Teaching and Zombies

My original contribution to the world of education

For anyone that didn't know, I'm just finishing up my Master's Degree in Educational Leadership. This is will allow me to work in administration positions should I wish to make the switch. The coursework is nearly finished, and one of my final tasks is to share an original contribution to the world of education. When asking myself, "What do I do that no one has done before me?", I really struggled, because just like most teachers, many things I do have been borrowed from others. It wasn't until I was speaking with my 6th grade science class about the best location for our class to survive the impending zombie apocalypse that I realized I had my original contribution right in front of me. My 6th grade science class is surviving a zombie apocalypse this year. I'll explain more about this later in this post, but first I'd like to start at very beginning and share some of the things that have lead me to create this fictitious world for my students. 

*update: After writing this blog, someone shared with me the following video. It turns out what I thought had never been done before me, has been done. Here's his video and a link to their site. I'll be checking out more of it to see if there is anything I can incorporate into my classes. The link to their site is http://zombiebased.com/

Planting the seed

A few years ago, I watched a video titled Extra Credits: Gamifying Education, by the uploader Extra Credits. This channel on Youtube mainly focuses on gaming and highlights interesting aspects of the gaming industry. By no means is this a leading expert in the field of education, nor does the uploader claim to have any experience teaching. That being said, the video offered some thought-provoking points as well as offered some suggestions.  

The points that really stuck out to me were grading, and how this can be "demotivational" (Extra Credits, 2012). As someone that grew up playing various sorts of video games, including games in which you level up your character, some of the suggestions made a lot of sense to me. For example, it is a relatively easy switch to create a grading system that has all students starting at zero, and any task or assignment they complete awards them points, thus providing positive reinforcement. Providing this direct correlation with turning in assignments and progressing through the class, can provide the motivation that some students are lacking. Also by providing students the opportunity to fail, redo a task, possibly failing again, and fixing their mistake until they've mastered a task, gives students the ability to problem solve and work through their mistakes. If you've ever played a video game, chances are you didn't beat it easily the first time through, nor any time shortly after that. If your experience was anything like mine, you died many times on nearly ever boss fight, until you mastered each skill and were able to conquer every stage. After watching this video, I continued to ask myself, "how could I create a learning environment in which initially failing was normal and expected, as means to achieve mastery in the end?" 

My first attempt

Eager to try some new things and spice up my classes, I implemented a new system of grading in my high school science classes. I scoured the standards, and made notes of everything the students needed to be able to do by the end of the year. Pulling up a list of Bloom's Taxonomy verbs, I created a list of possible assignments, ranging from very basic vocabulary to creating a board game using all of the topics in the unit. For my non-teacher readers, Bloom's Taxonomy is a tiered system that breaks down how people think. There are six different levels that increase in complexity and it's been described "as a stairway, leading many teachers to encourage their students to 'climb to a higher (level of) thought'" (Forehand, 2010). Each assignment on the list I had created had a corresponding Bloom's Taxonomy level, which in turn corresponded to a higher point total for the assignment. The more complex the assignment, the more points it was worth. The students were given a goal for the total amount of points needed to earn different letter grades. 

While this was a step in the right direction, it was still very far from perfect. The first flaw I ran into was that the overall project was much too large in scope initially. With 30 or more different assignments in front of them, and no specific due date, the students seemed lost with no real direction. Being a relatively new teacher, I hadn't properly thought out the logistics of grading. Having nearly 100 students each turning in a unit's worth of work, anywhere from 15-20 different assignments, all at the same time, was an absolute nightmare. Not only did it create an actual mountain of papers for me to read and mark, there was no immediate feedback to the students on their performance. They didn't know if they had done well, or missed an important concept, until we had already moved on to something new. When reflecting upon my teaching of the class, I felt the idea was sound, but the execution of the idea had many flaws that needed to be ironed out to truly be successful. 

Moving to Mongolia

The following year, I moved overseas to Mongolia with a new curriculum and grade level. With this change to middle school science, I reverted back to a much more traditional class experience for my students. My grade 6 class didn't have a stereotypical textbook with passages, highlighted vocabulary, and questions at end of each section. In order to effectively teach the curriculum, I was constantly pulling in outside materials and resources for them. The following year, due to schedule issues, I no longer had the grade 6 class. As the school year without grade 6 students came to a close, I helped to create the schedule for the following year. It was clear I would have grade 6 through 8 again. At that time, I realized I needed to come up with a much more structured plan for the 6th grade, and I began brainstorming about ways to make the classroom more fun and, if possible, turn it into a game. 

Gamify the classroom

The spring and summer before I got to teach the grade 6 students again was spent researching ways to gamify my classroom. A very helpful book was Gamify, by Brian Burke. While not directly focused on education, the book outlines many ways in which schools or organizations can use and have used gamification to help motivate people to achieve goals and build expertise. The book was very helpful to guide my thoughts as to how I could apply this in the classroom. It also outlined many pitfalls that happen during the designing of a gamified experience. Gamify outlined three common reasons gamified solutions fail; the goals aren't clearly defined, the solution is focused to achieve the teacher's goals instead of the student goals, and the solution is engaging through transactions and not emotionally (Burke, 2014). When thinking about my class, I knew the objectives needed to be clear, the game needed to be centered on the student's experience, and I needed to get them emotionally invested in the game. There were other caveats to keep in mind such as appropriate reward systems that are frequent enough to be motivating, but not so frequent that they lose all value. I'd recommend this book to any teacher looking for a way to motivate their students as well as any manager looking for a way to build skills in their employees. 

A Practitioner’s Guide to Gamification of Education (Huang, & Soman, 2013) outlines five basic steps one must take apply gamification in the classroom, 

"Step 1: Understanding the Target Audience and the Context

Step 2: Define Learning Objectives

Step 3: Structuring the Experience

Step 4: Identifying Resources

Step 5: Applying Gamification Elements"  (Huang, & Soman, 2013). 

taken from Huang, W. H. Y., & Soman, D. (2013). Gamification Of Education. Research Report Series: Behavioural Economics in Action.

I knew my audience would be grade 6 students that I'd see regularly. Step one was done. For step two I opened the Ontario curriculum and a notebook and began to take notes about each of the four major units, Biodiversity, Electricity, Flight, and Space. To structure the experience, I found a great website called 3dgamelab.org. The site allows me to create quests, or assignments, for the students. The students send completed assignments to me to either be accepted for full points, or to be returned for them to fix their mistakes. It allows me to give them as many or as few quests at a time, depending on their level of achievement. I wanted to have more quests than is possible for them to complete, so there is always the potential for students to go above and beyond. The quests again followed Bloom's taxonomy and were given point values to match the level of difficulty. Step four required me to return to my resources from a few years before, as well as scour the web for additional material. 3dgamelab provided me with the experience points, as well as a platform to give badges, achievements, and awards. It provided most of the skeleton or framework for the class, I just needed to input the content. Lastly, I needed to add gamification elements. Again 3dgamelab came prepared. It has a platform for creating awards and badges. I also printed out a regular leaderboard to showcase the highest point totals in the class. Within the quests there were several that were competitions between the students, while there were others that required collaboration in small groups. Now that I had had all of the elements coming together, I needed something to truly tie it all in. I needed a storyline.

Zombie Apocalypse

Through some brainstorming and laying awake in bed at night, this is the story my 6th grade student participate in throughout the year. First, the students are informed that there was a massive zombie outbreak in the city of Ulaanbaatar, and in an attempt to stay alive, we jumped on a bus and headed to the countryside. We didn't have time to pack, gather siblings, or even call home, it's just our grade 6 science class surviving. Our initial destination is a national park an hour's drive or so from the city. Hustai Park works to reintroduce the Przewalski's horse to the wild and also has many gers, or felt tents, for tourists. 

taken in Hustai Park

We agree to help the park with its efforts in return for a place to stay. The park is a little too close to the city, and zombies will inevitably spread out from the city center. Luckily, we have several options of places we can go, north to Khuvsgal Lake, west to the Altai Mountains, or South to the Gobi Desert. The students are tasked with researching the plant and animal life in each area to find how they survive there, as well as what we could eat. Through successful completion, the students work to come up with a plan for our next stage in the journey, effectively mastering the standards outlined in our first unit, Biodiversity. 

From the park, we decide on the best possible direction to head. We enter in the 2nd stage of our adventure, living on our own. Upon our travels, we find an abandoned building just perfect for our group as winter is setting in. There isn't any people around, and there's enough space for all of us, except the electricity doesn't work. We'll need to figure out how to get the lights back on, and more importantly how to create heat with electricity. The students will create their own flashlights using batteries we find, as well as learn how to get a generator going. 

Once we get the electricity flowing, we hear something over the radio. There is a safe zone somewhere in Russia, except they can only take the smartest and brightest people. People that can solve problems and find solutions. They give us a date that they'll be letting other survivors into the safe zone, and outline the process for entry. The process is remarkably similar to a middle school science fair. We take a semi-break from our zombie focus to have the students prepare a science fair project to gain entry to the safe zone. In the meantime, I am trying to find a vehicle for us to get to Russia. 

As the students are getting the projects finished, I announce to them that I've found an airport and hangar with all sorts machines that fly. Sadly, none of us know how to fly so we must delve into the airport's documents, flight logs, and other resources we find to try to learn how to fly the planes, helicopters and hot air balloons that we've found. Luckily, through our research, we are able to learn the basics of flight and manage to fly our group to Russia.

At this time we have our middle school science fair, I mean we have the competition to gain entrance to the safe zone. Once we earn our place in the safe zone, we are informed that the plan for long-term survival doesn't involve living on Earth. We are heading to space. We must begin preparing for what life will be like in space, as well as begin to learn more about the other planets in our solar system. The students will work in groups to scout out each of the planets, and report back to us on the conditions of the planet. They should also include considerations if we were to choose to live on that planet. The year ends with a lift off celebration, a certificate given to the survivors, and a critique of the movie, The Martian. 

Tips

That is our storyline for grade 6 science. The students enjoy it and I enjoy the creative process of trying to bring everything together. I do have some tips for anyone that is thinking of trying to use something similar in their classes. 

1. Plan out your grading scale

     Our school uses a very traditional grading system. I had originally laid out the plans for my students to earn 1000 points a quarter. The gradebook had one lone 1000 point assignment, that they could continuously earn points towards. Their mark can never go lower, it can only increase.  They would start off the year at 0% and work their way to a passing score of 60% and many would continue on to reach 100% or higher. The problem was with parents, coaches and administration having to constantly translate this score when checking in on progress. For example, a student on pace to earn 100% will only have a 25% a few weeks into the quarter. When coaches check grades for eligibility, is a student at 45% eligible or not based on the way the class is graded. My solution this year is to have weekly point goals that will go on their gradebook. Each week roughly 100 points are due, and it is up to the students to earn a passing score each week. Their grade then mirrors something closer to the traditional grades. 

2. Avoid bottle necks. 

     The site 3dgamelab offers a great platform for creating a gamified classroom. I can create quests for the students that unlock more difficult quests, that unlock even more challenging options. During my first year of working with the program, I created a quest that had some basic vocabulary for our electricity stage. The problem was that it was quick and easy for the students to complete, and it was a stepping stone for more difficult quests. Many students would complete it quickly and then have no quests available until I had approved their quest. The way around this was to originally give students the beginnings to several quest chains to allow myself time to check their work and them to never be stuck without something available. I've also combined a couple quests to create fewer quests but have each one take a longer amount of time. This allows the students to be working on something for the duration of a class period. 

3. Create quests that can be completed off-line

      We are lucky enough to have chromebooks that I can sign our regularly and most of the students have a device they can use. Inevitably the situation will come up where a student is without something to access the internet. This is when you can pull out a couple quest options for them to complete while not being online. 

4. Don't accept mediocrity 

     This platform provides the perfect opportunity for students to do some really amazing things. Students will tend to get in the mindset that they want to get as many points as quickly as possible and the quality of work will decrease. When this starts to happen, I just ask the student if this is representative of their best, and give them a few pointers to make a assignment better. I send everything back if there aren't complete sentences with punctuation or if there is blatant spelling and grammar mistake. With this all or nothing grading system, you can really guide students to taking pride in their work. If you want to recognize a student that is constantly going above and beyond, you can give them extra badges and achievements. 

References

Burke, B. (2014). Gamify: How gamification motivates people to do extraordinary things. Brookline, MA: Bibliomotion, Books media.

Forehand, M. (2010). Bloom’s taxonomy. Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology, 41-47.

Huang, W. H. Y., & Soman, D. (2013). Gamification Of Education. Research Report Series: Behavioural Economics in Action.