Gamification in education is the application of typical elements of game playing, point scoring, competition with others, a specific rules and rewards system, for example used to drive an educational experience. Game based learning is when specific content is taught or reinforced with the use of a game. While gamification uses the mechanics of gaming outside of the context of the game, game based learning uses an actual game as the vehicle for driving learning. My first experience with gamification was in high school. My calculus teacher allowed students to create games for our spring finals. Being a huge fan of The Price is Right I decided that I was going to create a Plinko board and have my peers compete to receive chances to drop a ball into the Plinko creation in order to score points OR to subtract points from other players. Math was the framework for the learning, as all of the questions were based on math content but the mechanics of how students engaged with the math were all game based. My first experience with game based learning came during computer lab time in elementary school. There was a math game that students loved, despite its content. It required one to move a shape onto an identical shape somewhere else on the screen by spinning, sliding and flipping the original shape. As a math teacher I now realize that the game was teaching the concepts of transformational geometry. As students were spinning, sliding and flipping, they were actually learning to rotate, translate and reflect images. I was lucky to find an updated version of this game hosted by Mathplayground and I am super excited to use it with my students as we progress through transformational geometry.
At the high school level students really appreciate any gamification that one adds to a course. Even if it’s simply putting students together in a team and having them race to complete assignments, or allowing students to gain class points toward a common goal by answering questions correctly, they enjoy the competitive and group elements it adds to the course. I get so much student by in when I use Kahoot or Quizizz by allowing the top scoring student to select a non academic kahoot or quizz to play next (Most common choices this year are: Disney movies, Minecraft and SexEd.) It is not a significant prize by any means but the students enjoy the choice and voice it provides them for demonstrating content knowledge. Next year I fully plan to incorporate more instances of Desmos based activities. Before I really looked into what was offered through their site I thought it was simply a free-use graphing calculator. Exploring all of the teacher created resources I found that there are a wide variety of games that help students learn complex topics such as functions and linear systems through exploration.
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I began this research project by looking into math phobia which tends to manifest in specialized math anxiety when one is placed in situations where math is required. I observed correlations that exist between a students feelings towards math and their performance in a math course and through data collection I was able to establish a negative correlation between a students level of math anxiety and their performance in a math course (The higher a students level of math anxiety, the lower their performance level).
As I looked closer into causes of math anxiety I explored the concept of cognitive load, a person’s ability to process information and the brain's ability to move information from working memory to long term memory. Math anxiety places a severe strain on cognitive load, comprising a person's access to working memory and thus their ability to learn. Through a survey on contributing factors to math anxiety, I found that a major reason my students felt math anxiety was their lack of preparation before coming to class. Outside of class my students were not committing any time to practicing what we discussed in class, including doing any of my assigned homework. My students were relying solely on the brief instructional periods we have to prepare them for the rigor of secondary math courses. It was at this point that I decided my assigned homework was ineffective at preparing students and so I needed to attempt a flipped or blended instructional model. My biggest struggle when first setting up a blended classroom was figuring out a way to effectively and efficiently create content that I could have students engage with at home, before coming to class. I first tried using content that was already created by searching for videos related to my content on different video hosting sites but all of the content that I found was too broad to be effective. I realized that I would have to create original content and it was through this need that I found “ShowMe” an iPad app that allows me to easily create videos, screencasts and interactive medias for my students. What makes this app so effective is its ease of use and how it allows users to easily integrate slideshows, voiceover and annotations in a powerful way that lets users easily guide students learning to desired objectives. When I first began this process I looked at technology as a replacement for things that I was already doing in my classroom. I used to think that instead of doing an example for students I could show a video of someone else doing an example. I was thinking very surface level, simply replacing with the tools I had available. In building my knowledge of the TPACK model I am seeing that by developing deep understandings of pedagogy, technology and content, teachers are able to integrate technology as a means of increasing the effectiveness of one’s instruction. Now instead of simply replacing with technology I am integrating with activities like: having students record themselves doing a problem, uploading the videos to flipgrid and then commenting on the work that their peers are doing. Using technology to develop my students ability to collaborate in more creative ways is how TPACK has helped improve my instructional practices. For this weeks exploration of flipped and blended classrooms I really wanted to take the opportunity to explore some of the whiteboard apps that are available to educators. Thinking about flipping my classroom, my number one concern is the ability to provide consistent instruction to students whether they be at home or in class. A solid whiteboard app would allow me to recreate the necessary elements of my in-class instruction while also allowing me to push students towards developing better understanding of math content in a variety of ways.
I chose to explore two different whiteboard apps based on feedback I have heard from other teachers and from various google searches. Kami - your paperless classroom hero Kami is an app that allows you to annotate and interact with any file you upload. Aside from seamless uploading of PDFs Kami does have the power to allow teachers to upload word documents and even powerpoints but at the cost of an upgrade to a paid version. I felt that Kami was extremely limited with its free version and required too much work-around in order to be useful without paying a fee. I also felt that Kami was not as responsive to inputs as other whiteboard choices. I used both my finger on the touchscreen and a stylus; neither impressed me. Kami does not have a built in screen capture feature so users would have to create annotated slides and then use something like screencast o'matic in order to create a presentation that could be posted for students. Show me Interactive Whiteboard - iPad ShowMe is an amazing app that turns your iPad into an interactive whiteboard and has a built in recording feature so that you can record videos right from your device. It was very simple to add in a picture, PDF or other file and start annotating directly over the file. You can prepare slides in advance and then go through your presentation, speaking over slides and describing all of the annotations in real time. It was really easy for me to use my iPad to take pictures of different examples that I had already created, adding them directly into the presentation I was cultivating for my flipped lesson plan. I can imagine finding amazing resources online and then using screenshots to easily develop fresh teaching materials right on the device. There is also a comprehensive “Explore” tab organized by both content and standards that makes available ShowMes created by teachers from all over the world. I was very impressed by the ease of using this app. Sadly there are limitations imposed to those who do not want to pay a fee. You are only allowed to upload 5 videos for free and then you have to pay a monthly subscription to continue posting content. Despite all of the great features that are made available by something like ShowMe, none of it matters if students are not able to access resources due to limited technology or internet options or if they simply refuse to make use of the learning material. As Jon Bergmann and Caitlin Tucker explain, we have to Flip & Engage so that students are interacting and not just passively watching. Having students interact with the screen cast increases the likelihood that they will learn something from the experience and walk away feeling as though the resources you are creating should be valued. EdPuzzle is a great option to bring in once you have created content like a screen cast because you can add further annotations and even quiz questions on top of your video to require students to view, explore and think while engaging. Integrating activities relating to the video such as having students complete google forms or engaging in online discussions through google docs might also be a way to monitor student engagement and ensure that they are utilizing the flipped aspect of instructional screen casts to their fullest potential! |
Brandon DeJesusMath Archives
July 2019
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