This week I participated in my first ever Twitter Chat. Thanks to a recommendation from Don Sturm, my District's tech coordinator, I joined #xplap on Tuesday night at 9:00pm. The purpose of this network of teachers is to throw around ideas based around gamification in the classroom. I was expecting teachers to be sharing about different games they created to teach different lessons.
Nope.
There is apparently an entire culture of teachers around the world who have gone hardcore into turning their classrooms into D&D style role-playing experiences. I was absolutely blown away! I felt like a Model T trying to keep up with Ferrari's on a highway. I felt like I had nothing to contribute, but it was still really fun to see everyone interact on this level and have a ton of fun with each other.
I do really like the idea of gamification, although it did come into conflict with the articles I read this week for the Teacher as Analyst challenge about competition. Still, the amount of fun that I imagine exists in these teacher's classrooms has to be incredible compelling, and it sounds like they've coupled their love of D&D with their class content in amazing ways.
Week 2 Report
This week I participated in my first ever Twitter Chat. Thanks to a recommendation from Don Sturm, my District's tech coordinator, I joined #xplap on Tuesday night at 9:00pm. The purpose of this network of teachers is to throw around ideas based around gamification in the classroom. I was expecting teachers to be sharing about different games they created to teach different lessons.
Nope.
There is apparently an entire culture of teachers around the world who have gone hardcore into turning their classrooms into D&D style role-playing experiences. I was absolutely blown away! I felt like a Model T trying to keep up with Ferrari's on a highway. I felt like I had nothing to contribute, but it was still really fun to see everyone interact on this level and have a ton of fun with each other.
I do really like the idea of gamification, although it did come into conflict with the articles I read this week for the Teacher as Analyst challenge about competition. Still, the amount of fun that I imagine exists in these teacher's classrooms has to be incredible compelling, and it sounds like they've coupled their love of D&D with their class content in amazing ways.