The product keeps improving
The second two weeks in our Classcraft adventure have given me extremely motivated and self-driven students.
What confused me in the first two weeks was improved by developers: The progression bar evolved and is now more meaningful to students, as well as me. It contains the overall Experience Points (XP) count for the whole class. This gives the students the idea how close or far they are to the next chapter. They are eager to get more points, and they consciously do the positive behaviors (e.g. helping out your classmates, coming to school on time) in order to level up quicker.
All the characters are the same
In week 3 the students created characters. There are no Mages, Guardians, and Healers yet, so they just had to choose the face, and the character creation was done fairly quickly. One student was absent, but he did it nevertheless, from home.
We had a small hiccup with students’ devices: some couldn’t open, most probably because of lack of working memory. Up to now, the biggest challenge to students’ progress is their ability to access the Classcraft platform. Their devices and software are not updated, the batteries are low, the WIFI access disabled by parent locks,… I can see how schools with Chromebooks have the ideal setting for Classcraft-based learning. I kind of envy those teachers, because the biggest time waster is troubleshooting WIFI access and device-related issues.
Send me a message
With messaging now functional, it’s much easier to target individual students with specific requests. We are using Padlet as our materials storage, but all the messages there are public. This way, through Classcraft, the students can tell me what they might be shy to share with the group.
Welcome to Elda Island
Most students were eager to start the quests, and half of them did not need any help, instructions or directions in how to do discussions or submit assignments. Those who progressed fast taught the others, earning the XP for positive behavior, too!
After the first quest, the class progression is as follows:
6-student class:
- 4 students Level 4
- 2 students Level 3
- Overall progression: 12600/18000
10-student class:
- 6 students Level 4
- 4 students Level 3
- Overall progression: 27000/30000
My plan is to assign one quest per week, to allow the students to progress far, and to collect a lot of GP so they can buy a lot of equipment.
One student added their parents. Very curious how that’s going to play in their progression.
In conclusion, the second chapter enabled my students to reap the benefits of following the rules. The students became more self-led and goal-driven, so much that they even reminded me of the rules. They encourage each others to do the positive behaviors, and are asking for more quests.
