Week 8 Reflection

This week I was part of a team that hosted a discussion/tutorial on Classcraft. I think it went very well. It was a little slow to start with troubleshooting all problems, but I think that was good for all to see for teachers who might want to use it to see the problems students might encounter. Once everyone got logged in things went smoothly and the boss battles were a lot of fun. 

Genevieve talked about 4 main elements to include: theme, characters, setting, and the action. I too thought in this way. I was having a tough time at first but then when I thought about a book or movie that I really liked and knew about I was hooked. I was having so much fun trying to set up this fantasy world in my classroom. I then realized that if I was having this much fun planning it how could students not get excited? She then talked about the many aspects of games, and I believe this is the challenging part. I'm not entirely sure what I would include. I know that you need game mechanics to keep everyone involved. ​I liked the analogy Matera used of Mario Kart. Even though there are unfair power ups everyone still enjoys it and want to play again. I think this really got me to thinking about how to use this to my advantage to bring up the lower students and get them involved or even get the students involved who don't seem interested. There are just so many game elements. I guess you just have to start with one and add as you go so you don't get too overwhelmed.

Aleta's post was similar to Genevieve's and mine. She talked about: Theme, Setting, Characters, and Action. I'm guessing this was a similar topic for all this week. It was definitely my biggest takeaway from the reading. I think it is so central to starting to fantasize about how to gamify your own classroom. As I was picking a theme I couldn't help but get to the rest. I just started to get really excited once I had my theme. I was wondering where I could put certain elements and how they could be most useful. Then I ran out of time to ponder due to my other duties. It really just seems like the best place to start. Once you get the theme, setting, characters, and action in place the rest seems like it would start to fall into place.