I have wanted to delve more deeply into gamification in the library. Over the years all of us have incorporating games throughout our programming whether it was staging a scavenger hunt, creating a Kahoot! for a lesson, or even the classic Jeopardy Powerpoint. Several years ago I looked into digital badging as one entry point into adding game features in my library program, but it never came to fruition. At the tail end of this school year I started my gamification research again as a way to recharge and level up the Battle of the Books program that has been going strong at my school, Berkeley Preparatory School. In a way, any schools that have had a Battle of the Books program demonstrated an early form of gamification in the format of a game show. So that is why I thought I could bring in the digital tools readily available to the classic Battle of the Books model to capture the interests of our students today. Students have loved books like Ender’s Game,The Hunger Games, Ready Player One, and more recently Nyxia that have video game elements in the narrative. So I thought I would immerse myself into gamification in education to see how I can merge these elements all together. I have named this iteration of gaming- Ready Reader One: a Battle of the Books Reboot. In this post I will share my research resources and the initial elements I want to incorporate. Disclaimer: I have not built my platform yet, but I hope to use the Google suite of apps to have a leaderboard, digital badges, and boss battles. I plan to write follow up posts on the process and outcomes from this endeavor.

Video Promotion of Ready Reader One

Some Basic Game Elements to Consider

Avatars/Player Stats– Students create their gaming identity and have their own statistics page.

Leaderboard– The central level-up board that pays tribute to video arcade games. This gives students feedback on their status

Quests/Missions-Narrative-based challenges like the webquest of yesteryear or the days of Dungeons and Dragons

Battles/Boss Battles-Setting up a challenge in which students collaborate to defeat a common enemy/beast.

Powers/Tokens– If students achieve a mastery or level they receive a special power or token that helps them get further in the game.

Badges– As students move through tasks that can receive a badge for each level or skill they achieve.

Pre-Existing Game Platforms

The following links are gamification platforms that have built the ecosystem for gaming elements for the classroom. 

Classcraft- https://www.classcraft.com/

Grade Craft-https://www.gradecraft.com/

Rezzly-https://www.rezzly.com/

Classcraft is the industry standard for a full package gamification for a classroom. They have demos and lots of support. Classcraft is robust and full-featured at the onset, but can be modified by the instructor. Rezzly has the basic features you would want to get started in gamification in education; it is simpler than Classcraft. I recently stumbled upon Grade Craft and it also has all the games elements available in a structured, easy to use set-up.

Gamifying Educators-Websites

The following educators are using google sheets to gamify their classrooms. I have decided to follow in their footsteps and build my own platform with Google apps so that I can tailor it specifically to my program. Many of the pre-existing platforms listed above are built for traditional classrooms and are a bit too robust for what I am trying for my program. So I am going to use many of the tips and tricks from the following educators to use more features of the Google apps. I am learning how to make a master sheet and link Google sheets to each other to automate scores on the leaderboard.

https://classroompowerups.com/

http://www.teachingabovethetest.com/p/gamification.html

https://www.mrmatera.com/explore-like-a-pirate/category/Gamification

https://alicekeeler.com/2014/11/05/gamification-creating-a-level-up-for-your-students/

Board Games

 I am always thinking about the balance between powering up and powering down. I want my students to be able to excel in the digital realm, but also develop inter/intra personal and introspective skills through off screen activities as well. The act of reading and getting lost in a book and playing a physical board games with classmates will also be integrated in this program. I am going to reuse some classic board games, but create new question cards based on the reading list for the Battle of the Books: Jenga, Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, and Battleship are just a few of game reincarnations to go with the book list.

Game On

I am excited to get started on the underlying structure to gamify the Battle of the Books for next year. I am going to start with creating questions in a Google form for each book on the list that will link to the leaderboard. I am also going to create a quest in which students will share about elements of each book to gain additional points. I’ll keep notes on my process to share for my next post.