Experience Points for Student Goal Setting

A couple of days ago, I posted about using forms and sheets for student reflections. As I was pushing it out to students, I started thinking about how to make it easy for me to assign XP and leveled badges for its use. Ideally, I would have some sort of automation that:

1. Allowed me to see students' latest goal without having to open each individual spreadsheet, and
2. Assigned XP and badges automatically.

Students latest goals:

I created a new spreadsheet, copy pasted my roster in column A, and used the importrange formula to bring the timestamp and goal from each individual grade reflection Goal sheet. For example:

=IMPORTRANGE("https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/180ZOz9vkPq20ZDKy3KJUN--gVpWP6TABFKzk-hSxW5Q/edit#gid=168726689", "Goals!$A$3:$B$3")

Where:

•  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/180ZOz9vkPq20ZDKy3KJUN--gVpWP6TABFKzk-hSxW5Q/edit#gid=168726689" is the URL of the individual grade sheet
• Goals is the name of the sheet I am bringing over
• $A$3:$B$3 is the cell reference for time stamp and goal

Painstaking in that you do have to change each cell reference, but you only have to do this during set up. It is worth noting that when you do this the first time, you will probably get an error telling you that you need to grant permission. Just click on the cell and allow access. Also note that the sorting by timestamp was already done in their individual sheets as explained under Form Responses 2 in my previous post.

Automatically assign XP for goals

This portion of the post assumes that you are already using spreadsheets to house your leaderboard, and works with any version you may have created. If you are looking for one, I offer mine, Mr. Matera's or Mr. Powley's.

As we all know, the faster XP are show/given out, the better. This posed a problem for the assigning of XP for this activity since nothing would replace the student/teacher conferencing about their goals or the student actually reflecting on them. However, I figured that if I could at least give out points and badges for some measure of completion, I could always go back and make time for those conversations. As I toyed with how to do this, I thought about making sure that some specific words were included, but quickly gave up on that simply because my list of possibilities grew rather quickly. I settled instead for a simple word count and figured that 30 words at a minimum per goal are sufficient. Letting Google spreadsheets do the work for me, I added a hidden spreadsheet to the grade reflection spreadsheet template I shared before. When you make your own copy of that document, simply unhide it

As displayed when unhidden, this sheet is simply the place where the counting and calculation of XP happens and can be modified to suit your needs.

With that in place, it is back to the leaderboard page, where you would need to decide where you would like to maintain the information and when to assign badges. 

The formula used to bring the XP from the student grade reflection sheet to the corresponding cell in your leaderboard is:

=IMPORTRANGE("https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/180ZOz9vkPq20ZDKy3KJUN--gVpWP6TABFKzk-hSxW5Q/edit#gid=168726689", "Wordcount!C2")

As before, each spreadsheet reference is unique to the student grade reflection sheet, so it needs to be manually changed and the spreadsheets need to be linked.

Finally, the awarding of badges is done using the techniques described in my Leaderboard and Badges post, using a conditional formula that awards badges according to the total points accumulated from the word count.

And the badges are displayed on the individual student sheets which feed from the leaderboard as explained in this post.

In an ideal world, the badges would only be assigned if the student actually met the goal they set for themselves, but that is a conundrum that I have yet to solve. Perhaps you have some ideas?

Reflective Students with Google Forms and Sheets

It is the end of the semester, and like most teachers, my colleagues and I are currently under the barrage of with last minute regrade requests that should have been taken care of months ago. Like you, we published grades in our LMS as assignments were due, and the students received feedback with full knowledge that their grades are fluid. We have been encouraging them to take action on the feedback, make corrections, additions, etc. We have had individual conferences, sent e-mails, and clarified, but still, some of them are surprised when they finally log on to look at their grades, and the inevitable "What can I do?" question pops up. At this point, the reply is, "Go do what I've been asking you to do all along."

As we pondered this in our last PLC meeting, we figured that one of the issues our students have is that not only are they not looking at our LMS consistently, they are not opening the rubrics and comments left on their assignments. By the same token, they are not thinking about the work habits they are cultivating and forget about any type of goal setting related to their work or performance. The question then became, how can we set up a routine that will allow our students to do all of this consistently.

@judyzaccheo shared her use of Sown to Grow, a platform whose goal is to "Empower students to set goals, reflect on strategies, and learn how to learn.". While it looks awesome and an easy way to address these issues, if you have been here before, you know that:

1. I do not have the funds to pay for stuff like that ( even if it is inexpensive), and 

2. I do not like to use platforms that cannot "move" with the students. (I like to use things that my students can keep using even after they have left my class).

So, I spent the last few days coming up with a solution, and along the way, I learned some things about how to allow anyone to make a copy of a Google form, automatically sort form responses by timestamp so that the latest shows on top, and forgo creating charts within a spreadsheet using a sparkline instead. 

Before we get into the how-to, let me show you the final product.

We start off with a traditional Google form. The form is divided into sections that allow students to input their grades for each subject, discuss what made them successful (or not) in each class, and set a goal for the next week.

This feeds into a spreadsheet that then organizes the information so that the latest goal and information is at the top.  I figured that if we are doing this every week and things populated at the bottom, the students would never scroll down to find the latest entry. This is also why I needed the "Goals" sheet as the landing sheet. They need to see, front and center what they said they were going to do.

Finally the "Content Area" sheets, where students can see their grade trends, and notice when their grade changed, and the work habits that led to those grades.

Hopefully, you are still with me as I share just how to do this. First off, I started with the creation of a Folder with "Anyone with the link can view" permissions that would house both the master spreadsheet and form. This step is important when sharing the forced copy of the form.

Copy of a Google Form. 

In the past, I've shared copies with teachers by simply having them create copies of the spreadsheet linked to it. I tried to do the same with the students, first by making them copies in Google classroom and when that didn't work forcing a copy of a link I sent them. For some reason, this does not work when working with student accounts! Even when the Form button appears, once students click on it ends up creating a blank form. Yup, you guessed it, spent a class period with my pilot class trying to troubleshoot with them and then the bell rang... After some digging that still did not explain why it would not work, I came across Mrs. Drasby's post. Following her instructions, I was able to create a link that would force that copy of the actual form for my students. That was all fine, but now I had to walk my students through recreating the spreadsheet with all that sorting and tabs that I had painstakingly created.

Copy of the Spreadsheet 

While some of my students would jump at the idea of working with the different formulas and conditional formatting that make the spreadsheet work, I know that for many it would end up in frustration and me running around "fixing" it. So instead I created instructions that would allow the students to copy each of the sheets from my master with minimal possibility of error. 

Note, these start off with the copying of the form. Once the students had their personal forms and sheets, it was simply a matter of having them submit their sheets to me in Google classroom so I would have them all for an easy looking into.

How the spreadsheet works

While I have shared my form, spreadsheet and instructions in this folder for you to use "as is", I am under no illusion that it suits your needs perfectly. So a little explanation that would allow you to recreate or modify is in order. I do recommend that when you make your own copies, you house them in a folder with "Anyone with the link can view" permissions to ensure that you do not run into problems when students copy your form. Anyway...

Form Responses 1

This is simply the sheet created by the form. Notice the purple box indicating that it is linked.

Form Responses 2

This sheet sorts the responses from Form Responses 1 in ascending order. The only thing it actually contains is this formula in cell A1.

=sort('Form Responses 1'!A:O, 1,0)

If your form has more or fewer cells than A:O, simply change the cell reference.

Goals sheet

This sheet brings up the responses from the Goals column from the sorted Forms Responses 2, using

=ARRAYFORMULA('Form Responses 2'!A1:A) in cell A2 to bring up the timestamp in column A

=ARRAYFORMULA('Form Responses 2'!O:O) in cell B2 to bring up the goals typed in from column O

Column B has a set of conditional formatting color-coding the responses when they include the content area names. Here the idea was that students can look at how frequently they make a goal for a specific class and reflect on whether they are meeting their goal or not.

Content Area Sheets

Bring up the grades reported for each class to its corresponding sheet along with the "what made you successful or not answer. In each, the only thing that changes is the cell references. 

=ARRAYFORMULA('Form Responses 2'!A1:A) in cell A2 to bring up the timestamp in column A

=ARRAYFORMULA('Form Responses 2'!H:I) in cell B2 to bring up the grade and comment, which have adjoining columns, in this case, cells from column H and I. 

Column B in these sheets has conditional formatting as a visual for students to notice when their grades for a class dip or move up and reflect on the habits that took them there.

Finally, these sheets also contain a sparkline formula that creates the added "graph":

I toyed with the idea of adding an actual chart, which you could still do. Since it was really an added visual to show quick trends I opted for a sparkline. The one I used is

=SPARKLINE(B3:B, {"charttype","column"; "axis", true; "axiscolor", "red"}) - Using the information now housed in column B, but you could change it up with any of the other versions found in this support article from Google.

Using this with students

I basically just rolled this out a couple of days ago. The intention is that students will input answers in their forms weekly, during class time, giving them a moment to stop and reflect on how they are doing. I know, from the examples submitted that we definitely have work to do in the goal-setting department, but my hope is that with instruction, consistency, and practice we will finally get rid of those last minute "What can I do to bring my grade up?" requests. I am also thinking that it is a great resource to have at parent conferences and SSTs. It even helps address ISTE standard for students 1a "Students articulate and set personal learning goals, develop strategies leveraging technology to achieve them and reflect on the learning process itself to improve learning outcomes".

What do you think?

Collaborative Annotations Using Scrible

Book annotation 2 by Katherine Stone

As many of you may have experienced in your own educational journey, at some point I was taught about annotating what I read. The mighty highlighter made its appearance in every school supply list my mother received, and much like you see above, I gleefully used it to mark pretty much everything I was allowed to. As the years progressed the highlighter slowly disappeared and the annotations instead made heavy use of the marvel of Post-Its which gave me the advantage of being able to write something along the text and not simply marking things that my young self considered "important".

At some point in my career as an educator, I was introduced to the idea of close reading, and with it came a whole new way of marking text that I was expected to teach my students. Colors and specific markings were the norm and while I am not against close reading or increasing student understanding of text (What is annotating and why is it an essential skill to close reading?), the idea of having my students have to follow a specific format and key made it seem more like busy work, akin to my highlighter overuse.

The questions I asked myself throughout the close reading professional development were:

• After all of this, will the student ever go back and use all those notes for something other than answering a couple of questions? 
• Will they ever remember that that particular document had some important notes that could be used later for something else? 
• What about all the reading we now do online? Am I really going to print out all their research so they can use this?
• What about using collaborative close reading, especially in my PBL classroom where students are often reading a relatively dense scientific text? Shouldn't there be a way for students to close read together?

All of these questions can be answered with just one "magical" digital annotation tool -  Scrible. Let me explain...

A couple of years ago, I developed a project for my 6th graders on Climate Change. The idea was that the students would choose a topic from a list, interact with several digital resources from places like the EPA and the NCA and collaboratively develop a product to educate others about the impact of climate change. Par for the course, except that many of them were overwhelmed by the amount of reading and synthesizing they had to do. Add to that that they had to share their thoughts on the reading with each other and organize all of the information and ideas into one cohesive product, all the hallmarks of chaos leading to disengagement.  That is when Scrible, a free tool, makes its entrance.

Scrible makes the possibility of collaborative digital annotations a reality! The only thing students have to do is create an account (using their district e-mail). Once that is done, a student can use the tool on any webpage sharing their thoughts right next to the text they highlight. If they create and share a permalink, they can also annotate collaboratively, which means other students can join a conversation about that digital text; this can take the form of questions, responses, comments and even links to other corroborating sources.

At first, students used the tool simply to remind themselves of the information, stating simply that "this information is important". However, as they progressed, and with some prodding on my part (adding cryptic replies such as "why?"), they started adding a more thorough commentary, and even inserting links that corroborated what they were reading. These annotations then allowed them not only to record their thinking but also to organize their thoughts in preparation for their project work. They served as reminders of key concepts and lateral readings they had done as they interacted with the resources. Since they were sharing the reading and annotating load, all the students were happy to add to what was being said instead of that solo "this is too much" mentality that we had before the use of the tool.

What is even more perfect, is that as long as you are logged on, the tool will keep track of the web pages you have visited and their annotations. This came into play for us when the students used pages they had annotated for the climate change project several months after the fact to support some of their building choices in their disaster-proof housing project during our human impacts unit. 

However, the best indication that the tool worked for my students was when I discovered it being used, without prompting, by former students. When I asked them why, they shared that it made their work easier since they could talk to each other about what they were reading, saving them time and allowing for everyone to join even if they were not in the same room. That, in itself, is a win for me.

There are a couple of Scrible tutorials on Youtube in case you need help signing up and using it:

It is worth noting that you can use Scrible on pdf's and "published to the web" Google documents, saving you the time and cost of printing resources you may already have to share with students.

I invite you to start playing with Scrible and share a comment telling us how it went. Until next time.

The "Once a Zero - Always a Zero" policy as a first step

First Step by Porapak Apichodilok 

Every year at this time, I get pushback from many of my educator friends and the parents of my students for AdVENTURE's "Once a Zero-Always a Zero" policy. I hear cries of "how is a student able to recover from this demotivating policy", "this sets up kids for failure" and "this policy promotes a fixed mindset". It seems that I am alone in this world of "First Attempt At Learning" mentality. The adults hear "zero" and appear to stop listening to how the policy is actually implemented.

What is very interesting is that I do not hear the same cries from the students sitting in my classroom. The students that are actually living and working with this policy in place, understand what it means, how to avoid that zero and most especially how it actually sets the stage for ongoing feedback and "re-dos".

Let me explain...

The only way a student in my classes will ever get a zero for an assignment is for doing absolutely nothing by the time the work is due, and I mean exactly that. Zeros are avoided by simply putting in a name on a paper and/or clicking turn in/submit if it is digital work. This is our way of having students acknowledge that there was a due date for the assignment and that if they "forgot" they are aware that there is work to be done. After what could be a pretty much blank turn in, everything is re-gradeable for full credit.

The Once a Zero policy at AdVENTURE, actually allows my students to, dare I say it, "Fail Forward". The idea is that instead of having students turn nothing in or extend due dates waiting for the student to turn in "perfect work", I'd much rather have a student turn in a piece of incomplete or badly done work, go over it and give feedback and set up a conference where we can talk about the pieces that are hard for him/her, and regrade (often several times). In order to achieve this, I have to know where the struggles, errors or misconceptions lie, and I cannot do that if the student simply avoids the whole thing and does not turn anything in.

The student who turns in something that he/she knows is not perfect and knows that by turning it in he/she is acknowledging that help is needed, also knows that help is on the way. He/she knows that there will be multiple opportunities to regrade until the work is where they want it to be, so in reality, this policy ends up fostering the growth mindset of the lifelong learner. "I could not do it when I first turned in, but I can do it now."

Of course, this only works because we allow multiple submissions and regrades, and this is where I think the adults get the wrong idea. "Once a zero, always a zero" does imply that there are no second chances, and yes, there are no second chances for those that decide to go the complete avoidance route, but there are two caveats to this:

1. We really do not allow students to not turn something in. On turn in day, you will often hear the call of "everyone stand up, you may sit when I say your name", while I go over the list of papers/digital submissions that I have. Anyone left standing after this gets a visit from me and cannot leave the room until whatever they have has been submitted, again even if basically blank with just a name.
2. The relationship we have with students is one of trust, where they know that resubmitting is not only allowed, but encouraged, and re-grading is as immediate as possible, always for full credit. The onus is on the student to take that first step by submitting what they have.

"Once a Zero, Always a Zero" has actually helped us become better at feedback and motivated our students to continue their learning journey as more empowered individuals. They have come to expect that a first attempt can always get better and that if they take that first step of submitting their work, their teachers are there to help throughout the process.

Paper prototypes - From idea to reality

If your students are anything like mine, they hate planning. Whenever they hear something along the lines of "Create a presentation, website, game, etc.", they immediately run to their devices and open a tool, never mind that they have no idea what will be put in there. Then, they blankly stare at screens or worse, start furiously typing (or copy/pasting) with little thought as to why they are putting any kind of content or ideas in there. Much like writing an essay without an outline, they just want to get to what they consider the "fun part" and skip over the very boring planning stages.

As teachers, we have tried to solve this problem with graphic organizers, templates, storyboards and a myriad of other tools which, while useful, tend to thwart creativity. We then have to sit through presentations and products that look basically the same. What's worse is that students seldom see the connection between the planning tools and the end product, so there is little cross-usability.

Pondering this problem, I took inspiration from game developers and introduced the idea of paper prototypes to my students. It went something like this:

_______________________________________________________________________________

What is paper prototyping?

Paper Prototyping is exactly what it sounds like. It's your opportunity to make a usable version of your game/website/app/presentation on paper or with other physical objects. This means you don't need any electronic device to make your product.

Making a paper prototype allows you to create a version of your product much quicker; this gives you time to include as many features as you like. DREAM BIG – now's your chance!

Creating your prototype allows you to test your product before it is made. This means you can make fast decisions about your product without wasting hours adding features you may realize you don't like.

Sketch your main screen:

Get out your sharpies, coloring pencils, etc. Make a sketch of your product. You may use this general template, or a specific template for your particular product. The paper prototype is like a draft, so don't worry about creating perfect drawings.

Add Functionality:

Once you have your main screen, it is time to add buttons, sprites, or whatever you need to help the user of your product navigate through your product. Cut each element out, and play around with placement.

Sketch other screens:

Continue the process of sketching, cutting out items and placing them. You can reuse backgrounds as needed. Just make sure you keep all papers and cutouts organized.

Play test:

You have all your screens and cutouts. You have a general idea of how your product works. Create a video where you demonstrate your product.

Here are some sample videos of paper prototypes:

• http://www.viddler.com/v/64238391
• http://www.viddler.com/v/f9b8d6fd
• http://www.viddler.com/v/44512a2a

Feedback:

Have a partner play test with you. This conversation will help you become aware of possible interactions with your product that you have not foreseen. Use the I like, I wish, I wonder format to provide feedback:

• I-LIKE: Highlight what you see as a strength in the work. 
• I-WISH: State one area that could be improved. Focus on the big ideas.
• I-WONDER: Ask clarifying questions and offer specific solutions to the stated I-Wish.

Rubric

_______________________________________________________________________________

Results

Needless to say, I was very happy with the results. Going through this exercise allowed my students to think in terms of usability and content and helped them make better decisions for their final product. They had a plan for creating, unburdened by the constraints of a specific tool.

Moving forward, I plan to incorporate paper prototyping for all sorts of products, even presentations, hoping to see more creative final products. I think it is well worth the effort. What do you think?

More paper prototype resources:

• Resources and Tools for Paper Prototyping
• Free Printable Sketching, Wireframing, and Note-Taking PDF Templates
• 20 Free Printable Sketching and Wireframing Templates
• 10 Free Printable Web Design Wireframing Templates

FLUXX MOD Project - Board Games in the Classroom

Although I am not affiliated with FLUXX® (or Looney Labs) in any way, I think that FLUXX® is a great game that everyone should own.

We often think of board games as a staple for Family Fun Night, and because many of them help teach soft skills and facilitate higher order cognitive abilities, teachers routinely incorporate classics like Monopoly, Risk, Scrabble and Apples to Apples in their classrooms. By the same token, creating MODs or skins for existing games is a time-honored classroom activity. A simple Google search will bring up a plethora of "create your own board game" classroom projects. For those of us that have tried it, we see it as an opportunity to review content, both as the game is being created or modified and while the students play them during those extra-long rainy day recesses.

A couple of years ago, my own children introduced me to a great little game called FLUXX® - The card game with the ever-changing rules. The game was very easy to learn and portable which made it a staple for my family. Over the next few months, we purchased several versions happily bringing them out as part of our game repertoire.

Not long after that, I started toying with the idea of not only sharing it with my students but also having them create MODs for it to play in the classroom since the gameplay itself is based on reaching a goal of paired concepts. This makes it super efficient in helping the students revisit concepts, while at the same time allowing for some deeper thinking about the relationship between ideas. For example, in FLUXX's original version one of the goals is Rocket Science, which "needs" Rocket and Brain on the table to win.

After a little refining and tweaking of the idea, I set about creating a project page with directions, templates and of course a rubric for my middle school students. I introduced the project on a Monday, and gave them two weeks to come up with their skins.

Of course, there were some students that did not know what I was talking about, which made me realize that before anything else happened, we needed to play a couple games of FLUXX. After a couple of rounds, and some more clarifying of where to find the "big ideas" and how to keep track of their paired goals so they would not repeat them, I had them get into groups (of 4) and choose a topic for their MOD.

Students took to this creative form of review in a way I had seldom seen otherwise. They loved the idea of coming up "funny" titles for their goals and were seen scouring textbooks and notes to figure out how they could pair ideas that at first glance may not have been obvious. In one of my favorite examples, a group that developed a Newton Motion FLUXX Mod, included Robert Hooke as a creeper.

Here is the full set of "Newton Motion" cards in case you want an example for students:

• Motion Goals 
• Motion Keepers Creepers and Basic Rules
• Actions (same as in project page)
• New Rules (same as in project page)
• Motion Backs

I have run this project now several times, and I am always amazed not only at the cards they create but also by the enthusiasm that they show whenever I declare "it's review time", and bring out stacks of student-created FLUXX decks.

For obvious reasons all of my students' FLUXX decks are science related (Motion, Evolution, Genetics, Matter, etc.) However, I can easily see FLUXX decks for novel studies, American Revolution, and even Linear Equations. In case you missed it above and are interested, here is a link to the Instructions and Templates that I share with my students.

If you try this, let me know. I would love to know how it went for you and your students.

Fines in a Gamified Classroom

Let me start by stating that I have two separate "but equally important" systems in my gamified classroom. The XP  system, which is tied to the students assignments (blog quests, mastery quests and PBL quests). In the XP system students are awarded initial points after submitting their work, and continue to gain XP as revisions are submitted. In true gaming style, one cannot lose XP. After all, once you have an experience you cannot undo it, you can only make it better. The XP system is shared out to students in my public leaderboards.

I also have a school currency system (we call them Patriot Bucks), which is tied to school and classroom behaviors, and stems from my school's PBIS. Students can earn Patriot Bucks at a staff member's discretion for things like picking up trash, participating in class, or basically any show of positive behavior. Students can use their Patriot Bucks to purchase items at the student store or enter them in weekly raffles. It is important to note that Patriot Bucks are a physical item (slips of blue paper, signed or stamped by the staff member who gave it out), and that no one, except for maybe the individual students, keeps track of them. This is what made it so easy to find a new use for them.

It all started a couple of weeks ago as I wrapping up of Back to School unit, which as in most classrooms involves teaching students the expectations, rules and procedures of my classroom. My students had just passed the Acceptable use Policy quiz, and were eager to get their hands on our classroom devices. I had taught/modeled how to take the devices out of the cart and how to put them away. I had explained how it was important that all devices be plugged (with their own plug) in order for all classes to have enough charge for the day, as well as how to make sure that each device was put in the correct slot. I even had students come up one by one and "show" the class just how to do it. Everything was going well until that first eager student picked up a "random" device (i.e. a device that was not assigned to him). The natural consequence for this is that the student would not have access to devices for at least that class period. But, I did not want to do that since that would mean that I would be the one to come up with something related to the activity, but that did not involve technology. The student in question suggested that he write a letter of apology promising to not do it again. It just so happened that I had just had a conversation with a fellow teacher about something she called the "opportunity log", where students write a reflection on a class misbehavior and promise to do better. I had shared with her that in my experience those almost never work. It is a forced apology, akin to a mother telling her children to "apologize to your brother for ____", only to repeat herself the next day and ask for another apology for the same behavior. I shared that with the student, asking him how many times he had apologized to a sibling without really meaning it. He sheepishly smiled, and stated that just that morning he had "apologized" to his sister, but he had no actual plans for "never doing it again".

At that moment, inspiration hit. I told him that in order to get his device he would have to pay a Patriot Buck fine. We agreed that 20 Patriot Bucks would be appropriate. He went back to his seat, carefully counted and came back to me with a proud look. He had just enough! He placed the "fine" on my desk and asked if he could go get his device. I simply thanked him and told him to get to work. The rest of the class exploded in questions about the "fine" system. For some reason they welcomed the addition of fines and saw it as a perfectly acceptable and fair way to overcome infractions. There were many questions about specifics, "What is the fine for not logging out? What about for forgetting to plug a computer?" It was the little things that bugged them as much as me that in their opinion should warrant a fine.

After much discussion, we ended up just having two categories of fines - minor infractions (20 Patriot Bucks) and major infractions (50 Patriot Bucks). Minor infractions include things like not plugging in a device, putting a device in the wrong slot, and taking someone else's device. Major infractions include things like off-task behavior or mishandling of the devices. I left myself some wiggle room, creating a third category that states "Fines for anything not mentioned before can be assigned at my sole discretion".

In a surprising turn of events, something else happened once the fines were in place. Students have begun to help each other avoid fines. Instead of simply walking away from unplugged devices (which of course still happen every once in a while), they take the time to plug them in for each other. I've overheard statements of,  "Dude, stop goofing off, that's a 50 PB fine!" This is already pretty cool, but there is more. A new student who did not have enough Patriot Bucks to pay for putting his device in the wrong slot, and who I was ready to excuse from the fine, saw his classmates (students he had just met), pool Patriot Bucks to pay his fine. No prompting at all, simply a spirit of cooperation and doing right by each other.

So far, this system is working beautifully, and I am wondering if you are using something similar. Do you have any words of wisdom to add? I would love to hear from you.

Web Tools to explore before the summer ends

Summer is coming to an end. As you start getting your teacher hat back on, and dreaming about your "perfect" classroom, you may want to look at some web-tools that could come in handy. Here are my favorite free or low cost summer discoveries:

Write-About: This site allows students to engage in high-interest writing for an authentic audience. Students browse through a collection of ideas, each one paired with an image, and write about them on the site itself. Students can even use the built-in voice recorder! Posts can be shared with the class or made publicly viewable so that registered students and teachers can comment on them. teachers can provide feedback on the writing and moderation tools are included. A yearly classroom plus subscription is around $40.00 USD allowing up to 250 students and unlimited posts. Want a closer look?

iPiccy: Similar, but less complicated than Photoshop, this is an image editing tool that allows users students to apply filters, add effects, crop or resize an image. All online.

EducaPlay: Create your own embeddable activities. From fill in the blanks and interactive maps to video quizzes and sentence jumbles, the possibilities are endless. You can also share activities, collections and search for content created by other teachers.  Free accounts allow you to create groups and see reports (a big bonus for data driven instruction). Watch how easy it is to create an activity in EducaPlay.

PrimaryAccess: A suite of free online tools that allows students and teachers to use primary source documents to complete meaningful and compelling learning activities with digital movies, storyboards, rebus stories and other online tools.

JustapoxJS: This Knight Lab tool allows user to tell stories by comparing two frames, including photos and gifs. Ideal for then/now stories that explain slow changes over time (growth of a city skyline, regrowth of a forest, etc.) or before/after stories that show the impact of single dramatic events (natural disasters, protests, wars, etc.). This is their own example using Google Earth's Images:



If none of these catch your fancy, maybe you will find something interesting in my growing collection:


Mrs. Garcia's Classroom Webtools, by mrsgarciaserrato

Pokemon Go in the classroom?

As I look around my neighborhood today, I cannot help but notice the bands of kids and teenagers walking around looking at their phones. Yes, Pokemon Go has hit my otherwise quiet street, and I immediately start thinking to a couple of weeks from now, when we get back to the classroom... I know the kids will come back from a summer of hunting Pokemon. I know they will be itching to talk about this or that amazing find. So, how can I harness that enthusiasm? What can I do to transform this "distraction" into some meaningful learning activities? Am I crazy for even thinking about it? Here goes:

Pokemon Go Math:

Pokemon caught are transferred into what is called a Pokedex. Clicking on the Pokedex, you can access data for individual Pokemons, including weight and height (in metric, Yay!) Students could use this information to determine things like, "If you were building a Pokemon dwelling, how many Squirtles would fit in an 64 square meter area?", the area needed to house all the Pokemon in their Pokedex, the height:weight ratio of unevolved to evolved Pokemon, or the ratio of "seen" vs. "capture" - does it vary by type or location? . You can even go as far as having students try to determine whether there is a proportional relationship between type of Pokemon and size.

The game also keeps records of all events in the Journal. The data gathered there could be used to figure out average Pidgey appearances for particular locations or times, or average out the number of Pokeballs given at Pokestops. Taking it one step further, they could also graph their Gym results, which has the added benefit (to the students) of helping them create the "best" team.

Pokemon Go Language Arts:

The game has the interesting feature of allowing users to take augmented reality pictures of "wild" Pokemon and placing them in the scene the camera is facing. Students can use these pictures to develop stories. Prompts could include things like "A day in the life of ...", or "When ____ took over the ____".

Pokemon Go Science: 

As part of a unit on biomes, students could use their knowledge of Pokemon types to develop habitats for specific types. This could also lead to lively discussions about why some Pokemons are more common in different places. What characteristics are shared by Ice Pokemon and the animals that inhabit the Tundra?

A study on the mechanisms of evolution could be followed by having students create scenarios that led to the traits observed in their favorite Pokemon.

On a more ambitious vein, you could have students develop a complete Pokemon utopic city, powered by electric Pokemon!

Pokemon Go Social Studies:

Many Pokestops and Gyms tend to be in historical landmarks.  Students could use these places as a basis for further research into the landmarks, or create virtual fieldtrips and advertisements encouraging others learn about those landmarks and/or visit them in pursuit of "Catching them All".


Any other ideas? I would love to hear all about them.

Beyond the Leaderboard: Self-ranking charts

A couple of days ago, I talked about creating a multiple-class, self-ranking leaderboard. My students love the idea of being able to see where they rank, and compare themselves to one another, creating this competitive gaming environment that often leads them to perform and to keep working, simply to "outrank" one another. As I was updating my class website to include this new board, I started thinking about how to use the leaderboard as more than just a ranking system for the XP. Could I use it to inform students about how they are doing in different categories? Could I show the data in some way that would maintain the integrity of the leaderboard, but focus students' attention on opportunities for improvement as well? And almost as important, is there an easy way to do it; one that would not require much more than inputting values as the students grow? The answer turned out to be YES on all accounts.

Before I show you how, let me share the end products:

"I Need To Do More" chart

This first interactive chart, displays the totals for each XP category. As the year progresses, students can see how much each of the categories has impacted their XP totals. On their own, or with some help, they can decide to go back to assignments they may have missed or where they scored low XP and re-do/re-submit in order to up their total XP for that category. In my case, it could show an Aha moment akin to, "I have not done many of my blogs, if I do them now I can gain all those XP I missed".

"I Need To Do Better" chart

In this other format, the same data is displayed by average XP obtained in each category. When students see the data organized this way, they can quickly see areas where they can focus their efforts, to increase their standings.

The beauty of both of these charts is that they use the same Pivot Table I created for the self-ranking leaderboard, so not only do they update as soon as I input new values, they are also tied to the original ranking. The student order within the chart updates as well as they move up or down on the leaderboard, making it a "one-stop" responsive system that does not create more work for me to maintain or update.

The following video explains how to create the charts, and I am also sharing a template that you can use to draft your own.

Let the games begin!

Simulations and the Gamified Classroom

The use of simulations in the classroom is a long-standing tradition. How else could we provide students with high end experiential learning, when our students seldom have access to anything other than basic scientific equipment, and in many cases not even that? If we want want our students to learn how to gather data, analyze it and come up with solutions grounded on evidence we need to provide them with the necessary tools, going beyond the simple inquiry that can be accomplished with household tools.

In the gamified science classroom, tech-based simulations are a handy tool to help us engage students in deep learning. Students can use simulations to develop and use models to predict outcomes. They provide them with data that is directly applicable and transferable to the gamified (and often real-life) scenarios that they are working in. Often, they have the advantage of already looking like a game, making it easy to assign them as part of your gamified experience.

The simulations best suited for a gamified classroom are interactive, animated, provide dynamic feedback, and allow for productive exploration. But, where do you find them?

PhET

PhET, created and maintained by the University of Colorado, Boulder, has hundreds of NGSS aligned simulations, complete with teaching resources. They have been working hard at converting all their sims to HTML, allowing access on any device. Not only that, they are constantly adding new sims.
PhET by NGSS for Middle School
PhET by NGSS for High School

Spongelab

Already completely gamified for you, Spongelab has  thousands of pieces of content that can be searched, organized and annotated. Take a look,  at their Energy Literacy collection as an example of how to integrate SpongeLab in your gamified classroom.

Glencoe Virtual Labs

VIRTUAL LABS offered by the Glencoe textbook company. These labs give the students the adventure of laboratory experimentation without costly supplies, worrisome environmental and safety issues, or time-consuming clean up. They are from all different areas of science: Biology, Physics, Genetics, Earth Science, Physical Science, and Chemistry.

Go-Lab

Go-Lab is a EU-based site that allows science teachers access to online labs and inquiry learning applications. The students receive the opportunity to perform personalized scientific experiments with online labs with access to virtual labs, remote labs and data sets. 

Setting up is a little time consuming, but they have a very well done tutorial.

Gizmos

Gizmos is the only paid service on this list. This service provides hundreds of Science (and Math) simulations, aligned to NGSS and searchable by topic, grade level and/or standard. Gizmos allow for manipulation of variables and include graphing tools that help students compare the results of their experiments, creating opportunities to apply the concepts to a variety of scenarios,


Let's take advantage of our students tech skills and allow them to use simulated tools and experiments. Go ahead and incorporate simulations in your gamified classroom. Your students will thank you for the opportunity to use technology, work in groups using sims as a substitute for real-life experiences and develop the skills needed to excel in the 21-century. 

Student AppSmash - A PBL success story

https://goo.gl/Gni2Bl

Many of you may have experienced that gut wrenching moment where, before the students have even begun to understand what the PBL experience they are in entails, they have already opened Google slides. The blank stares I get when I dare ask, "Are you sure that a slide deck is the best way to go?", tell me that they are much more product driven than I hope, and that most have been exposed to the "wrong" answer shown in the image above. Presentation equals slides! This is what has driven me to make sure that my driving questions are as vague as possible, at least with respect to the type of product the students create, which brings me to the real reason behind today's post.

A couple of weeks ago, my students began their exploration in our Interdependence of Organisms unit, which culminated in the students "Convincing the general public to care about an endangered species, and developing a realistic plan to bring it back from the brink of extinction".  As always my students launched into "presentation" mode, which was when I officially stated that I was incredibly tired of sitting through slides, so anyone "caught" even thinking about creating a slide deck without a storyboard would lose their tech. I then added that I expected to be entertained, because "no one cares about what is being presented if they are bored, so if the goal was to convince people to care, boring them to tears with slides was definitely not the way to go". What followed was a flurry of student engagement that culminated in one of my favorite student app-smashes of all time - the AyeAye Need You website

http://goo.gl/Z5LVrb

The Aye Aye Need you WIX website includes a student produced screencast-o-matic video, two Thinglinks (one of them used simply as a presentation aid), a HSTRY timeline and a Piktochart infographic.

I unfortunately did not think to record the students' presentation of their work, but their recovery plan included comments like:

- The US and Madagascar are not "besties", so they will need to put aside their differences and work together to restore the forest.

-  Why do we need charcoal? That just pollutes the air. What we need is more Aye-Aye's!



Did the student's achieve the goal of raising awareness, driving action and starting conversations to save the lowly Aye Aye? Yes.
Did they use technology to do it? Yes.
Did they "make a Google slide deck"? Most certainly not.

Now, on to the next step in this PBL evolution - guiding students to develop empathy for the user of a product before even thinking about what the product is/should look like/do.