Gamifying PD

Teachers cannot expect to teach in ways they have not experienced as learners. Or willingly and proficiently, anyway. 

That's why my brilliant district tech integration specialists, Marti and Tracy, have:

1. Created formative online assessments to help us differentiate our staff development efforts (Who wants to sit through training on using GoogleApps is one is already a proficient user?)
2. Placed staff development technology "classes" in Moodle, our CMS. (How can I create online activities when I've never participated in one?)
3. Made liberal use of self-created instructional videos so professional development classes can be flipped and the instructors can "clone" themselves and work with three or more groups of teachers at one time. (Oh, now I see how setting up learning groups in my classroom might work.) And can learn independently of F2F classes.

This has been done all in the last 18 months or so. I am so blown away.

But teachers, like all of us, may need a little extra motivation for learning independently, pushing our knowledge of and abilities with technologies, especially as we move to the MR levels of the SAMR model. You know, the scary parts.

I've been reading a lot about gamification in education, although I certainly don't consider myself any kind of expert. What does seem prima facie is that games seem to be universally loved by people of every age and help us all learn. So what I'm thinking about is gamifying our technology PD. Sound like fun?

Here are some things we are considering...

1. Identify the technology skills and uses we think would be useful to teachers and create ways they can demonstrate the mastery of these skills. I believe we already have about 40 separate online activities teachers can work on in 10 areas, each with Substitute, Augment, Modify and Restructure levels.
2. Create a means for teachers to report completion of each activity and mastery of the skill. Design a badge for each area of mastery and assign points. Badges could be put in e-mail sig files or on webpages.
3. Re-design each activity as a "quest" with hints, clues and maybe even humor. I'm thinking that something like the old graphic adventures like Zork might provide a model.
4. Create levels of overall mastery based on the number of points earned. For fun, let's call them Apprentice, Magician and Wizard levels.
5. Run a tournament among buildings to determine which building has the highest percentage of staff at each level. Update it weekly. Give prizes???

What do you think, readers? Do you know other districts doing this from whom we could learn as we design and implement?

One of my favorite "inspirational" posters is the one that begins this post. It universally gets a laugh when teachers see it. If we are going to restructure the learning experience for our students, shouldn't we be restructuring the professional learning experience as well? And if we want to bring a little fun into the classroom how about a little fun in our PD activities?

Just a thought.

(Not 10 minutes after I posted this entry, I picked up ISTE's September/October Leading & Learning with Technology and read Christopher Like's great article "Mission Impossible: Using Gamification to Increase Engagement in 1:1 Professional Development." Just goes to show great minds think alike, I guess.)

www.edudemic.com/2013/08/game-based-learning-infographic

Comments

[Tamara Cox]

We used a gaming model when we designed this PD opportunity. http://leveluptechquest.wikispaces.com You're welcome to use any of it. I'm looking forward to hearing you speak at our state tech conference, Edtech in October.

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Tamara,

This model is great - just what we are also thinking about but on a district-wide scale. I really appreciate you sharing it.

Doug

[Lisa Perez]

Doug:

I designed several online PD games for librarians here in Chicago last year. See our PLUS Tech game, played last fall, at https://sites.google.com/site/cpsplustech. In the spring, we played The Great Google Sites Cook-Off at https://sites.google.com/site/sitescookoff. Who says learning can't be fun and rewarding?

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Lisa,

This is great! I am sure we will steal a lot of ideas from you. Reminds me some of 23 Things that was all the rage a few year ago among public librarians.

Hope all is good in the Windy City.

Doug