Why You Should Consider Gamifying Your Classroom
For the past couple months, I have been using ClassCraft, an online gamification website, to add game elements in my classroom. Because I don't really play video games or RPG's (Role Playing Games), I was a little nervous jumping in on this, but I felt like it was going to be beneficial for my students. ClassCraft is described as Class Dojo meets Minecraft, which makes the name make complete sense. I previously used Class Dojo, and while I still like the product, I wanted something more interactive and fresh.
The layout of the website is very user-friendly, and uploading my students into the database was as easy as it possibly could be. I spent an afternoon reading the manual and trying to understand what exactly it was capable of doing. |
After I felt I had a good grasp of the game, I implemented into my afternoon class. Immediately, the students were excited. They logged in and customized their character to look like themselves and read about the super powers they could gain. I'm not going to get into the specifics of the game itself other than students earn Experience Points (XP) for good behavior, lose Health Points (HP) for bad behavior, and use Action Points (AP) to activate their super powers.
After about a week of implementing this program into my everyday lesson, I saw improvements in not just behavior, but also academics. Students who normally didn't volunteer now did to earn XP throughout the lesson. I start most days off with a random event. This ranges from "They ate something poisonous, they all lose 10 HP" to "The Game Master [Teacher] will choose a song and you must give the Artist and Song Title to earn 250 XP." I think my students like these the most.
On top of all of that, you can use it to choose random teams or players, give rewards (or punishments) for poor grades, and even embed questions/discussions in the software. It's highly customizable and a lot of fun for both the teacher and the educator.
Even if you're not a "gamer," if you are looking for a great way to increase motivation, participation, and academic scores, ClassCraft is definitely something you should look into. Click here to sign up today!
After about a week of implementing this program into my everyday lesson, I saw improvements in not just behavior, but also academics. Students who normally didn't volunteer now did to earn XP throughout the lesson. I start most days off with a random event. This ranges from "They ate something poisonous, they all lose 10 HP" to "The Game Master [Teacher] will choose a song and you must give the Artist and Song Title to earn 250 XP." I think my students like these the most.
On top of all of that, you can use it to choose random teams or players, give rewards (or punishments) for poor grades, and even embed questions/discussions in the software. It's highly customizable and a lot of fun for both the teacher and the educator.
Even if you're not a "gamer," if you are looking for a great way to increase motivation, participation, and academic scores, ClassCraft is definitely something you should look into. Click here to sign up today!