Lately I have been working on developing a unit of study for my AP Physics classroom that will turn our learning environment into something resembles more of a game. The intent is that it can spark some competition and boost motivation for all students to work to achieve at higher levels. This concept of gamifying the classroom is an intriguing one, and I am very curious to see how this will affect my students.
I chose the topic of circuits and the web-based platform of 3D GameLab (powered by Rezzly) to implement this physics classroom game. Rezzly did a nice job of explaining the basics - and requiring you to complete specific "quests" before you as a teacher can even begin to form your own groups/quests/rewards. When I did run across some issues, the help that was available online provided easy to find answers with great explanations. Getting started with this gaming platform was relatively painless. The most difficult part was deciding on point totals for the ranks to make them attainable. Adding in quests and rewards was a quick, user friendly process.
My thought process on the development of the game can be found in a document here. If you would like to check out the game, feel free to take a look and log in to 3D GameLab by using the fake student account I have created for this purpose. The Gamer Tag is PhysicsStudent and the password is student. Although I have not yet tried this out with my students (since this is a topic that we will start toward the beginning of 2nd semester), I am confident that a gaming platform will help those students that tend to underachieve. Those students can have a tendency to wait to complete assignments and hand in work, but gaming and displaying a leaderboard can show them exactly what is possible and provide them with a way of measuring how productively they are using their time compared to some of their classmates.
I can't wait to actually test this game out with my students... I will blog about the effect of gaming on the AP Physics classroom in February. Until then, Happy Holidays!!
