I'm Sorry That You'll Never Meet Your Great-Grandpa

This morning, your mom and I woke up and got ready for work just like any other day. You were still tucked away in your mom's belly, giving her some kicks to show you're still there. We got to work and went about our normal routines. Then, at morning break, about 9am in Bangkok, your mom called me on the phone. This is not a normal thing so I was immediately concerned. She told me that my cousin Randi had posted something on Facebook. I had my computer in front of me and no students in my room so I did a quick check. Her Facebook status read, "Today we lost a great man, who knew everything about the outdoors. I will miss him soo much. Im sad that I will not get to dance with you at my wedding. I love you grandpa, but I'm glad u get to be with the love of your life again. Xo". I had to hold disbelief that maybe she was referring to another, non-shared grandpa but deep down, I knew that your great-grandfater, Russell Thomson had passed away.

I scrambled to confirm it. I had tried calling my mom but there was no answer at her home. Eventually, Randi's brother Bob signed in to Facebook chat. With a few short messages, he was the one that confirmed it for me officially. He had said that his mom, Kelly, and my mom were at my grandpa's house in Ancaster so I called his home. Funny how it's probably the last time I will ever call that number though I doubt I will ever forget it. My aunt Kelly answered and passed the phone to my mom. Her voice sounded surprisingly stable given the fact that she was in her now-deceased father's home and police and medical staff were in the process of moving his body from the home. When I asked her how she felt, all she said was "numb." And that's a pretty accurate description of how I feel too. 

After hanging up with my mom, I took a few minutes to dry some tears and gather my composure then sorted cover for the rest of both mine and your mother's teaching responsibilities for the day. I walked up to your mother's classroom and allowed the elementary principal, Brett, to ask your mom into the hallway. She knew right away what that meant. We shared some tears and hugs and made our way home to give everything some time to sink in.

I can honestly say that I have no regrets about my relationship with my grandpa. We spoke often, typically every week or two, and it was always great to hear his voice (especially when I would call him early in his morning time, before he had had a chance to put in his false teeth). Most calls would last anywhere from about 12-20 minutes before one of us would declare that we were out of things to say. But that was plenty. Often, we'd catch up on things that I had been up to and he'd talk about his week of playing cards (he was a killer bridge player) and taking walks to the local Walmart for a McDonalds coffee. In recent months and years, it was harder for him to remember things he had been doing. Even if he had just finished watching a hockey game, he likely couldn't tell you who won or probably even who played. But he enjoyed it in the moment.

Of course, if you asked him about something from the past, his memories were as clear as a movie and he could remember all kinds of stories from his childhood. Because we live in Thailand (and before that, I would call him from Germany, England, Australia, or Vancouver when I lived in those places), it was common to hear him say, "One time, I travelled all the way to Stoney Creek." In case that doesn't mean anything to you, Stoney Creek is a part of the Greater Hamilton area and is maybe 20 kilometres down the road. It was his playful way of saying he never really travelled too far which, in all honesty, is a lie.

Your great-grandpa had travelled around North America quite a bit with your great-grandma when she was alive. They had done trips to California, Western Canada, and they had a good stretch of years where they would spend their winters in Florida. When he was in the navy, he had been stationed along the East Coast of the U.S. near Boston. In 2011, he got his first passport and travelled all the way to Ireland for our wedding. He loved every minute of it and the Irish side of the family fell in love with him too.

Above all though, Rus loved to head up North to the Ontario wilderness for some camping, canoeing and fishing. He was pretty incredible. Even in the past year or two, he would drive up there on his own, put his kayak in the water (his old canoe had gotten a bit too heavy for him) and cast a fishing line. When I was a kid, it was common for us to go camping with my grandma and grandpa. He particularly loved Grundy Lake Provincial Park near Parry Sound. It doesn't seem so long ago but apparently it's been over five years since we went camping in Grundy together. It was great to spend some time with him but it was also a bit of a disaster since it was quite rainy and the tent was leaking. It cut our time a bit short but it was still a nice getaway.

It is going to be strange visiting Canada and not going to Ancaster to visit my grandpa. No more sitting on his front verandah, sipping a cold drink, watching him feed "the chippies" peanuts, chatting with passing neighbours (and passing strangers for that matter). I will now have to live with him in my head and my heart. I will remember him for the kind things he did and for things that he taught me. Yes, I can probably give him some credit for my frugality. If anyone knew the best value order at Wendy's, he was your man. But I can also give him credit for showing how rewarding kindness and forgiveness can be. If you ask people from the generation before me about him, you might hear stories about Rus having a temper or being a stern father. I never knew that Rus Thomson.

I doubt there are many families out there that don't have their share of in-family politics and our family is no different. Without getting into the details, in his later years, your great-gandfather mellowed himself out, swallowed his pride and put the past behind him with regards to any family politics. He decided to live the rest of his life knowing and loving all his kids, grandkids and even a few great-grandkids. I could see how happy he was in that decision; casting off any grudges and just enjoying people for who they are. It's a shining example and something I strive for myself. 

In recent months, Rus had been fighting what I can only assume was prostate cancer. He wasn't very forthcoming with information about it and would often try to dismiss questions about it or downplay his visits (or lack of visits) to the doctor. I imagine that the topic was pretty scary for him. Strangely though, I don't think it was the cancer itself that scared him so much as the idea of burdening anyone else with his problems. That in itself must have been scary, going through things alone. Lately, I had taken to asking him how he was feeling when we would talk. When I spoke to him last Thursday, he said that he felt generally well but he was getting more tired more easily. I asked him how he felt when driving his car and he said he still felt safe but knew that he tried to avoid driving at night to new places. He had plans to visit the doctor this week actually as a follow up to his visit a few months earlier about something "in his bowels" as he described it, probably not wanting to use words like prostate or other insinuating terms. 

Despite this, he was still quite active and independent right up until his death. He played cards at least four or five times a week and tried to walk a few miles each day when weather permitted (or, even when it didn't permit, he'd still do a few laps around "the track" at Walmart). One sad yet uplifting catchphrase that he had adopted lately too was, "I've had a good run." He had come to terms with an approaching end and was ready for it yet he hadn't given up on life.  That said, he was right; he had had a good run.

Sadly, he never got to meet you but Rus Thomson died in the best way that he could have hoped. He lived life right up until the end and passed peacefully in his sleep. He has left the world a lineage of wonderful people who will miss him dearly and who will always love him. I know that his spirit will be looking over us, keeping watch. 

Thank you grandpa for all your love. You will be in our memories forever.

Why We Are Unlikely to Fly Air France Again

The following is a feedback for Air France. Unless you're looking for an opinion about Air France service, you probably don't want to read this post.

I am writing to express our disappointment with our 15 December Air France flight from Bangkok to Dublin (flights AF 0165 and AF 1478, booking reference 62RR4P). For my wife and I, this was our first experience with Air France and things actually started off very promisingly. The check in procedure was friendly and easy; the plane was relatively comfortable; and the first meal that was served after take off (BKK to CDG) was quite good. After the initial meal, we were actually quite impressed with Air France but things seemed to go downhill from there.

The first disappointment came about 6 or 7 hours after the initial meal. As you might expect, we started to get a bit hungry so I asked a flight attendant if any more food would be served. Her response was that sandwiches and other food had been available on a "self serve" basis throughout the flight and that the announcement had been made earlier. I quickly flashed back to the announcements earlier that I could not actually hear due the noise of the plane. By the time I had asked about food, there was no more food available and that the next meal would be served in a couple of hours.

The next disappointment was shortly after this when my wife had finished reading her book and tried to use her entertainment system only to find that the sound from the player came through as a high pitched ringing. As it was two thirds of the way through the flight, we did not bother to contact any attendant about this.

Alleged "meal" on Air France / Photo from Flickr by twowaystairs

By the time the next meal was served, about nine hours had passed since our previous meal so we were naturally quite hungry. The "meal" that came out was more of a snack than a meal. There were three small slices of chicken with a small dollop of slimy coleslaw, an inedible bun that had not been properly defrosted and a piece of poorly-named "Tasty" cheese. So after waiting so long to eat, essentially, I had three small slices of chicken and a tasteless piece of cheese. Not providing properly portioned meals for a flight of over twelve hours is unacceptable.

Soaked Luggage / Photo from Flickr by twowaystairs

The next, and probably biggest disappointment was with regards to our luggage. As we were disembarking the transfer bus from the terminal to the plane at Charles de Gaulle, we could actually see one of our bags sitting on a stationary conveyor belt for over a minute (that we could see) in the pouring rain. When we collected our luggage in Dublin, it was soaking wet. Thankfully, we only had clothing in our checked luggage and did not have anything particularly susceptible to water damage. Also, luckily, we were visiting family in Ireland and had the capacity to clean and dry our wet clothes but this is absolutely an unacceptable practice for an airline that endeavours to provide a reasonable level of service. This procedure does not bode well for our return flight when we will have fuller luggage after Christmas. 

Wet Clothes / Photo from Flickr by twowaystairs

Two weeks ago, I used the Air France online feedback form to try to provide this feedback but I there were not enough characters available in the input box to adequately describe our disappointment. Worse yet, the expected response time is a dismal four weeks. We fly back to Bangkok tomorrow and, as I hadn't yet heard a response, I decided to call customer care. To be perfectly honest, it's a terribly uncomfortable thing to call to complain to someone. Typically, I would rather just take my business elsewhere but in this case, we're still tied to flights tomorrow that we're really not looking forward to so I thought I called to give Air France the opportunity to show some kind of gesture to make things better before we fly because after that flight, the likelihood of us wanting to book with them again is minimal.

The woman at customer care was friendly but, in this situation at least, fairly useless. I asked her what Air France could do to make this situation better before our flight tomorrow and she asked me what I had in mind. Not knowing of many other possibilities, I suggested that if there were upgraded seats available, that that would be appreciated. She said this wasn't possible so I asked her what was possible (as I am not an airline customer care expert). She repeatedly replied that an upgrade wasn't possible (which, to be fair, I understood the first time she had explained it) and that I should submit a complaint form because "Air France loves to hear feedback like this." I seriously doubt that Air France actually loves to hear this feedback but, regardless, it was very clear that any possible solution is still weeks away and will be long beyond the time in which Air France has the opportunity to make us feel better about flying with their company. Even if Air France refunds us some money, it would still be too late to improve our flying experience with them.

I have given Air France enough opportunities to make some show of good faith while we are still a captive audience but after our flights tomorrow, I'm afraid that it is unlikely that any gesture from Air France will be significant enough to persuade us book with them again in the future. Here's hoping that I'm wrong.

Why You Should Do The "Photo a Day" Challenge

Photo from Flickr by twowaystairs

In 2011, I was starting to get more familiar Twitter and noticed people that were posting daily photos. I also had a Facebook friend that was doing the "Photo a Day" challenge too. I remember really enjoying the posts and seeing what each day's photo would bring. It wasn't just about the photo but it was a about the person; getting to know them and how they view the world, even if I was twelve time zones away. So my wife and I both decided that we would undertake The Challenge in 2012 and we're both happy that we did despite the fact that neither of us are likely to continue into with The Challenge in 2013. Here's what I learned from the Photo a Day Challenge.

Photo by: @fatmumslim

The Rules

For those of you who aren't fully familiar with the Photo a Day Challenge, the name mostly sums it up. Every day, you share a photo that you have taken. That's it. Other than that, the rules are up to you. Some people focus on the photography aspect and look for cool, interesting images each day or use it as a way of improving their photographic skills. Some people set specific challenges for things to look for each day (see example to the right). Some people look for an image that tells a story of their day. When 2012 started, neither Caroline nor I knew which approach we would take but we both kind of fell into the latter approach. The Challenge became a kind of daily chronicle; an online diary of our year. For me, this has been the best reason for doing The Challenge.

Why I Liked The Challenge

The most rewarding reason for doing this challenge, for me, turned out to be a reflection on the year. It's amazing, looking through pictures from January or even July or August, how distant some of those events already seem. When I look back through the whole Flickr set from 2012, I get to see just how much I do in a year. The people I have visited or have visited me; the places I've travelled; the events I've attended; there is a lot crammed into a year. I have never kept a diary in my life but this photographic diary is a great way of keeping track of a year. The direct offshoot of sharing this diary online is that I can keep my family, friends and followers abreast of what's happening in my life on a regular basis.

Photo from Flickr by twowaystairs

Social media has made it so much easier to keep in touch with friends and family in a relatively unobtrusive way. Being a Canadian, living in Thailand, and having lived in many other countries, I have a wide range of family and friends in different time zones so this has been a good way of keeping people up to date with what I'm up to. It can become a conversation starter too. Often this year, whether in person or through an online video call, someone would say something like, "I saw you went to 'X restaurant' last week. How was that?" or "I couldn't believe our school had a typewriter set up for the students either." It gave people something to talk about.

Another, less expected aspect of The Challenge that I really appreciated was that it got me to step outside of my day and take a different perspective. It made me consider the events of my day, even the seemingly mundane aspects, to try to find a story. It helped to take you off of the auto-pilot of daily life. Knowing that I had to summarize my day through an image really helped me to stop and reflect on the often overlooked magic that goes into a seemingly ordinary day.

The Challenges of The Challenge

I remember when my Facebook friend, Mark Cunningham, reached the end of his year of daily photos and declared that he wasn't going to continue the following year. As an entertained follower, I was quite disappointed. His posts were interesting and insightful, often capturing the quirkiness of the everyday, so I didn't understand why he wouldn't want to carry on. As I now reach the end of my year-long challenge, despite the great reasons for undertaking The Challenge, I can now see why Mark didn't continue posting daily photos. It's probably the same reason that I will not continue with this specific endeavour in 2013. As rewarding and and insightful as it has been to partake in The Challenge, the fact of the matter is that it is in fact challenging.

Photo from Flickr by twowaystairs

By year's end, I will have posted a photo each day for 366 days. Living in Thailand, and being a teacher with a reasonable amount of holiday time means that there were many days when it was easy to find an interesting photo to tell the story of that particular day. A long weekend escape to the beach practically takes its own photo. However, when you're going to work, teaching, day-in, day-out for weeks straight, it becomes difficult to find an interesting image to sum up your day. Some days, you end up with a forgettable picture like the one to the left. It's almost sad to think that as early as the 16th of January, this was the best image I could conceive of to summarize my day.

Photo from Flickr by twowaystairs

Closely related to the inability to find a worthy image for a given day, at the other end of the spectrum, are the amazing days when one photo or image just doesn't capture the day. Or I may have taken an interesting image but when it came time to choose an image for that day, another image gave a better representation of my day so the interesting image was relegated to live anonymously in the gallery of my phone. For example, I remember on a drive down to Hua Hin, we saw this truck (pictured, right) stacked ridiculously high with crates. I love little Thai vignettes like this that show cultural differences but when it came to the end of the day, as amusing as I found this scene, it wasn't the best representation of my day and was ultimately forgotten until I started writing this blog post and was looking for an example of a neglected photo.

Finally, as I said earlier, I really enjoyed how The Challenge forced me to step outside of myself a bit to try to view my day as a spectator; as someone who would get a glimpse of my life in a single image. This allowed me to see the finer details in my day-to-day but it also meant that I would go photo "hunting" sometimes for fear of reaching the end of the day without having taken a daily photo. I would take pictures of fairly mundane things that could be woven into a short summary of my day but then, later that day, I would take a better picture and the more mundane picture would be unnecessary. Sometimes though, I would take that some mundane picture the following day again as a backup. While I was getting to see the smaller elements of my day, taking pictures like this to simply satisfy the need for a photo a day kind of defeated the purpose for me and, on those days, took away the fun of The Challenge.

Photo from Flickr by twowaystairs

Summary


For 2013, I will not be continuing my photo-a-day challenge but I endeavour to maintain the spirit of The Challenge; to continue to see the magic in the daily grind. I'm going to take a more post-as-I-go approach to my photo sharing with the hope of posting more interesting images as I encounter them. I may post a regular (weekly/bi-weekly) update on this blog to maintain a bit of chronicle of the year.

For those of you that haven't attempted The Challenge, I recommend you try it for at least one year of your life. It's a great way to really gain a self-perspective of just what your life is all about on a day-to-day basis. To those of you that continue The Challenge beyond one year, I commend you as I can attest to the fact that it is indeed a challenge.

Help to Give Our Students Some Examples

This Image on Flickr

If you're reading this, then you probably followed a tweet and your interest is greatly appreciated. Some brave teachers at NIST will be putting their likenesses online and open to our Year 10 students as a competition for the most interesting editing of the image. Of course, the results may be frightening but it's a fine example of our teachers being risk takers and 'walking the talk.'

If you have a few minutes to spare and care to crop out the background of this image and replace it with something far more interesting, this would be very helpful for getting the students' ideas flowing. Don't worry about how good it turns out. Effort is better than quality in this case. And something is better than nothing! Sorry for the crude green screen and if you don't have photo editing software installed on your computer, try out Pixlr online for free.

If anyone actually helps out with this, could you host your edited images online somewhere and tweet the results to @twowaystairs, please? Many thanks!

PS - Thanks to Alec and George Couros for the inspiration from their keynote at Learning 2.011 last year in Shanghai.

No More Throwing Your Sticks in the Middle to Pick Teams

Tweet

This year, with my Year 9s, I'm putting a focus on collaboration as students will work in groups to develop Scratch programs to help a NIST teacher improve teaching and learning in their classroom (overview here). In general, the students at our school are quite good students and, if allowed to choose their own groups, they would likely choose their friends but still manage to work fairly well. Most of them. However, as the development of an interactive Scratch program requires a range of different skills (some technical, some creative, some organizational, among others), I decided that I wanted to assign groups in which there is a reasonable balance of some of these different skills between team members. I'm hoping that this might encourage them to plan a little differently than usual. For example, if they know that one particular student has strong artistic or design skills, when planning, that student may be responsible for designing and creating custom sprites.

Structurally Sound Tower Bridge

My very first lesson of the year, I knew that my students would not yet have received their laptops for the year (1:1 program at NIST) which was an excellent excuse to get students into groups to remind them about how their peers interact in group activities. The activity was simple. I gave each team a box of supplies (paper; cue cards; coloured pencils; markers; rulers; paper clips; etc.) and asked each group to create something. They had about 50 minutes to create anything they wanted/could make with the given supplies. The results ranged from disappointing (the students' sentiments, not mine) to pretty impressive (including an Olympic-era replica of Tower Bridge in London and a Minnie Mouse puppet).

Minnie Mouse Puppet

With group dynamics and peers' skills fresh in their minds, I had the students fill out a survey on KwikSurveys (which, since the change of ownership, has gone downhill) in order to rate all of their classmates in six areas: Creativity; Problem Solving; Leadership; Knowledge/Expression; Teamwork; Digital Skills. I had done some searching for more scientific or proven skills/qualities to rate but couldn't find anything so, while I still feel that these maybe aren't the best range of skills, they served the purpose well for assigning diverse and balanced groups.

Using these results, I plotted them into a spreadsheet (shown below) and tried to assign balanced groups that should, hopefully, result in successful learning outcomes for each student. The nice thing for me is that even if students complain about their group placements, I can say that I used information that they gave me to make the decisions and it makes it seem less teacher-directed. However, as collaboration is the main thread/theme for this unit, undoubtedly, even students that get frustrated with fellow group members will still be coming away with appropriate learning experiences and will have plenty to reflect upon during the evaluating phase.

Values out of 500 because it was faster to not type a decimal

For me, it was interesting to see some of the results from the students to see how well the students know one another. Some results were fairly predictable but it was still nice to see that students do recognize the skills that their peers possess. There were a few surprising results too from students whose skills were put in more higher regards than I expected and some students whose skills were held in much lower regards than I'm sure they would care to know. Thank goodness for technology that allows for easy to use anonymity. Groups will be revealed early this week coming up so it will be interesting to see how the students react.

Gamification in Practice: Proceed to the Next Level

Tweet

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I was going to give gamification of my Year 8 Flash unit a go. The general idea is that the students would proceed through a set of nine levels that alternated through Flash skill building tasks and more curriculum based tasks like defining Design Specifications or creating a storyboard. I was interested to see how the students would react to this approach and so far the results have been amazing.

I decided to set up nine different blog posts and password protect them. To receive the password for the next level, the students would need to complete the previous level to an acceptable degree. Each blog post contains instructions for how to complete the level's challenge and how to show proof of completion. Here's an example of how one of the blog posts was set up:

The First Level

When reading this post, you might think that it sounds a bit prescribed and that it doesn't allow the students to the students to inquire and learn on their own but in practice, it has actually been quite the opposite. Each level becomes more challenging than the last by asking the student to solve more problems on their own. As students work their way through them, they begin to differentiate themselves based on their understanding of different tasks and, as you might expect, some students get through some of the tasks more quickly than others.

Increased Peer Support

Auto-Filtered Folders

When the students have completed a level, they are supposed to send me an email, which I automatically filter to the corresponding Outlook folder. I've told them that if they are waiting for a reply to an email, they can verbally let me know they are waiting and be patient. While they are waiting, they should be helping those around them, especially those that are at lower levels in the game. It's now at the point where students check the help resources and then if they can't complete the challenge, their next point of contact for help is their peers. If they're still stuck, I can then come over and help them to get past whatever obstacle is preventing them from progressing to the next level but for the most part, the students are solving things together.

Increased Engagement

Going into this, I had a hunch that students would enjoy the unique approach, as it's definitely different from their typical class structures, but I didn't expect the engagement that I've seen so far. I have explicitly said that students do not need to do any of this work outside of class time and yet I get students sending me emails looking for passwords to the next level at all times of the day, inside or outside of school. This isn't only for the "more fun" tasks like making things in Flash but even for tasks like making a storyboard or writing design specifications. They want to be able to set their red, incomplete levels to green, complete levels.

Students Fill in Their Successes on This Shared Google Doc

I have informally polled my two classes that are doing this unit and when I asked how many preferred this approach to work compared to the more "normal classroom" approach, it was pretty much unanimous that they preferred this. When asked if they thought it would 'get old' over the course of a trimester (2-3 months), most seemed to think that they would be happy to work through this learning method for extended periods of time.

Password Master

In the current incarnation, I am in charge of reviewing each piece of work and providing passwords for subsequent levels. At first, it felt like all I did was stand at my computer and review work and I was worried that I wouldn't be available to help students but, as students began to advance to higher levels, those levels would take longer to complete and the amount of email approvals has steadied out. Indirectly, it probably forced me to let the kids figure out more on their own or through their peers and get a chance to see that that method can be (and has been) successful. (NOTE: Having prepared video and text tutorials for many of the tasks was extremely helpful for supporting those early stages as it allowed me to say things like, "Check the 4 minute mark of the video and see if that helps"). Another advantage of being in charge of giving out the passwords for subsequent levels can be in giving students a slight delay between levels which encourages them to look beyond their own work to see who they can help before they more on to the next level.

Looking Ahead

The success I've seen with this has encouraged me to try the game method for a full trimester of work when school resumes after summer break. I have aspirations of being more explicit so that certain levels become official assessment levels (to keep the following example more globally understandable, I will use percentages with the explicit caveat that even mentioning the idea of percentages is completely anti-MYP). For example, perhaps by the time a student has successfully completed Level 3, this is enough to show 60% understanding for Criterion A and by the time they successfully complete Level 12, they can prove an 80% understanding of Criterion D. This would make assessment simpler but it will take a lot of planning to ensure that students are in fact given challenges that give them the opportunity to effectively prove their understanding of a particular criterion to at a particular level of understanding. I think it would help to make achievement more transparent for my students (typically between 10 and 14 years old) because I can clearly set minimum achievement levels, e.g. If you want 60% (again, for example purposes only), you will need to successfully complete 8 levels.

Photo from Flickr by Darwin Bell

My next step with this is going to be looking at my unit of work and each of the criteria to break them down into small, achievable tasks that show evidence towards a certain mark band within a particular criterion. In addition to these, I can supplement the criteria-based stages with relevant but perhaps not directly related tasks like having students find recent Technology news and blogging about it or presenting it to the class to help keep the tasks fresh and varied or getting students to read other students' work and leave them feedback about it. Since I have fairly successful units of work prepared already, it's basically a jigsaw puzzle at this point. I just need to break it apart so that I can reassemble all the pieces into a new, hopefully more interesting and effective picture.

Everything's a Game: Gamifying My Classroom

Tweet

Over the course of this school year, I've learned about a lot of different teaching methods and ideas about which I wasn't previously aware. I've been trying some of them in my own classes (21st century skills, crowdsourced grading, increased prominence of blogging, etc.) but there has been one that has intrigued me quite a bit that I have yet to implement and that's game based learning. Gartner, Inc. has predicted that "by 2015, more than 50 percent of organizations that manage innovation processes will gamify those processes." Since the same principles seem to make sense in an educational setting, I've been toying with ideas in my mind about how to make it work within the context of my classes. I've had some ideas but what usually gets in the way is trying make a game that fits the MYP Technology curriculum and adequately addresses each criterion. With this in mind, I eagerly attended John Rinker's session on game based learning.



photo credit: Toni Blay via photopin cc

John had taken a game based approach to learning about the history of the Neolithic revolution. To investigate the essential question ‘How does WHERE we live affect HOW we live?’, Rinker's class undertook a range of challenges, split into levels of achievement, that blended investigation of the content with investigation and skill development in Google Earth. An advantage to game-based learning is that it can help to keep an appropriate focus on the concept of the unit of work rather than on the tools used to present it. As Rinker points out in his blog, "This project isn’t about using the tool, it’s about creating an authentic experience to demonstrate an understanding of our essential question." This is what can really help me effectively apply game based learning to the MYP Technology Design Cycle.

As is the nature of the Design Cycle, despite the "creating" criterion  being a relatively small component of the curriculum (maybe about a fifth of the criteria), it tends to take up a lot of time with learning specific tools (in the case of most of my classes, that refers to digital tools) and applying those skills. Getting students to complete levels is an interesting way to get them to do more "dry" work like research in order to add some motivation to unlock the next level which may include learning or applying skills in a particular program. As the school year is nearing its end, I have managed to assess my Year 8s on all the required criteria at least once already so this leaves me a little more free to experiment with new ideas with my students. Typically, at this point of the trimester, my Year 8s would be starting a relatively brief 'design and make' project, using Flash animation software to create an eCard. As I was riding a bus recently, I jotted down an outline of how to take what is typically a pretty straightforward little unit and gamified it. I tried to alternate between Flash skills and other design cycle criteria. Here's an outline of what I have come up with so far:

Level 1 - Animate a Bouncing Ball. Students will follow along to a video tutorial I created last year to help animate a bouncing ball.

Level 2 - Type out possible ideas for their eCard and post it to their blog.

Level 3 - Get a star to follow a particular path while continuously changing colour.



photo credit: Cross-stitch ninja via photopin cc

Level 4 - Write Design Specifications for a successful eCard and post it to their blog.

Level 5 - Make your name transform into a shape

Level 6 - Pick one idea for your eCard and draw a simple storyboard to explain the action

Level 7 - Make the eCard

Level 8 - Make your animation file available through your blog

Level 9 - Support others with their eCards

So far, these are just skeletal instructions for each level and more specific instructions and requirements will be added. I am still toying with the idea of how to distribute each level to students who have successfully completed the work. An email containing the next level's instructions is one, simple way but I'm also considering having a password protected blog post for each level as well. Another thing to consider is a tracking sheet so that students can easily (and preferably visually) track their progress.

There are a few challenges to using this approach for student projects. One problem I've already alluded to earlier is that it can be difficult to present adequate/interesting challenges that still address the different bands of achievement on the curriculum rubrics. For this particular unit, I am making sure that students do address the different parts of the rubric but I think it will still be up to my professional judgment as to what level of achievement they've demonstrated for a given criterion. In the planning of future units of work though, I could foresee this as a great way to differentiate a unit of work. The earlier levels represent lower bands on the rubric and as the students succeed to high levels, they will begin to demonstrate evidence of criteria from the upper mark bands. Some students may not actually complete all the levels but for the more keen or capable students, this gives them the opportunity to take their work to a higher level without being held back by other students that do not progress as quickly.



Probably the biggest challenge involved in setting up a unit like this is the planning required for it to work successfully. Thankfully, for this first attempt at a game based learning unit, I already have a number of resources to build upon which makes it a more manageable task at this time of the year. Also, on the plus side, initiating such careful planning early on also means that once the unit is underway, I should, in theory, have a fair bit of time to manage the game and support students in their attempt to complete each level.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this works out and am certain that I will run into challenges along the way but I'm sure that things will work out on the whole and any problems that arise will simply help me to make improvements to units of work for next school year.