Why? After observing the success that another teacher had with gamification, attending several conference sessions, and reading the book, Personalized PD: Flipping Your Professional Development by Jason Bretzmann, I decided to gamify PD this year for our staff. Holley Fontenot, an English teacher at my school, inspired me to gamify because of the success and motivation her students experienced in class. After gamifying, she had students who wanted to edit their papers and beat a grammar quiz even though they could have moved on to another activity in order to level up.
How?
For the first draft, I used Holley's template. She adapted it from a presentation by Jared Colley and Seth Burgess at the Lausanne Learning Institute in Memphis, TN. I used the template to organize the activities I wanted to make available to teachers. Each activity has a corresponding number of XP (experience) to earn. Our teachers are required to earn at least 15 hours of Tech PD each year and record it on a tech journal. This year, with gamification, they will earn XP but still use the tech journal to keep track of what they earn. Before proceeding with faculty-wide implementation, I asked two teachers to review the gamification template and make comments. Since I use a OneNote Class Notebook with teachers, I was able to easily share my first draft and get feedback (see image below).
For the second draft, I incorporated the suggestions but still was not satisfied with the template. It did not look fun and seemed complicated. I came across something called PD Bingo from a blog post (http://technicallyteamann.com/no-teacher-summer-slide-fun-summer-pd-teachers/) and loved the simple form. I decided this was the route I needed to pursue, so I started making a similar template with the activities from the second draft. I called it PD Bingo, but it wasn't really making sense to me. I thought about renaming it PD Building Blocks or PD Puzzle. I wanted it to have a positive title where one is motivated to complete the "game" after reading it. I began thinking about the word "Tech" and games and finally put together TECH-TAC-TOE. Teachers can play TECH-TAC-TOE to complete levels! Because we are a 1:1 school, new teachers to our school will be going on The Amazing Journey. They will still play TECH-TAC-TOE but will reach levels by meeting with me to learn about a part of The Amazing Journey. All materials needed will be in the OneNote Class Notebook for easy access.
Click the links below to access the templates.
- TECH-TAC-TOE (Levels 1-3)
- Tech Journal
My hope is that PD Gamification will make technology integration more meaningful for both teachers and students. Gamification allows participants to choose their own path, and it will be no different with Tech PD Gamification. Each teacher's journey will be personalized with student needs at the forefront. I look forward to teacher feedback to make it better, and I'm excited about rolling it out this week and letting the games begin.
