A Jealous Teacher

I have a confession to make: I am a jealous teacher, and unfortunately, incredibly so. I am not jealous of some other teacher on campus or even some other person. No, the targets of my jealousy are the silly games my students play throughout their day. I say silly, but in actuality they are wonderfully designed forms of entertainment. Students will tell me that they are not smart enough to graph a quadratic, yet they are able to solve the puzzles of Candy Crush or devise strategies in League of Legends. They do not want to make connections about World History, yet they will learn the lore of World of Warcraft or play the auction house in Final Fantasy XIV.

And my peers in high school education would blame an addiction to video games or a lack of practice paying attention for long periods of time for the students' lack of interest in educational content. However, I would argue that even my generation was this picky in what would keep its attention.We grew up on television. We required visuals that matched the audio we were receiving. We required anecdotes or narratives to break up the spans of direct instruction we were processing. Teachers that met these needs created by our form of entertainment, either intentionally or unintentionally, were seen as great. We claimed that we understood these teachers better and that they really knew how to connect with us. And those who were unable to mimic our entertainment in the educational realm were often viewed as ineffective and poor educators, at least by the students.

Sometimes, teachers would come up with ideas that were truly amazing in terms of making us learn in a kinesthetic fashion, or putting us in groups that made us stretch both intellectually and socially, or some other idea that was generally outside the box. But from my recollection, to be seen as a great teacher over the course of a whole year, a teacher would need to mold himself to the way students were being entertained in that day.

And although I was never a part of the generation before me, I would venture to guess that teachers had to convey ideas in the style of an older version of television and magazines. And those great teachers I had probably made the jump to a newer style of television and entertainment pretty easily.

And I am sure that I wish to become a great teacher in my day, I must mold my classroom to the style of entertainment my students are consuming. After careful examination, I have come to the conclusion that my students are entertained by two different styles of entertainment. The first would be video games, either the "serious" gamer kind of game like World of Warcraft or Call of Duty, and the "casual" gamer variety like Bejeweled or Farmville. The other style of entertainment my students find interesting are the videos they find either on their selection of cable channels or on YouTube.

And what qualities define the entertainment of my students? Choice, a tolerance for failure, and a design of small addicting activities. Let's look at these concepts, my argument for why I need it in the classroom, and how I might be able to incorporate these design styles into my classroom:

Choice:

For the gamer, choice is seen not only in selection of games available of every genre but also in the activities available once in the game itself. A consumer has a wide variety of apps and games to choose from in his quest to vanquish the boredom in his life. And even after he has entered the game world, he typically has a variety of tasks from which he can choose to engage himself in. For example, a user who chooses to play World of Warcraft could spend his time going on quests and killing things all by himself. Another player playing the exact same game could spend hours running a dungeon (a set of tasks designed for a group of 5  to tackle together each playing a specified role) with a small group of 4 other players or upgrade to a raid (a larger task for 25 players still with the defined roles) where he can play with up to 24 other player. One player may ride around on his raptor looking for herbs to pick or ore to mine while another may be killing wolves just for their skins. Another might choose to play against other players in controlled 20 vs. 20 match, while another player may fly around the world looking for other players to fight (who may be engaged in another activity listed above.) Still another player may spend all his time in a safe capital city crafting equipment to sell to other players or use his money to play the auction house much like a real world trader would play the stock market. And that's just one game! What's more is that I could have picked from any number of games my students choose to play and still presented just as many options of play. How am I supposed to compete with this level of choice offered to my gamer students?

Furthermore, my students who are not involved with video games will spend countless hours choosing what entertainment to watch. Gone are the days of 5 channels available to a viewer. Now if a student chooses  to watch his entertainment, he has probably at least 150 unique channels, on demand videos (either provided through his cable provider or a subscription service like Netflix or Hulu), and if "nothing else is on" YouTube will certainly meet his entertainment needs. Again, how am I supposed to emulate this style of entertainment?

Well, I have very little control over the choice of content I can offer to my students. In a course like Video Game Design or Computer Science, my students have already learned the basics of programming in... Computer Programming, so I can offer them a variety of activities to pursue, and they will gladly chase down these "quests" and learn something. The interesting concept I have found though is that the more freedom I give my students on what to learn, the more they learn. On the down side, when I give them that freedom, I lose control over what they are learning. In these courses, students will often choose to chase down topics that I would like them to learn, and everything goes well from that stand point. Even when a student starts to venture into useless territory, I can suggest topics with as little intervention as possible, and the student will redirect his focus onto something more beneficial. However, very rarely, like once or twice a year, that train goes flying off the tracks full speed in a no-man's land, and there is often very little I can do to bring that specific student back to the rest of the class without breaking the preset model of the classroom. It is a design flaw, and I am consistently seeking ideas on how to correct this flaw.

In my other classes, like Algebra 2, Statistics or even Computer Programming, we as a class are on a cruise of learning together. We will all leave at the same time, we will all port at various stops at the same time, and we will all arrive at the final destination about the same time. Just like an entertainment director for a cruise, my goal is to provide as many choices to my passengers. I can provide choice on how many people a student can work with. I can provide choice on the method they can learn material (video tutorial, question and answer session, do it yourself worksheet, reading a textbook or online article). Additionally, I can offer options on how large of assignments they choose to tackle. They could do a large number of small tasks to show mastery, or perhaps they may prefer to show all their knowledge in a single test, or they may want to take on a large project that would let me know they have an excellent handle on the concepts we are learning.

A Tolerance of Failures:

Here's where video games really shine in appeal. For almost all video games, a player is assigned a task, and very rarely is failure an unacceptable. For example, a player may try a level of Bejeweled 100 times without fear of a significant consequence. Yes, the player may have to take a little bit of time to redo the level, but he will gladly spend some additional time working on the game to make sure he can get it right. And even in the old days of Super Mario, a player that falls into a pit or gets touched by an evil turtle immediately begins the level again. Often, video game designers strive to find ways to immediately get a failing player back to playing the game.

Even television addresses this desire. The best example is Dora the Explorer or other preschool programming. These shows will ask the viewer to respond, sometimes even yell, his answer to the current question. They can yell the wrong answer all they want, but in the end, the host of the show will announce the correct answer and explain how the answer is found. The viewer that got the question correct will spend the next minute feeling great about his correct answer, and the viewer who got it wrong will spend a minute learning how to get the correct answer. Regardless of the viewers ability to get the answer correct or not, the playing field quickly gets leveled, and they all move on to the next question. No score and no put downs about how bad you are if you do not get the right answer.

The adult version of this design principle is often addressed in reality television. Survivor will present the viewer with the question of who he would vote out. The Bachelor asks the user who should be kept around another week to see if she is the mythical one. And even House Hunters will ask the viewer which house the buyers should purchase. And regardless of your answer, the show moves on and the viewer is either correct in his answer or learns something about the world around him. And on YouTube, video creators are often ending their videos with questions that the viewers can "hash out in the comments." Some will even spend a few minutes each episode commenting on the comments and validating/debating thoughts presented by viewers.

Overall, my the entertainment my students are engaging in has a high tolerance of failure. Many of these activities will actively engage their brain and require thought and problem solving skills they are unwilling to use in a classroom. So what makes their entertainment so special? Why can't I get the tenacity and the brain currency students gladly give games? A tolerance of failure.

In the current model of school, students are actually asked to do similar activities that the entertainment asks of them. A history class asks students to analyze what actions they would have taken at some point in history in a similar manner to how Survivor would have asked the viewer what he would do. An algebra problem will require a user to devise a strategy for solving just as a Call of Duty would ask a user to devise a strategy for completing a level. And there are only two distinct differences.

First, a student engaged in entertainment will know almost immediately if he succeeded at his presented task. In a school setting, once a student has taken a test, he may have to wait a week or more before finding out what score he made. By that time, his brain is already completely disengaged, and he no longer cares about the problem that stumped him so thoroughly before. As a teacher, I need to design methods where my students can get immediate feedback on assessments that matter without just giving out the answers. Furthermore, in a high school setting, telling one set of students the answer to a quiz they just took, sets the rest of the day up for cheaters as students will take the path of least resistance and pass the answers along. (Which they do all the time in video games, but very few care as games in the end do not matter.)

Second, if the user did answer incorrectly, the entertainment is really good about immediately putting the user back into the entertainment. If a user got 60% of a level correct in a puzzle game, the game says "Good job on the 60% you got right. Now do it again and do better. You could get it all right next time!" In a school setting, if a student gets a 60%, we tell him that he is a failure. He can try again, but the most he can get right next time is 70%. I'm not arguing that I want to offer infinite retests for full credit as I am sure someone will take advantage of that. However, I do want to offer a system where I can tell a student, "Great job on getting 65% of the test correct. Here's what you missed. I know that you can make adjustments and do better next time."

I have been able to tackle this task in a small way in my math courses. At our school, daily grades (quizzes for me) count as 70% of a students grade. In my class, quizzes are designed to be difficult. I want a student to take a quiz and know exactly what he knows and what he doesn't know. Tests, on the other hand count for 30% of their grade and would mean very little except that I have a deal that is quite appealing to my students. I allow the test for a chapter to override the quizzes for that chapter if the grade of the test is better. So if you as a student made a 50 on a quiz but a 95 on the test, that 95 can potentially count for 100% of your grade. (That's 70% plus the 30% for you non-mathy people).

In my Computer Science course, I have started giving students a 0 at the beginning of the nine weeks, and students will do the work of the course and watch their grades rise. Students are told that their final grade will be scored out of 1500 points. Then if I give a student a test that is out of 200 points and he gets 60% of the test correct, I tell him "Congratulations! You earned 120 points on that test. Let's see what you did wrong and get to work on getting more points." instead of  "You failed with a 60. You can retest on your own time if you like."

I haven't figured the whole tolerance of failure out completely, but I'm hoping to open up this conversation with my peers and see what ideas they throw out there.

A Design of Small Addicting Activities:

Finally, modern entertainment has built into their design small activities that become incredibly addicting. The investment of another level of a puzzle game like 2048 is small, and the player is convinced that the time cost of playing another game is so minimal that there is no harm in playing another round. And HGTV is the master of this in the realm of cable television. They will show a string of the same series over and over again. And a viewer will sit there and think, "Oh, another House Hunters. I might have time for one more. Oh, it's starting now. I guess I have time for one more." And he's hooked. Poor little addicted viewer.

And yet no student will sit and think to himself "Hmm, perhaps I should do just one more math problem. What's the harm?" How can I as a teacher design a course that will create a drive in a student to do just one more math problem? How can I create a classroom setting where the student has a drive to figure out problems on his own, where the bell ringing is just a sign for his body to move to another class, but the problems he encounters in my classroom? How can I create problems so that a student would gladly choose my work over the myriad of entertainment at his disposal? How can I organize my seating, my website, my assessments, my lessons into a giant trap of engagement that few students would have the willpower to resist? How can I create an addicting classroom that is addicting to both advanced and on-level students?

And this is my sticking point as a teacher, at least for right now. It consumes my mind as I drive to work, watch students on hall duty, or even wait in the line at the drive-thru. For without the other two concepts: choice and a tolerance of failure, I am fully aware that I have no hope of creating this last piece. And yet, if I could make a classroom that was filled with addicting activities, my job of motivation as a teacher would be done.

Diminishing Returns

A few years ago, I was directed toward a website called CodingBat to help give my students some extra practice coding without making me create lots of new problems. Honestly, it was love at first sight. Coding bat is fantastic! As a student, CodingBat provides a large number of Java coding problems. You just type the code into the text box provided, and it will compile the Java code you write and run it through a number of test cases. Then, CodingBat will tell you which test cases you failed so you can properly troubleshoot your code. As a teacher, CodingBat will track how often your students are running code and how correct they are with the code they are submitting. Additionally, you as a teacher are provided with the actual code they are submitting, so that you can see what they may be doing wrong and provide assistance that way.

Fast forward to today where I am attempting to create a gamified classroom. For the past progress reports my students had not performed well as I had been creating assignments with too little return for the effort. This created a poverty of points that resulted in failures on progress reports. (Which is a problem for a teacher as well as for the students and their parents.) I could have addressed the issue by decreasing the total number of points required, but I am quite fond of the goal of earning 500 points a week. So I didn't. I could have increased the value of assignments already turned in, but then such a sliding scale I thought would lead to distrust from my students as all assignments probably would not receive the same increase. Consequently, a student would probably end up saying, "Wow, I would have done that assignment had I known it would have been worth that much." So, I didn't go for that option either. 

I did however pursue 2 options that I thought would address the issue of poverty of points. The first option I pursued was the inclusion of Boss Fights (tests that are only available for a single day. For more info, see this previous post). Every student was provided with a review and later a test worth about a couple of weeks worth of points. And come to find out, for some students, if you put a worksheet in their hand, they will complete it and simply thrive. You tell them there is a test on these types of problems, and they will study that worksheet and do pretty well on the test. It's just how some students work. And a good number of students gained points back that way. I was pleased. 

The other way I addressed the poverty of points was through CodingBat. I figured that to make CodingBat appealing, I would need to make each problem worth at least 10 points. I also figured that no student would actually complete more than 20 or so as CodingBat will quickly increase the difficulty of the problems. I also informed my students that the problems that had a "show solution" button would not be worth any points but would be valuable in the learning process. 

For most students, my assumption of no more than 20 problems was correct. However, one student sat down for a weekend and knocked out 39 problems! And he was done for the 9-weeks. I still had 2-3 more weeks I needed for him to be motivated and learning, and he was done until April rolls around.

Next time, I am going to go for diminishing returns. On something as repeatable as this where I can be nickel'd and dime'd to death, I will make it so that the more problems you do, the less each problem is worth. If I were to write the assignment again (because I do not want to go rewriting assignments for the reasons listed above), I would say the first 15 problems would be worth 10 points each. The next 15 would be worth 5 points each, and every problem completed after that would each be worth 1 point each. That way, if he is just doing them because he thinks they are fun, I will continue to give him some reward, though not enough to make him useless for the rest of the month.

Team Leader Assignments

Today both classes of students decided on who would be a team leader from that class. I have 2 classes and told the students to select 2 leaders from each class. That will give me 4 total students to touch base with on the progress of the project. The plan is that I will not need to discuss the project with anyone other than the team leaders. The sole requirement for the team leader was a desire not to take the AP test. I did not want a student who would be focused on the AP test to be distracted by the worries of managing such a large project.

I started the conversation by telling the students that only non-AP testers were eligible for being a team leader for the project. Then I asked for volunteers. When a student would volunteer, I would have him/her leave the room, and students would "Fist to Five" (will explain below) the idea of that student serving as leader. All students would vote, including the AP testers, and if the majority of the students felt comfortable with that student as a leader, we would name him/her as one of the leaders.

One issue that arose in my second class period was an abnormal number of absences in one day. Apparently, tennis, baseball, and one-act-play were all out today. As a quick fix the process listed above was followed, but one student who was not present was selected as a team leader. Fortunately, I am confident about his ability to lead the group, and I had no objections to the class selecting him as leader even in his absence.

**Fist to Five** This is an opinion measurement tool used in the classroom to gauge the feelings of students on a matter. I will start by stating an opinion such as "Travis should be a team leader." Then students will display their thought by showing with their hand a number from zero to five.

• Zero means "I totally disagree with this statement. I will gladly argue against it if asked." 
• Three means "I do not care one way or the other." 
• And five means "I agree with the statement. I would even argue for it if required." 

Each student is required to vote, and all voices are heard with equal volume. This technique goes even further than merely voting for a leader. Here are some statements I have used with "Fist to Five" in my classroom.

• At the end of a complicated math lesson. "I think we need to work another problem together for me to really get this."
• "I have completed my test review and am ready to discuss issues I had working on it."
• "I would prefer to have extra time on the quiz today rather than use my notes on the quiz."

Selecting an Assignment

Today my classes gathered together at a common time to discuss the potential projects. I took the projects that students gathered and modified them to be large enough for a large group of students to complete over the course of a month. Students debated between asking colleges the value of National Honor Society and Academic competitions for college admissions or asking all UIL 2A schools about their contentment with the split district alignments. (Our school was recently put into 2 separate 3A districts. One for just football based on size and one for all other activities based on location.)

After asking questions, the students decided on the 2A project. They are now assigned to create a non-biased survey to gather the information. Then they will conduct a census of all 2A schools contacting both the superintendent and the athletic director of each 2A schools. (A census is required as there are only 220 2A schools). Students were hoping that by doing such a large project they will be able to work on a project that matters.

Tomorrow, two students from each class who are not taking the AP test will volunteer to be team leaders. Team leaders will be the contact for the class on work to complete. Team leaders have the luxury of assigning grunt work to peers but also have the responsibility of making sure the project stays on schedule. Once team leaders are assigned, I will primarily give tasks to team leaders and allow them to delegate tasks to their team members.

The meeting today took 5 mins, and the team leader assignments should take no more than 10 mins. Below you will find the spreadsheet I posted for the students to discuss the potential projects.

Student Contact	Organization	Pitched Project	Barrett's Version
Marcus	Mrs. Crumpacker	Value of Honor Society vs Academic Competition	Develop a non-biased survey. Sample 100 colleges and universities across the nation, 50 across Texas, and all top 25 universities based by size
Zack	Coach Fedora	Campus's opinion of new alignment	Develop a non-biased survey. Survey a census of all 2A schools to see how they liked the split alignment
Kyle	Community Pool	What proportion of the Navasota population use the pool?	Develop a non-biased survey. Obtain a map of Navasota and determine usage by geographical segments of the city

Gathering Ideas

As a small update, students were assigned community organizations to visit and ask about potential projects. Predictably, nothing came in on the first day, so we "bumped" the deadline back a day to today. Approximately 30 students were asked to collect projects. Three students came back with a potential project. The three projects are: collecting data about the feelings of the school about the recent UIL District re-alignment, polling community members to determine what proportion of the community uses the public pool, and polling universities and colleges to find the value of National Honor Society and Academic Competitions. Tomorrow both classes will meet in a larger meeting, and as a group, we will decide which project we will pursue.

Boss Fights

As I worked on the gamified course, I consistently came up with the thought that I would have to give up tests, for they did not fit the questing model. I was completely fine with this idea, but as a teacher hoping that others would want to pick up this model, I really wanted test to be a workable method for any subject.

At the same time, my students were failing as they were not able to knock out the quests quickly enough. I wanted to ensure that they were learning through projects, but the time needed to do these assignments was too extensive for my students. And then the solution to both of these problems came to me....

Boss fights!

I could create a test as a 1 day quest offering. Each student had one opportunity to tackle the test and the grade he received would contribute to his total experience points. I considered that surely no student would voluntarily take a test, but the key to motivation is incentive. I decided that the test was valuable to me, so it would need to be valuable for my students. I offered a maximum of 250 points for the boss fight. Students had learned that points come slowly, so the opportunity to get 250 points in one day was too much to pass up. And they all took the test and took it seriously.

Furthermore, if a student failed or missed the exam, he could always complete more quests to prove to me that he know the material. Essentially that is what we call corrections at our school, and students would always have the chance to prove knowledge of the material even if they were not a "good test taker."

Gamified Update

We have done the gamified class for 3 weeks now, (I know it is the same posting date as the intro blog, but I was a little behind and am now catching up) and the students seem to be doing pretty well picking assignments to do and sticking with them. I may need to increase to point value of the quests as I thought that students would be collecting more points than they have. Accordingly so, a number of students are failing on the progress report, but that will change as I look to make adjustments to the values.

One cause of this point deficiency is that I will give my students a great task yet not realize just how difficult the task is to tackle. They are about 90% on task, but my assessment of how difficult a task is was incredibly off. To adjust for this, I have posted a number of quick and easy quests that students should take and quickly raise their grade.

A positive note has been the quest, "Hijack the Lesson." I teach a new concept on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and students are provided my schedule of concepts to lecture about on the website. At any time, a student could say they want to teach the lesson, and hijack it from me. I will give that student a 5 min crash course on the topic and then let him research the concept and develop a lesson. Sometimes they make a powerpoint, sometimes they make code for others to look at, and sometimes they just come to the board and start talking. We have 50 min periods, so I tell them that I will give them 100 pts minus 2 pts for each minute I have to explain after the fact.

After 3 tries, we finally had a student make it through the whole lesson. The first couple of times, students would start and after a couple of minutes would get nervous and give up. As the students develop a culture of trying to teach and patience, they are starting to take more risks and learn concepts on their own. I have also attached a class wide achievement called "Better than Barrett" hopefully to provide incentive for students to keep trying to "hijack" the lesson.

Well, that's all for today. More updates to come!