Well here we are, on the eve of yet another school year, and I am excited. Wait, wait? A teacher who is excited to be going back to school? Yes, you read that correctly. A midst the soon to be over crowded halls, deafening noise and funky smells that accompany all middle schools, I am truly excited to be right in the middle of it once again.

The beginning of this year has a different feel for me. This gamification has reinvigorated me and I am hoping that I can translate this growing passion for my subjects (science and technology), coupled with the gamification, to raise student engagement to never thought of levels.

So, when I last posted, I left you all with my thoughts about the importance of a successful narrative. In short, if you have not read my previous posts: the narrative creates the story and the story creates the selling point, and the selling point ropes in the player. Now, most classrooms do not replicate any sort of environment that most students would find "game like". Desks are often in rows, kids need to remain still, work is provided with little flexibility, you know the drill... I was guilty of this for years myself but this year I decided it was time to change that.

Now to clarify, I have no issue with this style if it works for you but over the past two years I have been slowly working away from this because it does not work for me. I'm active, over the top, loud and a bit of an odd ball and asking the kids to do something I could never do often proved difficult on me. My gamification was my opportunity to ditch it completely and try something totally different!

When I walked into my classroom on Wednesday, August 26th, this is what I was faced with...

Now, I'm the first to admit, this room had a lot of work to be done to it to pull off a believable "Land of Scientia Terra" feel. Overall, it was plain and needed some major creativity - admittedly, something I lack from a design standpoint. However, I was able to counteract this with my rich, nerdy past.

The first thing I decided to do was think back to my RPG playing days and layout what I could access as a player. The easy ones of course were the shops located in the villages. I knew as part of my game I would be selling items and forging and crafting them as well, so right away I knew I needed two locations in my room for this to happen and thus my "General Store" and my "Blacksmith" were born.

*Disclaimer - my room would not have been completed on time if it were not for the incredible help of my wonderful staff. At points, I had 5 different people helping me out from cutting out game cards and sorting them, to re-lining bulletin boards with paper and everything else you could think of, they did. Kim, Marilyn, Carolina, Walter, Karen - I would have never completed this without your help!*

If you look at the picture above on the left, I used the display case in the back of the room to create these two different areas. Normally, this display case accumulated random junk throughout the school year and just became a burden. Now, it would be a focal point of my game. To dress it up, I printed off different photos of old barn wood, bricks and nails and proceeded to cut them into strips and blocks. I lined the bottom with wood strips to create an old hardwood floor and lined the back with wood and brick to create the back walls and roof. To create the store photos themselves, I used a very, how should I say, uniquely named, website. This website takes standard photos and blows them up to cover multiple pages forming one large image and it does it well. Want to create large, unique posters for your room or office? You need to learn to rasterbate. Sigh, a lame joke. The website, named as a "youth mistake" according to the creator (if I understood a blog post I read correctly) is located at http://rasterbator.net and generates fabulous wall art for free. You just need to take the time to cut and put it together. Feel free to check it out!

Anyway, to complete the look I added hours of operation, open and closed signs, and dirtied up the blacksmith floor with various odds and ends to sell the whole crafting feel while putting up pretend shelves and items on them in the store. I'm very happy with how it turned out. Here is the finished product!

So that turned out pretty good and left me to wonder what I should do next. Well, thinking back to games I knew I needed quests because, well it sounds a lot more fun than "work" and second it offers multiple possible tasks, which are leveled with different difficulties, occurring at the same time. Now I needed a way to get these quests to seem real, that is to say, if I said you were able to fight goblins in a field I could not just tell you - I needed to make it real. Well, through some great conventions and collaborations, I'm pretty familiar with Augmented Reality (AR) technology and decided that would be the perfect way to add the true to life "questing" element I was looking for. I will be posting an entire blog about quests. How I use them, why I use them, how they work and how they are submitted  and I will be doing this soon so for now I'll leave the greater details as a mystery! Just know this, AR technology requires the use of trigger images, that is to say, images that the software recognizes and in turn triggers something to happen. To accomplish this I used the website mentioned above again to create some scenery about locations you could encounter in Scientia Terra: mountains, fields, caves, villages, etc... and placed them around the room. It did not look complete though when I did that so, with the help of many, we took them down and lined the walls with blue paper to mimic a sky. Still did not look good enough to me, so I added paper clouds and "m" birds. Yes, the kindergarten, Sharpie, "m" bird is back and his presence really tied the room together I must say!

So I've got quests and stores. Now, on the topic of quests, I really did not want the students to complete their quests and simply hand them in so I decided I needed a different approach. Coincidentally, my school was getting rid of some old junk and one piece of junk was actually a giant Lego robotics table. I snatched it up and looked it up and down for a while. Then it hit me! When I was buying baseball card holders (for my games inventory which I will talk about more later on in the year) I noticed a huge setup for the board game "War Hammer".  Now I have no idea how it is played but I do know it requires a giant, painted and very detailed battle field that you move around. The better it looks the more it sells the feel. Bingo!

I decided to take the table and build my own Battle Ground. I filled it with sands and rocks and little figures I found at another game shop. I added sticks and big chucks of broken concrete and other scraps and carefully tried to pull it all together. I wanted to create a war torn area where battles (work submission) would take place. I have to say, I still have some details I want to add to it and I have an incredible art teacher who is looking at getting a few detail pieces for me as well, so it is not 100% just yet but I'm happy with it now. Now back to the whole work submission component. When I discuss my questing component I will be addressing at the same time how I use this table along with it. You'll have to check back later to see how it will all come together. For now, check out the table!

*Not shown is the 4 x 4 gravel laminated print the kids put their work on to avoid spreading dirt all over the room - I hope!*

The last major component was my poorly used, humongous bulletin board in the back of the room. Last year, I really wasted the space to be honest. I did not keep anything up to date and was not motivated to for that matter. It more or less became an eye sore and I did not want that to happen again. This year I had a plan. Most RPG video games contain community areas where you can chat, post items for sale or you are in search of or even provide clues to bigger and better treasures hidden in  the game. I needed to do that so I revamped the back room. I added a giant community board by printing off old wood photos, cutting it into strips and stapling it to create a frame. Then, to get the cork board look and feel of an old, community, message board, I simply used a scalpel and cut the paper out. Looked awesome! I then did the same for 3 additional frames where I will post my Player of the Week, Guild of the Week and Treasure Clues (more on those later on as well). Using the same wood trim and cork look I really feel like it tied it together.

I then needed a map of the land to make it real so I found one online (thank you to whoever made it!) and did a little rough, photo-shopping. I added the names of the lands and again used the rasterbator (still feels awful to type that) and made it 6 sheets of paper big. Next, being a Catholic school, I needed a prayer corner. Easy transition! I made the last panel of the bulletin board my Chapel. This will contain all the important information I need to communicate in both my religion and science courses and provide a small perk to the Priest class player! I tied it all together by printing old signs, and getting the incredible Marilyn (art teacher extraordinaire) to fill them out to complete the signage. This way to shop, map, etc... It really cleaned up the look I have to say!

Also, yes I do use that TV. I hook it up to an old laptop and use that computer to display my digital leader board. This helps players know where they lie in the greater scheme of things from multiple standpoints (XP, gold, by class, etc...).

Finally, I wanted a sense of mystery so I decided to cover the shops and battle grounds and will unveil them a week or so into the game. I will be adding question marks to them the first morning of school just before the kids show up. This should hopefully create some suspense and curiosity in the kids. Unless they listen to me as I explain the game to them then they will know to come here and see the surprise before it is unveiled!

The last thing I did was rearrange the desks into 4 guilds like you see pictured. They have small signs floating above them that will soon be replaced by true guild names and logos. I'm excited for that part. Finally, I need to complete my Armory where the kids can collect their needed supplies for their guild and subsequent quests. It will be on the left under the wall of cabinets. I've started the transformation but have not yet completed it. I will also be wrapping my desk with black fabric and adding some sort of detail to it indicating that it is my throne and palace for I am Master Heebs during this gamification! Will take me another day or so.

So here is my class. Ready for the kids and hopefully captivating enough to capture their attention and take them into the land of Scientia Terra. Fingers crossed it all works out!

What do you think?

Scott

PS: Good luck everyone with your own classes as the year begins!

(This is part two from my first part - Developing A Successful Narrative Part 1)

My apologies for the delay between posts as I do realize it has been over a month since I have updated this blog. I decided to take some of the summer off and just focus on family. I had a pretty up and down year (a birth, a loss, built a house, etc...) that I decided it was time to be there for the family! With school mere days away I decided it was OK to jump back into this.

Thank you for your patience!

So in my previous post I eluded to the importance of creating a successful narrative in your Gamification. While it is a point of contention in the gamification world I firmly believe that it is important to make sure you develop a strong one to capture your audience. Just like a good story in a book or a strong movie script, a good story can truly draw the user (reader, viewer, player) into the media at a deeper level, immersing themselves into the characters and their surroundings.

So when I decided to write my narrative, which can be found here, I had to gauge my audience. As a grade 8 teacher, I work with students from 12 to 14 years of age, often with raging hormones (yes I went there), multiple commitments and a potential disinterest in my subject area (not often of course!). Who could forget as well that they are bombarded with media everyday when they pick up their phone. With that being said, I knew that simply writing a story would not be the ideal solution to everyone, to some of course but not all, so I decided to whip up a little movie trailer to better sell the story.

(To make this trailer I utilized Abobe Premiere Pro for the editing and compiled clips from Lord of the Rings, The Gumeracha Medieval Festival and The Templar Sword Fighting Association while using audio from the Requiem For A Dream Soundtrack. Obviously, no copyright infringement is, or was, intended in the creation of this piece for my class)

Please check out my trailer below. Feel free to leave a comment below!

So, after watching this, imagine being in the shoes of a student walking into my course. Instead of sitting in your desk, receiving yet another syllabus you sit down and are told the following two sentences (which I do say!)

"Welcome to Grade 8 Science. That is the last time you will hear me call it that. Also, you all have 0 in the course right now"

Kids look on perplexed...

"Here is your game manual. Before I explain it, please watch this video" and I press play.
(I will be discussing the game manual and posting a copy of my own in a future blog post)

Now you have the kids hooked because they are curious, they wonder what in the world I am talking about and I am happy to explain. Now I explain the concept of Gamification and how it will apply to this course. I go over the game manual and set the bar for the course. I am always enthusiastic and dramatic because I need to hook them now!

So once this has been completed they look at me and ask what is next. My eyes light up because this is my favorite part of the gamification, "You get to create the new you!" I reply. It is at this point that I explain to them the concept of an avatar - almost most do already understand it because of current gaming systems. This is normally where most gamifications stop but I decided to draw from my gamer experience and introduce character classes.

Not only do players in my gamification get to create a player and name them but they get to select a character class. Will they choose a barbarian or a mage perhaps a priest or a thief, maybe a knight or a steam punk! Each class has a perk associated to it that the players are unaware of - to this point anyway. They receive a custom card indicating their class, male or female version of each, and they are to hold on to it for the duration of the game.

Next, they are randomly selected and put into a guild (team) whom they will work with for the duration of the game. They are then asked to generate a guild name and logo and it will be displayed in class, above their hideout (desk arrangement) while they play. I use a digital, online, randomizer (I use this one found here) to create my guilds. The kids love the excitement of this because it is almost like a draft. (More on the guild system in a future post).

Doing all of this, I hope to draw my kids in to not only creating an avatar but connecting with it. Not only familiarizing themselvs with the story but wanting to be apart of it! A mindset of ... "I am (name) a barbarian in the land of Scientia Terra ready to free it's people" (or a mage or priest, etc...). "I have seen the land and I have seen the seen the people and I will do what I can to help them." That is the ultimate goal in my eyes! Just like a good movie or book, if you cannot put it down, then you will progress quickly and progress hear is learning!

So to summarize, using a successful narrative is crucial to a successful gamification - to me that is. Introducing the story in not only words but with a video is important. Creating avatars as well as character classes and the creation of guilds continues to build that emotional bond. The students begin to feel connected with the gamification and ultimately, that is what gamification is all about isn't it?

Until next time!