The first week of school

Exhaustion, bleary eyes, and hoarse throat.  Must be the first week of school, for teachers.  So how did my first week of the gaming classroom go?  About as good as you could expect for a noob.

The first day of EPIC Geography, which is the title for my gamed classroom, was rather amusing to me.  When I told my classroom that we were going to play a game for Geography this year, they looked confused.  Then I started talking about experience points, levels, quests, and the sort, and some kids looked like I was speaking Greek.  Or so it looked to me.
Imagine if you walked into the office on the first day and your boss told you to go on a boss raid with him to gain some more XP.  You might wonder if you accidentally wandered into a LARP event instead of your job.  I can imagine that 8th graders have become accustomed to a specific type of first week of school.  I wasn't fitting into their mold of "what a teacher does on the first day".  Mission accomplished.

The first game we played came on the second day of class.  I projected a blank world map on my Smartboard and told them it was time for their first quest.  Their quest was to identify 10 countries on the map in 10 minutes with no resources except each other to earn 10 XP.  Seems simple enough, right?  Then I added a tweak to it...
If they could identify 20 total nations in 10 minutes, I would double their group XP.  That little incentive got them motivated and cooperating, with each player calling out to help their classmates to label specific nations.  After 10 minutes, I ended the quest and began to count.  1, 2, 3,...18, 19...Sorry guys, Greenland isn't a country.  Its a territory.  The class gave a collective groan with a few declaring, "I could have gotten 1 more if I'd had more time".  In the spirit of fun(and learning) I told 1 girl that If she could label 1 more country, I would count it as 20 and the whole class would complete the quest and get the bonus XP.  She confidently strode to the board and froze.  She looked to her classmates for advice.  "I know Chile is a long narrow country.  Right?" she asked me.  I wouldn't give any hints.  She finally decided to get it over with and labeled Chile.  In the right spot.  When I told the class they had finished the quest with the bonus XP, they cheered and high fived each other, and the game was rolling.

Friday was their second quest, creating their avatars for the game.  I gave 10 XP for creating a name for their avatar, 10 XP for drawing/creatiing their avatar, and 10 XP if they spun a backstory for their character.  At the end of the class on Friday, I was only missing 2 avatars in a class of 26.  Many characters were merely names on paper or iPads.  A few drew out their characters and a few others crafted their avatar using Hero Factory or similar sites.  Not the engagement I was hoping for, but I'll consider the turn in rate a success and move on.  I'll post pictures of some of their avatars next week.
Speaking of next week...more games and some of the tools I'll be using this year for EPIC Geography!

The sun has risen on my tenth year of teaching middle school.  But this year wouldn't be like the rest.  No, I wasn't going to teach like I had always taught before.  This year I'm going to 'game' my 8th grade Geography classroom and this blog is a chronicle of what has worked and what has failed throughout the year.  Its for those of you curious about integrating game elements into your job and for me as a record of what I tried this year.

Background:
I've been playing games since the Apple IIe.  I have fond memories of fording the Columbia River on Oregon Trail and avoiding the troll in the eponymous Troll Tale.  I've played most gaming platforms since, including board games and video games.  I still maintain that gaming is a vital part of my mental health, just ask my wife.
I got the idea of playing games in the classroom while teaching world history and playing Civilizations at home.  I was always frustrated though, at the gap between educational usefulness and engagement. Games were either too teach-ey or too recreational to succeed in the classroom.

Then I started my MA at the University of St. Thomas in the field of Educational Technology.  In researching my final thesis paper I stumbled across two authors that started to change how I approached games in the classroom.
James Paul Gee and Jane McGonigal have both shown me new ways to think of games in my classroom.
Lee Sheldon more recently has helped put method to the madness and given a mold I can steal ideas from that has been tried and reviewed in a real world classroom.  I will delve deeper into their respective influences in later posts.

Fast forward: At the end of last year I realized I kept talking about doing something great and decided it was time to actually do it.  Enough talking and planning.  Time to start gaming.  So I piloted a few mini projects and lesson ideas with my classes and committed to gaming my classroom for the following year.  It appeared that all the pieces were in place to start on my own quest to turn my classroom into a game room where learning and gaming were an everyday occurrence.

Next week:
How did the first week of school go....