Time for a new quest!
Getting ready for the new school year. My definite EdTech winner of last year was Nearpod. The close second — Classcraft. These two were the most powerful — game changing — apps that influenced my whole lesson planning process, and metamorphosed my attitude towards teaching, learning, and students’ journey towards success.
After two terms of Classcrafting, I abandoned it because it seemed overwhelming and time consuming at the kick-off, for the first three-four weeks. It took a lot of effort to explain what they should do, how, why, and to sign them into the Class. There was a giant discrepancy between tech savvy students and those without their own smart phones. We ended up spending a lot of time on technical issues before they understood the concept and the purpose of the game.
I feel like Classcraft team heard my whining, and worked for months to eradicate this issue. To give you the numbers: it took me about two afternoons to figure out how to start ‘playing’ when I first landed on the Classcraft platform. Granted, being familiar with the functionalities and the vocabulary made it much easier to kick start the new re-vamped version, but once I launched it, I was able to play 15 minutes later.
Disclaimer: This article may be confusing for teachers who are not familiar with Classcraft terminology. All the student names are made up.
Let’s start from the beginning.
The irreversible decision took me a month to make. I have been following the Classcraft Facebook group and have been weary of the complaints the teachers had. The best thing to do for now is to trust the higher power and the developers. They are detecting and resolving bugs daily, so while I am in the planning phase, the other teachers are Guinea pigs and thanks to them, there will be less issues in October.
So, what happens when you are ready to switch?
I’m encouraged to move on.
This is the most important change. Instead of the whole game being thrown at the Game Master at the beginning, Classcraft is now a gradual learning adventure — for the teacher as well as the students. Each chapter unlocks new functionalities and features. The landing page is very similar to the old one.
My existing classes are completely preserved: the students and the quests, together with their current progress and levels — everything has successfully transferred into the new platform.
All of my classes are already in Chapter 4, which means we are playing with quests.
If you create a new class, you are guided in the set-up stage: defining behaviors, powers, and adding students.
This may be confusing, but it’s good to know that you can mix-it-up with the behaviors you choose. You cannot, however, do so with the powers. I’d like to be able to choose the individual powers, too.
In the Introduction and Chapter One, the only features available are the tools:
Adding students is super easy. You just type (or paste) their names, and you can start giving points! No need for emails, waiting for students to join and choose their characters. This will be done in a later Chapter, when the students already have some XP and understand the rules that give them XP.
And Now we can start Chapter 1!
The greatest thing about Classcraft — the story — is still here! They kept the same video Intro you can play to the students in the first lesson. Before you start applying the Positive Behavior XP points, make sure you click around: you can see the students in a list view. Apart from the usual ‘to do’ and ‘notifications’, there is now a game feed tab. It tells all about how your players are progressing. This was presented in ‘notifications’ tab before, and it tended to be quite crowded during the intensive quest activity. This is an excellent decision by the developers.
Before I tell my students about the game rules, I just have to adjust the XP needed for levelling up. The Game/Class settings are the same as the old version, so no surprises there. Oh, yes, there are many more options for the sound effects.
I heard there are still issues of integrating Classcraft with Google Classroom. I intend to only use Classcraft in the first term. Very much looking forward to it!
When it comes to the Market Place, the space where you can find other teachers’ quests and import them to your classes, it’s still functional. There is an added ESL filter, which wasn’t there before. I managed to import two quests smoothly. That will be a great time saver once we reach this stage.
Although the predominant sentiment of the posts in the Facebook group in the past moth has been skeptical and frustrating, I am quite optimistic about the new changes. Needless to say, I will keep updating you about my and my students’ Classcraft journey at the end of each Chapter.
