The following presentation by Nathaniel Bott speaking on gamification in education (TedX, 2013) is a must watch for any educator currently on a journey to adapt to 21st Century education.
Which brings me to my day yesterday with a class of Year 8 students. This class has a bunch of characters with learning behaviours that Nathaniel describes in his TedX talk. It was one of those exhausting days where you perhaps feign classroom control and expend a lot of energy guiding the cohort with heaps of encouragement.
On these days I always see myself as a pirate on a pirate ship, me the captain . We work together collaboratively but the weather is choppy and the crew unruly. Mutiny is in the air. 🙂
Student work
In the last session for the day when all can deteriorate very quickly, I guided the students towards an activity that could link into a Humanities unit of Geography. Students were to choose a country of their choice and with a few guiding question communicate to me why they would want to travel there.
I love it when you stand back and all goes well.
The little glimmer of success in this busy day was a handful of curated and published content from my students. Some chose to use Pic Collage to communicate their research, an example of which is the above page on Canada.
Minecraft
The real glimmer was four boys using Minecraft to create a scene from the U.S.A. This group of four worked beautifully together to build a replica of the Statue of Liberty. They found an image of the statue and to the best of their artistic ability build a virtual copy. At the feet of their Minecraft constructed statue sat a plaque that presented in text form, some interesting information about the U.S.A.
As is mentioned in the above clip, we need to Think Big and look for ways to allow students to explore as they choose, to be creative. If we as educators do not allow this, then students will choose that path anyway, following their own passions and pathways.
If you want to explore further, this classroom experience also illustrates the thinking of Helen Haste (Harvard Education, 2009) who describes the human being as “tool user”.
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those that cannot read and write, but those that cannot learn, unlearn and relearn” Alvin Toffler
The above TedxTalk mentions:
Gamification: ”The use of game thinking and game mechanics in a non game context to engage users and solve problems”
References:
Harvard Education (2009 Jun 26). Technology and Youth: Problem Solver vs Tool User (Part 1 of 4) Retrieved from http://youtu.be/YZRoS5QlJ44
Tedx Talks (2013 Dec 5). 21st century learning: Nathaniel Bott at Tedx Launceston. Retrieved from http://youtu.be/UI9TiuVHc0A
