This is in response to a post by David Warlick:
Games in Classrooms? or Classrooms in Games?
Convert-able and Convers-able Rewards:
We reward student work and successful learning with grades. However, grades hold value mostly to their parents, to teachers, and, increasingly, to the government. In video games, students work to increase their level.
What is it about a level that has value? Two things come to mind. First of all, it’s something that they talk about. I often overhear conversations between video gaming youngsters where they are announcing the levels they have achieved in different games. They will then share strategies and short cuts that they discovered or invented in order to achieve their level. Secondly, the level influences the gaming experience. When a student moves to a new level, the game environment frequently changes dramatically. Perhaps you move from a dank cavern to a beautiful shoreline, or the surface of another planet.
I was reminded of the Harry Potter movies, when Mr Snape looks down his nose at Hermione and declares “10 points from Gryffindor” and the scores on the wall (looked like a cricket scoreboard) flutter round as some ghostly umpire was omnipresently monitoring the words of all the tutors and totting up scores in real time. (Sorry I know I should have chosen a rewarding example not a punishing one.)
Surely that could be possible now? Handheld terminals that allow us to assess kids on the spot,and for different type of achievments to be worth different points all adding up to a up numeric points total for each child or group to be displayed on a classroom display.
Now that would be fun way to tick off your assessment points.
