Gamifying The Classroom: 21st Century Skills through 21st Century Gaming

Gamifying Your Classroom:

The advancements of technology has brought about many new opportunities for us as teachers to develop fun and engaging lessons for our students.  Yet we often find ourselves competing for their attention with the games that they have readily available on their devices.  When we went one to one devices with our students this year one of the most common questions/ challenges was, "How do we get them to not play games on their devices?"  Although it is a valid question, it is also one worth exploring a little more.  Why are students choosing to play these games instead of being engaged in our lesson? Is it because the game is fun? Or perhaps is it because they are competing against a friend, or trying to beat a certain mission so they can level up their character or unlock a prize.  Is it because they want to escape and imagine themselves in another world where they can be who they want to be?  Or is it because those lessons that we planned just aren't as engaging as we initially thought.  To answer the question that the worried teacher asked earlier, how do we keep them from playing games...We don't.  What if we could turn our lessons to be more similar to those games that have our students actively engaged every second they are playing.  What if we could create a world where our students could cooperatively work together to complete tasks which could level up their character that they have designed and unlock awards...Welcome to ClassCraft.  

What is ClassCraft:

ClassCraft is a program which teachers have the ability to design their own gaming world for their students to be fully immersed in.  It is completely customizable and allows you to transform from a teacher to the "Game-master" of your class.  The game is designed to promote teamwork and collaboration among students as they work to complete tasks throughout the game.  Each student will have their own unique character which possess specific abilities which can help the student, the team, or both.  As students complete tasks throughout the game they will earn points which will allow the students to level up their character, giving them the ability to obtain new powers and rewards. Take a look at this introductory video by the inventors of Classcraft.

The Characters of Classcraft:

There are three distinct characters in Classcraft; The Warrior, The Healer, and the Mage.  Each character is designed to have unique abilities which can help out the team as well as help out the student.  Within each character class there are three different types of powers; student rewards, team

rewards and academic rewards.  Many of this powers are specific for the character and are designed to work hand in hand with other members of their team.  For instance Healers can unlock an ability to give health points back to their teammates, while Warriors have the ability to protect other teammates from losing health points in the game.  The powers from each character help to promote teams to work together as a cohesive unit to advance throughout the tasks that they are sent on.   

Classcraft Quests:

The quests through Classcraft is how you can guide your students through a personalized, engaging, and fun learning experience.  Quests can be used to move your students through tasks or assignments which has your students going through the content of your class.  As students complete these tasks they can earn experience points (XP) or gold pieces (GP) to level up and customize their character in Classcraft.  The video provided here shows you how I used quests in my classroom to have my students explore their unit on World War I.  

Boss Battles:  

Boss battles are another fun feature of the game to formatively or summatively assess your students during class.  With this option students or teams are given questions which if answered correctly knocks health points off a Boss who is attacking them.  If they get the questions wrong however the Boss can knock heath points off of them.  If the Boss is defeated than the entire class can earn additional XP and GP.  This feature is also customizable, you can make them as challenging as you want because you design the questions that are being asked.  Here is a video from Classcraft demonstrating what a Boss Battle is and how to create one. 

My Reflections with Classcraft:

When I first heard of this program it was around winter break of the school year.  Expectations have already been established, students have been familiar with Google Classroom and how and where to find the assignments, so taking on something new like this could be a challenge and a disruption if not done properly.  So I decided to first create a free trail version to explore while on winter break.  I created a class and made some of my family members log in so we could experiment and I could get a better idea of how it all worked.  I saw the power right away of how engaging and how well it could work with its ability to integrate with Google Classroom.  Once winter break was over I approached my Principal on wanting to explore this program.  He gave me permission to purchase it, however I knew I had to be very strategic on how to launch it with my classes.  I wanted to make sure that the potential would match up to the reality of middle school students.  I did not know if they would buy in to it and how well it would grab their attention.  I picked a class which I knew had a wide range of individual and student interests.  There were students in the class who were gamers and who liked games with a similar design and feel as Classcraft, but I also knew that I had students in this class who have probably never touched a video game in their life and really didn't have much interest.  This would be a perfect experimental class, if they will buy into it than it shouldn't be a problem with my other classes as well.  Before leaving for winter break I spoke with my class and told them what my thoughts are and asked them if they wanted to partake in this exploration with me.  I personally feel that it is important to have them be a part of the conversation. I wanted to be transparent as to why I was interested in doing it and why I think they would enjoy it.  We agreed as a class to implement it after winter break.  I will say it took some time away from instruction with the initial set up and exploring the ins and out of the program, however once Classcraft was operational it more than made up for the time.  Students were actively engaged, were working independent and collaborated with their teams when it was necessary.  It added in an extra layer of behavior management which rewarded those who were completing tasks and working through their objectives and encouraged those who weren't to get back on track.  As soon as I got it up and running in one class my other classes started asking when we were going to introduce it to them as well.  As they have leveled up throughout the year students have noticed that their work directly impacted their ability to do the things they wanted to do either in class or academically as well.  Classcraft was a huge success this year and is worth the time and effort in creating this immersive and engaging classroom experience.