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Tuesday evening was the moment that the teacher, now student, becomes teacher again. While I spend all day teaching Grade 6-8 students, it is another thing to "stand up" in front of your peers and lead a class. My topic: Interactive Games To do this I wanted to develop a more interactive presentation to match the topic. My new passion (or obsession) is the Breakout EDU concept. Building on the escape room trend, Breakout EDU uses a locked box or digital document that requires the solving of a number of clues to unlock the game. In the process there is a great deal of gamification and game-based learning happening. While exploring a digital break out that could be done I came across the Sound of Music Digital breakout by Goh Boon Jin and Stephanie Foo Tze Wurn. The deck.toys.com platform was used to create this digital breakout. Try your hand at it and see how you do. You can comment on my post and I will message you privately with any hints that you might need. Following someone in a cosplay costume has a way of making the nerves get a little worked up. What if it doesn't work? What if it isn't enough? What if it is too much? What if the content is correct? After a short preamble, students were asked to log into the Interactive Games deck.toys. Having run the demo and actual presentation on iPad, laptop, iPhone, PC I was familiar with how it worked as a student, but didn't know what it would look like as a gamification/teaching platform. What I saw was a nice platform that allowed me to see where each of my fellow classmates, turned students, were. The little initial icons floated between activities. As a teacher I could quickly see that one person was stuck on the first technology match up question. I suspected one of two things: a) confusion with the terminology or b) issues with the technology. Within 2 minutes the student moved onto the next area and was able to get into the rest of the material so I didn't need to interrupt their learning process. In a classroom situation, I would have been able to go over and help problem solve with the student and determine if it was a language, content or technical issue. At one point there were students at the beginning and nearly the end of the material. I may also check in with those that finished first and ask them some follow-up questions to ensure understanding of the material. It is possible on some of the stages that people clicked through without watching the videos and thus might have missed some of the information. As the students reached the Breakout EDU activity they were locked until they figured out the password. For students to figure out the directional lock they needed to use the prompt to go back to the brain map and look at the path they had taken (e.g. Up, Left, Up, Diagonal, Right, Down). I saw several students get stuck at this point and as I approached the end of the class time I started to take questions in the general chat area. Several admitted getting stuck, others were interested in more of the features that existed behind this learning platform. All in all it was a successful lesson on gamification and game-based learning. I had hoped the LINOIT would get practical examples from my fellow teachers. The problem with technology is keeping up with all the latest developments. The best resources have come from word of mouth and perhaps those reading this blog will consider going back to add to it.
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AuthorI am a teacher in Halton and have spent 12 years dedicated to learning about and working with students who have special learning needs. I have been teaching since 2005. I have 4 kids (2 + 2 step), I play bagpipes, ride a motorcycle and love being outdoors. Archives
August 2017
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