on the feedback, resubmitted for a new assessment and opportunity to gain more XP.

3. Some may demonstrate mastery on their first attempt earning a set amount of XP and perhaps a badge that shows the students (and community) that mastery of the standard has been achieved. This does not mean that the "learning is done". The student can then go on a side quest to earn even more XP and continue to level up within that standard. While this is happening other students are re-working/adding to their work and even going through the same side quest that the "masters" are completing, practicing the standard until they have collected enough evidence of mastery and the total amount of XP available for the standard is achieved.

All of this made public to my students on the leaderboard. But what happens at the end of the week, when I am contractually obligated to publish at least one new grade in the grade book? For that, I choose the most recent evidence of learning. This means that what goes in is not the same piece for all, but rather the individual piece of work that illustrates the learning from that particular student for that week. So, for example, the student that demonstrated mastery on week one and decided to sit back and relax on week two may, in fact, receive a failing grade for the week (no evidence of learning), while the student that has not shown mastery could be receiving an A. 

I know that this system is not perfect, and there is a possibility of inflated grades. Have you found a different solution? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Leaderboard and Badging with Google Sheets

Many of us in the gamified education game have toyed with different leaderboards and badging systems over the years. I've often dreamed of having a system that does the tracking of XP, badges, and items automatically as I input scores, without having to navigate between spreadsheets copy/pasting data from one to the other. This dream also includes the ability to change ranking and badging systems relatively quickly so that if my students become bored with something I do not have to start from scratch each time. As I've kept toying with this idea, I've been discovering some new tricks on spreadsheets that have allowed me to come up with a template of sorts.

I invite you to make your own copy of the template before I explain what is happening in each sheet. Doing so will allow you to follow along and make changes so that by the end of this post you have your own working copy.

Leaderboard and Badging Template

Leaderboard Sheet

Displays all names, ranks, total XP and badges earned by the students. The names and last names are carried over to all other sheets, so any changes you make there will be present in all other sheets. Inversely, it populates the data and images from the other sheets, so changes made in other sheets will display on the Leaderboard sheet without you needing to make any adjustments to it. This is the only sheet I share with the students.

Ranking Sheet

This is a pivot table created from the data on the Leaderboard sheet. If you are using the template, you do not need to do anything to it, but I am sharing a video that explains how to create one in case you are interested.

Heraldry Sheet

In this sheet, I include the images and points needed for each of the 11 ranks I have in my game this year. If you want to change the image to something else, you will need to have the URL for the image you want to display. Simply substitute that URL within the =image("URL goes here, inside the quotations") formulas found in cells A2-A12. Changing those URLs will automatically change the images on the leaderboard page. Same goes for changes in the name and the min and max XP for each rank, allowing you to quickly change the theme of your ranks as well as make adjustments to your ranking when you find that the range of points for a rank is too wide or too narrow.

Badges Sheet

Much like the heraldry sheet, this sheet contains the images and descriptors for each of the badges I have for this class. Any changes in name or image for the badge are reflected on the Leaderboard sheet. Just like in the Heraldry sheet, to substitute the badge image change the URL of the image to one of your liking within the quotations of the =image("URL") function. All of my badges were created using Google Draw as explained by Alice Keeler in this blog post.

XP Sheets - (Blogs, PBL quests, Mastery Quests, Repeat Assignment)

These are the sheets where I input the XP. Although I could have done this on just one sheet, I prefer to have the different sheets in order to organize the data. The names in all of them are populated from the leaderboard, and the total values calculated in each sheet, populated back into the hidden columns (F-J) on the Leaderboard and added into column E. Changing the names of the sheets will not affect the Leaderboard calculations nor the ranking sheet. The "magic happens" on the cells with a grey background so those are the ones that should not be touched directly.

Badge Tally Sheet

This is the sheet where the badges are "awarded".  You can award the badges "manually" by entering the scores directly, or you can pull those scores from the sheets and manipulating them using the different formulas you see on the sheet. The names for the badges come from the Badges sheet, making it easy to keep everything organized.

Right now, I am toying with adding an Items sheet that will work much like the Badges sheet, and I will share that with you as soon as I am done. If there is anything that does not work, or you find confusing drop me a note in the comment section. I'll gladly help you figure it out.