Zach Diamond  0:03  
Welcome to the Modern Classrooms Project podcast. Each week, we bring you discussions with educators on how they use blended, self paced and mastery based learning to better serve their students. We believe teachers learn best from each other. So this is our way of lifting up the voices of leaders and innovators in our community. This is the Modern Classrooms Project podcast. 

Zach Diamond  0:29  
Hello, and welcome to episode 177 of the Modern Classrooms Project podcast. My name is Zach Diamond and I'm a middle school digital music teacher in Washington DC, and a modern classrooms implementer and mentor. And today I am joined by Chad Collins, who has taught sixth grade language arts up until January when he transitioned to a role as an elementary and middle school gifted and talented teacher. And I happen to know that Chad is newly a DMCE because I was the one who reviewed his DMCE submission, and we're going to talk about that a little bit later. But anyway, welcome, Chad. I'm so happy to have you on the podcast.

Chad Collins  1:04  
Thank you for having me on here. I'm excited to talk about this. 

Zach Diamond  1:08  
Yeah, I'm excited to talk about it too. Our topic for today is gamification, which I have wanted to talk about on the podcast for quite a while and kind of snuck in a little bit on an episode a few weeks ago with Cat from Genially. But we're really gonna dive into gamification because listeners, what Chad has built is is it's on another level in terms of gamification, that's really just quite remarkable. So we're gonna get into that. Before we get started, though, Chad, tell us a little bit more about yourself. Tell us what you teach who you are, what you do. And tell us how you started your modern classrooms journey. 

Chad Collins  1:42  
Absolutely. And to give a little bit of background, I've been teaching sixth grade language arts for about 10 years. And I've also been doing a class for students that are on our school academic team for roughly around seven, eight years. If you're familiar with Quiz Bowl, and other competitive Academic Team style stuff that a lot of different states do. This is just like Kentucky's version, under KAACE. With that academic team. They do of course, like the buzzer style questions, they have like written tests, it's extremely fun. I've been teaching this class for academic team students for a while. And that got me kind of interested in gifted and talented education. And as of January, I am now switching over to working in GT for both elementary and middle school students. And for the elementary teachers, this is my first time working with elementary school students at all, They are awesome to work with their high level for certain things is through the roof. So it's been I was I was a little bit nervous about switching positions and working with this group for the first time. But they've been incredibly welcoming. I'm still teaching and I'm planning to continue in the future like having students in the classroom as a GT teacher, and still continuing in this academic team class where I'm implementing a lot of what I'm going to be talking about today. So that's, that's kind of where I'm at. I have this sort of special class that I'll talk about to start on modern classroom and my journey, I guess, with it. I'm gonna start with my, the local educational cooperative that we have out of Louisville is OVEK. They passed on information to our district about MCP, and I was pretty much immediately interested. I started making short videos for my classes a few years ago, playing around with that, I enjoy working with technology. And that became really useful when my students were having to work from home due to us being out for COVID. Definitely, I found that my students, and I'm sure a lot of other teachers agree like keeping everything together, keeping the ball rolling was very difficult, but having videos that kids could go to, and kind of work at their own pace, I think really prevented a lot of learning loss that we have it made things more accessible for students who had family things going on. I really thought that that was important to keep doing once we were back in session in schools. And then we get to that point I hear about modern classroom, they mentioned that creating videos is sort of a, like a cornerstone part of that so kids can have that self based instruction. I loved the training process for people that are listening that went through it. I hope they had similar experiences because I felt like my time was respected. I felt like I was talking to you earlier. Zach, like the feedback that I got back was legitimate, like people actually took time to look at what I had posted, even if it was a lot and give me real feedback that I could use. My mentor was awesome. I I have recommended it to a lot of colleagues and a lot of them have taken up on it like our school has went from basically just like two or three of us to, it's looking like probably by the end of this school year, we'll have probably close to half of our entire faculty that have gotten into the training or have went through the training. Wow. It's been, it's blown up. And it's, it's been very fun to see, because a lot of teachers that I work with are kind of excited about it, our schools excited about it, and kind of our district is getting into it too. But I was really, so monitoring classroom, energize me a lot. I was basically nine years into teaching. And I think I needed something to energize me. I was also energized by a group that I joined a teacher cohort that was part of our educational cooperative, we put together a group called the teacher navigators with kind of this goal of sort of coming together for sharing ideas on deeper learning, just ideas we had from the classroom, getting feedback from each other, sort of like the mentorship, you all do with modern classroom to a certain extent, we were bringing lessons and showing each other and things like that. And working in this group, I think energize me to it gave me new ideas. And that's probably where that's that's where a lot of the stuff with gamification really came to me. And that's kind of how all this got started. 

Zach Diamond  6:30  
Awesome. Yeah. And I'm gonna want to hear more about that in just a sec, because we're really going to get into gamification in a very deep way listeners, I know we're teasing this. But what Chad has built is just incredible. But I, it resonated with me when you said, Well, everything you said about COVID. And the students when we were out of school, it's interesting, because, you know, a pandemic, is a big deal. It's not the only problem that modern classrooms solves, right? Those you know, you mentioned family situations, right? That kind of stuff doesn't go away, just because we're in school, students need to be able to self pace. And so totally bought in with that. I love all these collectives and things that are happening in Kentucky, that's such a cool idea. And like such a, such an interesting way of sharing, teaching strategies and approaches and things. And I think that, you know, I wasn't your mentor, I did review your DMCE application. I think that you have just a very open mind when it comes to feedback. And I'm guessing that that's part of the reason that maybe you seek out or like are into these kinds of collectives, right? Because it's like a sharing of ideas. It's not like I'm protecting you, and meaning you need to fix this. It's like, we're gonna just all share, I could try this, you could try that. It was I was it was just very refreshing to for me, because I gave you some critical feedback. And like the way that you reacted to it was so reflective and open minded. And I was mentioning this to you before as well. And I really appreciated that as a mentor. So yeah, that's just I think it's very cool to be participating in this kind of like, idea share world. Very cool, very interesting. And I'm gonna link whatever I can in there. And I want to learn more about this stuff.

Chad Collins  8:15  
Yeah, it's been extremely rewarding. I've not been the teacher that it's probably really for me, just in the last two or three years when I've been like, Okay, I want to go get other opinions. I guess I've usually that teacher who just listens, and hasn't participated in as much in the discussion. But now that I'm like, I'm at this point, I'm 10 years into my career. And I feel like listening up to this point has helped me a lot. But it's time for me to start getting involved. And if I'm going to continue to evolve as a teacher, because teachers have to keep evolving, I need to be a part of the conversation too. And so even, I don't think that necessarily for everybody has to be going and being a part of a big group of discussion. But even doing some stuff like this, where I mean, the mentorship aspect of it, getting some feedback on your lessons just a little bit. Modern classroom isn't a huge time sink, like going through the whole process. I've talked to all my colleagues, and they're just like, I didn't think it would be this easy. It's actually kind of neat, because I know how to make videos now, like the back and forth, I think is important for education. And I hope that districts other than mine, I feel like Kentucky, at least around my area is doing a good job of starting to blow up this collaboration that we're doing. But I really hope that in other states, other teachers are having similar experiences where their administration or their district is saying, Okay, let's get you out there to go into other schools and like, look and see what people are doing. Because now that I'm getting an idea of seeing what some other teachers are doing, I'm able to take that stuff and bring it in, and it's just been really inspiring, and really helpful.

Zach Diamond  9:57  
I love that. I mean, it's So modern classrooms to share ideas. It's actually it's in the intro of this podcast, it says we think teachers learn best from each other. And it's, it's true, you know, I can sit in a PD for like 10 hours or whatever, and I won't get as much out of it as I do going into the classroom of like an expert teacher, because I can look at I can see what they're doing. And I can be like that, I want to try, or that wouldn't work for me, but I know how I could do it in my style, or whatever, you know, observation. Yeah.

Chad Collins  10:28  
When, and that goes back to being like, you know, baby first and second year teacher, I don't know that I would have survived if I hadn't had mentors in my school building. And I hope it was similar for you. And you were getting started. 

Zach Diamond  10:42  
I would say the exact same thing. Yep. Yep. 100% 

Chad Collins  10:46  
schools have to build that into we need people so that you can get a model, get started as a teacher, and then build neat stuff and find whatever your niche is, if you want to gamify thinks if you want to get deep into project based learning, whatever, whatever it is, I think you've got to give people a base, and then they can build really cool stuff. 

Zach Diamond  11:06  
Yeah. 100%. All right, Chad, what do you have to get down off the soapbox together, that we're both standing up? Let's let's talk more about gamification. So while you're telling us a little bit about how you came to modern classrooms, I'd be curious to hear also how you came to gamification I, I've mentioned before that I like love games, I would consider myself a gamer. And, you know, it's interesting, because I'm really into the idea of gamification. But I've never gotten super into it as like a classroom tool or a teaching tool. So I would love to hear from you like how you came to gamification, how it sort of worked its way into your teaching, and how Eventually, we got to what we have now, which we'll talk about after this.

Chad Collins  11:48  
I think one of the neat things about gamifying a classroom or bringing games into a classroom is that it's getting a whole lot easier to do with a lot of schools, of course, getting a little bit more technology into their system. A lot of websites and tools are building gamification into their platforms, gaming top websites, if there's teachers that are listening that have used websites like Blooket, or Gimp kit, or Quizziz, things like that, I feel like are extremely great formative assessment tools, like study tools, and they've went in the last few years from essentially just being like, Okay, we just have a game for students to play to being these platforms that build in sometimes, like long term progression, the kinds of things that you know, when you're out playing a video game, we start playing that game. And it's not like arcade games where where you put a quarter and you play for 20 minutes, and you're done. And you go on to another one. A lot of us are playing games now that we play, you know, for weeks or months, or sometimes years, people get invested now. And then I guess, I had been seeing these more accessible methods of just bringing games into the classroom. At the same time, going back to my cohort of teachers that I was working with, one of the organizers for that. Adam Watson does a lot of work on gamification in Kentucky, particularly with tabletop style gaming, like think Dungeons and Dragons and stuff like that. He has a website called KY Ed RPG, or he's kind of organized all of these different teachers that are bringing in some of that, like tabletop RPG style gaming into their classrooms, kind of through different methods. Another teacher in this group, John Brewer, mentioned using kind of a d&d and role playing type system as a big part of his classes, things like character classes that his students could pick experience points, they could earn items and things like that. And once I kind of heard about this, and I was like, Oh, this sounds really neat. I want to dig in to see what these teachers are doing. Because that's an area that I don't really have tons of experience in. I have never played Dungeons and Dragons or a tabletop RPG before. I've always thought it was kind of interesting sounding, but I've just never had people in my life that did that. And all that's blown up. I mean, you've I'm sure you've seen it there too. Like it's it's gotten huge the last few years, there's so many people that participate in it now. All of my students know about tabletop RPGs, and Dungeons and Dragons. And that was definitely not true. When I was growing up, like in Kentucky, there just weren't many kids that did that. But I have kids that are playing it. I have kids that are playing it with their parents, I have them that are going into like clubs and stuff where they're going to the library and you know, it's exploded. So even though I'm a you know, just saying hey, this is kind of interesting. I read about these teachers doing this. And part of that to me and I've been aware of it is that essentially with video games, modern video games, video games back when we were growing up, a lot of the systems and things that they use were based off of d&d, they were based on having characters that progress. They were based on sort of a long term experience, or you get invested into it. And that formula hooks people in. So as educators, what do we want to do with our students, we want to engage them, we want to hook them in. So I'm starting to get sparks at that point, seeing these teachers doing these things where their kids are clearly engaged. So I'm thinking about what what are my students doing when they have off time? Well, they're going home and, and they're playing NBA 2k 24. And what does you know, we're talking about a basketball sim, the basketball, Sims still has stuff like building a character, it still has stuff like XP, their earning experience, there's a progression system.

Zach Diamond  16:03  
It's an RPG,

Chad Collins  16:04  
it's an RPG. And weirdly, like everything now has these RPG elements. If you buy the newest Mario game, Mario wonder it's incredibly fun for game recommendations. If anybody came here for video game recommendations,

Zach Diamond  16:18  
I beat that one with my kids, it's great. If you have kids, it's a great game for playing with little kids. 

Chad Collins  16:23  
Yeah, the multiplayer is great. But even it you're still picking a character to run the Mario course with you're getting little badges that you can kind of customize your character. Literally everything is building in this customization, this progression. And so I'm I'm I'm having these experiences just sitting at home, unfortunately, much less than I get to play a whole lot less than I was when I was like, much younger, but I'm still seeing all this. I'm being inspired by these teachers who are building stuff that has this progression. And it makes me think a lot about education, which is educators, I think we need to do not to get on the soapbox again. But what do we ask? What do we ask our students to do? Day to day, if we're looking at the standard that we've practiced for an extremely long time, we have a grade book where we put in a percentage base score that calculates over time we give our students papers back, they see that grade. And I don't think we're asking enough how much that really impacts or matters to kids. The number to me as a teacher for 10 years is helpful. But I teach a middle schoolers and you teach middle schoolers too, and I see a lot of them get that paper, look at the ad or the non D on the paper, put it in their backpack and never think about it again. Yep. And I don't think education has to be just that. I'd really like education, it to be a story. And you get this a lot with things like project based learning where kids invest into something and build something and create something. But I think doing something with, you know, thinking about video games, you're thinking about tabletop games, where kids are really invested in building something over the time over time. My thought was, what if we could do that with a class? And so that's when I really started to dig into everything. 

Zach Diamond  18:24  
Yeah, that's such a fantastic response. Chad, I, I had a couple of students in my homeroom last year, they were eighth graders who were in the d&d club at my school. And they would come in, like just all year, like every now and then they would come in this campaign went on for the whole year. You know, she'd be like, Oh, my half orc cleric. I've never played d&d either. But like, she would tell me all these stories that happened to her character. And just like, there really are invested in it. And it's a story, it has a progression, and the character levels up while they can experience and so it's really interesting to like, hook into that, and leverage that same motivation to for learning, because you're right, like, it's not about the number, it's about the learning. And so like that, that number goes up mentality. Like, it's interesting how it sort of translates over. Very cool. I think also, like, it's kind of wild to think that there is a, there are enough teachers in Kentucky, who are teaching based off tabletop gaming, to have a whole collective of it, or a website of it. But like, this is why it's so important for teachers to share the crazy cool stuff they're doing exactly. I'm sure that there's teachers out there doing all sorts of wild stuff. And if we don't share it, it just lives in our classrooms. And if we do share it, this happens, like we get these really neat and new and different ideas. So yeah, that's that's just so fantastic. Why don't you go ahead and describe what you've made. And listeners, we're going to try and describe this, you know, here on the podcast, verbally, but I'm gonna Link some stuff in the show notes to so you can see what I saw. And like explore Chad's the the I don't know what to even call it. It's a game. It's just a game. That is a class that he made. So, but why don't you go ahead and tell us more or less what it is that you've made? 

Chad Collins  20:13  
Yes, we've got so Zach we have some theming for it. We call it the academy. It is a school for heroes. Essentially, the, I guess narrative background for it is that the students in my academic team class, the sixth, seventh and eighth graders have been transported to another world. And in this world, they have picked up, I guess, a character class based on the subjects that they are most interested in learning about. And they have a class corresponding to that. And they also have coursework that corresponds to that.

Zach Diamond  20:47  
When you when you say character class, just because this is a teacher's podcast, you mean like a class of character, like a like a healer, or melee fighter or something along those lines? 

Chad Collins  20:56  
Correct. So for example, our I have, I've aligned it with the subjects that students would need to stay for academic team, which is basically everything. So arts and humanities students are bards, if they're studying science, they are Rangers or archers, social studies, knights on and on. The, I guess it probably helps to give a little bit of context for this class, just I've given a little bit. But I have students that need to study everything. I have sixth through eighth graders. So we have cross grade learning, we have cross curricular learning, because I have students that need to study everything. I've been doing this class for seven or eight years. Our principal kind of gave a suggestion to me when I was a newer teacher, and I was trying to do this academic team, we were struggling to get kids to come to practice. So Mr. Mercer, who's our principal at the time, and as our principle still was just like, Well, why don't you try to make a class out of it, and trusted a baby teacher to try to make something neat, and it ended up being extremely successful. principles that let teachers take risks is something that schools need to have. We built this class, we started out with, you know, 20 students, probably, I had another science teacher, Sarah Parnell helping me out at the time, we ended up today we have a class of 80 students, more than 80 students at this point. I've got two other teachers helping me out, we're in three different classrooms. But we all want our students kind of learning at this accelerated pace, stuff that they're not going to pick up typically in middle school. And so Zach, we've always kind of struggled with just coordinating that. I'm a teacher who teaches language arts, most of the most of my career. And I can kind of keep a path through that and do things like differentiate and do things like build neat experiences. But we struggled to do that with this, because we were trying to do so much. Which again, is where modern classroom project comes into it, I do this training. And I immediately think, this academic team class, this is what we've been missing. This is the like organization that I needed to make this class, like, go from something that I think is really cool to something that really, you know, take everything, and again, a sends it to the next level. So modern classroom, the framework helps we do everything in this class aligned with modern classroom to continue with the theming. Our students all have to complete a main quest, every quarter. So if you're a ranger learning science, you have to complete the science main quest that aligns with must do activities, every student needs to complete these, if you complete one, you earn five XP for your character, and you need to have 100 XP by the end of the quarter to max out your experience game. For sure, do we have side quests, these are activities that students you know, should get into, they get finished with their main quest stuff for the quarter, they can immediately hop into these. And these allow students to kind of explore things and other subjects because as you know, I think it's really cool that I have students, they can come into this kind of like special elective class. They love science. So they get a chance to study science for an extra class period. But maybe they also love math, so they can go and when they finished their main quest, they can get into some math activities on the side quests. And then we also have feats of strength, which are aspire to do activities, which are more like long term stuff with that we hope they would complete either over the course of a year or maybe it's something they build up towards, because I'll have some of these students in class or collaborating with teachers for three years. And again, with talking about like building a story and getting them invested. I think I have kind of a unique opportunity to do that with, you know, this longer platform and this collaboration that I have But the alignment with MCP, and having kind of this like fantasy branding or video game branding tabletop, whatever you want to call it, it just works. And that don't think I would have ever gotten any of that to click unless I, you know, done the modern classroom training. It also makes it way easier to keep up with stuff, talking about all these different things that are going on at the same time. Because I have a Progress Tracker that I've got posted that has the kids listed, it has the subject and the character class that they are. And it has a checkbox for every time they earn, they complete an activity and earn XP, so they can get on anytime and see. Where am I? How many XP have I earned this quarter, their parents can get on and do the same? It just it makes organizing things actually possible. With this sort of, I guess, like, maximum, we have a lot of things going on format of this class. Which I think I mean, obviously translate if you're trying to get one subjects taught, if we can juggle something that has five websites with five courses, and three different grade levels, then I think it illustrates that modern classroom works, whether it's just a standard class, or whether you're trying to do something that's a little bit more niche like we are.

Zach Diamond  26:27  
Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting that modern classrooms is sort of like the, the framework this all lives in. I've heard that before, even just in sort of, I would say more traditional classes, right? Like, even though they're modern classrooms, classes, they're not this. And I've heard that before that, like, it's the framework that we put the materials and it's the exact same class, right. And the organizational tools that it gives you lets you do that with a staggering number of of like possible outcomes for students. And I don't mean that in terms of like, their academic achievement, I mean, like which path they follow. And that's, that's great. I'm so glad that when our classrooms like provides that for you, because it lets you do stuff like this. Can I ask you what happens as they earn XP and level up? Like, do they cash that in for something or like in the video game, you would level up, but then your character would get stronger? So like, you could do your skills at a higher level or whatever? What does the XP translate to in your class as they level up.

Chad Collins  27:28  
So I keep the XP very, as just kind of like a standard thing. You earn it, I'm connecting it more with grades than anything else, essentially, at the end of a quarter students level up, I have sort of like a tracking page that they have for their binder that has just like a picture of their character on it, it lists what level they are, I'm kind of wanting to make that a little bit more involved over time, and maybe let them pick out some, you know, like creatures to help them out, or some like items that they use that would maybe go on this. But I tried to keep that really simple because I think what I want to be able to do the most with that part is just be able to say okay, this connects to your grade. This is your standard progression that you need to meet. And I can explain it to parents pretty easily that way. The parts that are a little bit more interactive that we've built in so far, because a lot of this is feels very much beta testing it with very awesome students who are willing to go with this with our side quests, or our should do activities, we have a little like currency system that students have. So if they complete, I should do activity. I have some little like branded coins that I pass out to students, they save those, we've got a little I have a traveling market on a cart that I take to the three different classrooms. We do academic dmn. And they can spend these. So that's that's kind of a like, Yeah, they'll save those. That's amazing. It's very fun to add brought it around yesterday. It's very fun to bring a cart of snacks and candy to a classroom and give them to kids because they went above and beyond doing stuff. 

Zach Diamond  29:13  
Yeah, the theming your theming is just off the charts here. It's like better than Disney. You know, when you go to Disneyland, and everything is like perfectly themed. But this is amazing. Like the whole thing is themed so well. It like pervades everything in in here. Listeners for real if you have the chance, stop what you're doing and click the links in the show notes so that you can see this like it's in the instructions for their tasks, like they're written as lore in the story. It's just incredible. Theming it's I'm so impressed. It's so cool.

Chad Collins  29:44  
Thank you. You can you can probably tell going to that page that like I'm having a lot of fun with putting this stuff together.

Zach Diamond  29:51  
I could tell that yes, I could. I could. 

Chad Collins  29:54  
Yes. Like the planning in the planning process has just been really really, really fun, especially now that we've kind of got it going like for people going to it, keep in mind that I'm working with like three teachers, people at different grade levels experts, like we had, I spent a lot of time front loading this. But it's also the kind of thing like, once you've got it going, and I have other, you know, teacher peers that do things like host a Google site where they have, you know, like some progression systems and stuff like that, that doesn't have to have like, you know, crazy monster pictures and stuff all over it and lore attached to it that like, once you get that going, it's there, like, I can use a lot of this next year, I can build into it. Once you've got the format for the page, a lot of the hardest part was just deciding how we wanted to structure stuff. Now it's, I just need to put in the activities. I just need to come up with ideas. And I think I would really like people to visit the pages and check them out and just give me feedback. What do you like about it? What do like you think would be cool to add in? Because I still feel fairly new to this world. There's people that have been doing stuff with d&d and progression systems and more gaming type things in their classrooms for a whole lot longer than I have, that I'm sure doing things that are, you know, just as cooler cooler. I want to get feedback from some of those people and see what what do you think about what we're trying to put together?

Zach Diamond  31:29  
Yeah, yeah, I, okay. So you mentioned something that I think is actually really important. Like, if listeners do go and click into those things. First of all, you're working with a team like it, it's a monumental amount of work that you've done. And so the idea isn't for listeners to feel bad that they haven't done it, right. Just to marvel at how amazing it is. But I think also, like you said, how much fun it was, I have said something similar about how I produce my instructional videos. Like I get really into it, you know, I'm into tech, I'm a music teacher, I teach digital music, I like editing video and editing audio. And so I spend a, an enormous amount of time and effort on those videos that I would never recommend other teachers do, right. But like, you know, you were talking before about how you, you felt like you needed some kind of a spark, right? Like you were getting into a rut or whatever, and you did something and you found it like this, you do this because you enjoy it, you don't need to, like it could just be a Google site, and that will be fine. It would still be awesome. And it would still be gamified. But I think that just sort of in general, like allowing ourselves to enjoy teaching by by doing it and the way that we that brings us joy. I think that's so valuable. And I can see the fun that you had in making this. It's like it's and listeners, if you go and look at it, you will too it's it's very evident, from from what you've created.

Chad Collins  32:58  
I think I think kids sense that when you enjoy something. Yeah. And it could just be you know, as a language arts teacher, we read Ghost by Jason Reynolds. And I really love that book. And so I think the kids get it when you talk about, you know how much you love what you're reading, I think when we can bring our own just joy into the process, which is not always easy to do. They pick up on it. And I think it raises that in them as well. 

Zach Diamond  33:28  
Yeah. So how have the learners responded? I'm curious to know, like, does it does it work? Does it tap into that like gamified mentality of I want to progress my character, I want to learn the story. I want to see what happens next. Like, how was it gone? And I guess I want to also ask, like, have there been students who kind of bounced off of it, who didn't enjoy it? And if you've had to adapt for them, but I guess more just broadly and generally, how have your students responded?

Chad Collins  33:54  
Very good questions. I'll admit, going into this, that I was somewhat terrified because I'd put all this work into it over the summer, I'd introduced it to like my co coaches and shown them what I wanted to do and got feedback. And we thought this would be kind of cool and neat. But I didn't know how students would respond. And I have to say that the engagement is just it's crazy. It's the most this most engaged this class has ever been. And we've tried neat stuff in the past, we've had some cool like badge systems and some really neat project based learning, but I think this brought everything together. And the options they have combined with the theming the competitive aspects of it. These kids just really like coming into this class. And like, like you asked, Are there kids that bounced off it? And I would say there's some kids that absolutely don't care about the theming of the class. And that's totally fine. Like those kids that you know, could care less that they A you know, when they're completing a mastery check or defeating a monster are still like, enjoying the fact that we have this system that still allows them tons of choice that allows them to play like a game when they're doing something instead of just the worksheets, like, they're loving that. 

Zach Diamond  35:18  
Yeah. Okay. And that makes sense. And I guess there's also like, because it's such an authentic experience, there's different avenues to extract enjoyment from this, if that makes sense. Like, I'll say that when I play video games, I tend to to be what you would call a gameplay person like I, I kind of don't care that much about the stories because I like developing the actual motor skill of playing the game and beating difficult bosses and things like that. Whereas some people are really, really into the story. And they put the game on easy mode, because they don't want it to be hard. They just want to see the story, sort of as if it were a book or a visual novel. Some games are called right. And I guess that even as I wrote this question, I wasn't thinking that that students might have different ways of engaging with what you've made. Maybe it's the theming maybe it's the actual academics because they're interested in science, and just motivated intrinsically to to learn science. So that's really interesting. Okay, so folks, we're gonna go to a break for an announcement. And when we come back, Chad and I are going to chat more about gamification. 

Zach Diamond  36:24  
Hey there listeners, this is Zach to tell you about some learning experiences we have for you this upcoming week. What if you could simplify your mastery checks? In this workshop you can learn how to leverage school AI spaces to create AI based mastery checks, offer instant feedback and help identify students needing extra support. Our workshop supercharge mastery checks with AI will be on February 21 at 6pm. Eastern got questions. We have answers. Attend our monthly MCP q&a session to get your questions answered live on Wednesday, February 21, at 5pm Eastern. And finally, are you ready to create a story of learning documented by the learner through familiar sharing tools? In this webinar, you'll discover how unruled advanced features seamlessly integrate with MCP. Our workshop using unruled in your modern classrooms is on February 22 at 6pm. Eastern registration links for all of this will be in the show notes. So take a look there if you're interested in 

Avery Balasbas  37:29  
calling all Los Angeles educators. My name is Avery, your West Coast partnerships manager here at MCP and do we have an exciting opportunity for you? Modern classrooms project is thrilled to announce the launch of our second fully funded regional scholarship here in California, the Los Angeles educator scholarship if you've been looking to transform your classroom into an equitable student centered space, enroll in our again fully funded virtual mentorship program plus a $500 stipend through MCPS, Los Angeles educators scholarship, just go to modern classrooms.org forward slash Los Angeles to apply today. If you have any questions or want to connect, you can reach me at blas bus at Avery dot philosophize at modern classrooms.org. That's a V as in Victor e r y dot b is in boy, a l a s b is boy as at modern classrooms.org. We look forward to seeing your application.

Zach Diamond  38:26  
Alright, folks, we're back. I'm here with Chad, and we're talking about gamification. The next question that I have for you is one that I am sort of struggling to articulate. But you know, when I think about games, I think that there are some aspects of games that really are not compatible with teaching and learning. And I sort of talked about this a little bit with Kat on that episode, where I interviewed her about genially. But what I mean by that is that, for example, in a game, you know, you can lose, like there can be a game over. And in in school, we can't have that right. There can't be a lose state, there can't be a game over. You lost this, this unit. So you're not going to learn this. We need to push our students to progress all the way through. Another thing that I thought of specifically with regard to your the thing that you've designed here, because it's d&d Is that in d&d, we use dice rolls to determine outcomes. So there's a lot that's left up to chance, and we can't leave learning up to chance. And in some ways, these are the aspects of games that make them fun, right? Like I was talking before, about, you know, the difficulty of beating a boss. But the difficulty of beating a boss is because of how easily it can make you lose. And so we can't let our kids lose. And so I'm curious to hear like how you mix this in, like, how do you design a game so that you can't lose? It's not at the chance, but it's still a game? Does that make sense? What I'm trying to ask him I'm sort of having a hard time articulating this. But can you talk about that a little bit? 

Chad Collins  40:03  
That makes sense? And is is a good question. And I think answering it starts with, again, one of those pillars of modern classroom is that we are doing mastery based learning, I need to see the mastered something and moved on. It goes beyond just giving a student is 60 or 70 on a paper instead, when I give a student a challenge, which you know, is framed like a quest or a monster to beat, I need them to complete that quest, I need them to defeat that monster. And that means you get to try again, with our mastery checks, we use quizzes for a lot of them quizzes has an awesome mastery game mode that lets you try things over and over again if you need to. And of course, that mastery check papers, they turn in things like notes to me, and I'll see how they go. And we'll turn those in. But like, like a video game, you don't lose the video game. And then the game, your Xbox just shuts down and you're done forever. And it explodes. Like that's luckily not that what happens because none of us would be able to afford it. But it asked you usually most of the time, especially with modern games, what we're playing today, if you fall off the cliff and Mario, it's going to bring your character back ready to go in just a second, like you might have to wait a second, you might be a little bit frustrated that you have to go back a little bit just like a student would be in a mastery check. They don't want to not, you know, get 80% or whatever I'm asking. But I think they're also recognizing, particularly where what we do is kind of competitive that it's working. We had I'll talk about my sixth grade class, because I work with them every single day. They had a sixth grade competition, we'd been going with this system at that point from August when we started school until December, we get to the sixth grade showcase competition. And kids just blow it out of the water they won. You know, I had kids placed in basically every category, they end up winning the whole thing overall, they wanted our quick recall buzzer system. And they came back to me and they were like Mr. Collins, that all that was in the mastery check. Like, how did you know that that was going to be on? And the answer is because I've been coaching academic team for just about a decade at this point. But they got it from having that experience. And I mean, it doesn't have to be kids going to a big competition, but like having little competitive events in our classroom being bringing in like a fun game, and giving some kids some opportunities to just be like, Oh, I know that now like I've mastered that content. I think that cements it for them. I think that builds word that I'm looking for is resilience in them, to where maybe you don't necessarily master it the first time. Okay, you can do this. And that's kind of inspiring for me as an adult, too. I think at this point, like, going back to talking about being terrified of this not working, it would be fine if this didn't work sack. Like if we as teachers build something, it is extremely painful. If we put together what we think is an awesome lesson, and it flops, and the kids hate it and they're not engaged. It unfortunately happens. But it's also one of those things where I think we've got to be the same way with ourselves. We have to be like, Okay, I didn't get it this time. What can I do to make that work the next time, like a mastery check on us as a teacher, I guess to a certain extent, it's okay to go back and try things again, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

Zach Diamond  43:39  
What an incredibly good answer. I had not thought about it that way. And I actually feel like you've sort of like squared the circle for me. I did not think about it that way. Man. It's like, I know. So supermario wonder you mentioned has these like challenge levels after you beat the game. I don't know if you got to those have not made it that far yet. Unfortunately, well, they're super hard. They're like the difficulty spike is huge. It's way harder than anything else in the game. And it's timed. Like it's just it's really, really hard. But the way that you do it is you go and you you fall off the cliff and you start over and you fall off the cliff and you start over and the timer runs out. And you start over and you get a little further and then you fall off another cliff. And then you just keep doing it right over and over until you get it. And I don't think that we want our students trying our mastery checks the amount of times that I tried those challenge levels. They should probably be a little easier than that. But it's that that's what drives you back. It's like oh, I made it a little bit further that time. Like I know how to do that part now. And then when you see the end and you you die, like just a few feet before the end you're like oh, I was so close. I can go back and I can do it. Now. I know exactly what to do. It's like real learning. I read a blog post about this like years ago. I guess I'll link it about Dark Souls. I don't know if you're familiar with the Souls games. 

Chad Collins  44:56  
Yeah, I played Eldon ring last summer in a have small amounts of video game time and made it pretty far into it. I felt very, it's that, like you said that sense of accomplishment when you do something that seems literally impossible exam and you actually get it done. It translates to games and learning.

Zach Diamond  45:15  
I love that I think that's such a great answer. And it made the connection to something that I had already thought when I wrote that blog post, you know, it's like, what a fantastic way to think about this. It's that, and that motivation for me is like, it's very deep. It's very real. It's like, I need to keep doing this until I beat this boss, because I am very close, and I know what to do. And I just messed up, and I'm gonna go back and not mess up this time. Wow, I love that. Thank you for opening my eyes on that one. Because that totally makes sense to me now. And I think that this is something that I can start actually using, because I feel like I get it now. That's amazing. What a fantastic answer. Thank you chat. I want to shift gears completely for a second, because we're getting kind of close to the end of the episode. But before we do, I want to ask you about the DMCE application process. Because I mentioned before that I reviewed your submission, and I saw this incredible RPG game based thing that you made. I can't remember specifically what it was that I marked, but there was one thing that I marked for revision, so it got sent back to you. And I, I was just so impressed with how first of all, you didn't take it personally like you, you I think that it should be clear to our listeners that you have excellent, like growth mindset, like you're approaching these things in ways that, like you, you're seeking to improve. Right. And that was awesome, because you came back to me with like, this is a great point. Let me try this. Here are some other comments on other things like we kind of wound up having a sort of like a dialogue through the comments on your DMCE application, which I had never had that experience before. And you know, no shade towards the other DMCEs that I reviewed. They were also all great. But that was a new experience for me. And I really enjoyed that. And so I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit about the DMCE application process from the applicants perspective. And, and what sort of drove you to do that? Because I thought it was really refreshing for me to see like, wow, I'm making myself clear. I'm not just like insulting your work, I'm telling you, these are the things that I think might improve if you change them, and you're receiving them that way. So yeah. Could you talk a little bit more about that process and how it went for you?

Chad Collins  47:31  
Absolutely. Like I probably some people feel like when they're applying for DMCE, I was kind of intimidated by it. I was like, Could I be distinguished in modern classroom project after a year of doing it, like, the word distinguished to me, I guess, has some connotations, as like, you know, writing instruction of it being almost nearly perfect. I asked myself, if I should do it. I think what drove me to go ahead and try the DMCE process was that I did want that feedback. Like I said earlier, probably at the very beginning, when we were talking, the feedback that I've gotten with modern classroom project has just been real. It's been coming from teachers, educators, people that have been through everything that, you know, looked at my stuff, and were like, Hey, this is extremely neat, or I think your feedback was something along the lines, there might have been a couple of things, but one of them was just like formatting something. And it was like, it was an oh my gosh, moment. This like makes so much sense if I just moved to this here. And that kind of started that dialogue. But I wanted to see what you know, happened again, I'm at this stage in my career where I'm like, okay, it's okay to fail. If I don't, if they don't tell me that I'm a Distinguished modern classroom educator, then I can go back and try it again next year. As a starting teacher, period, I was always kind of afraid of, you know, criticism. Again, where I'm at now is that there is no such thing as being perfect. As educators, we have to be constantly growing and learning. So I went ahead, kicked it, tried DMCE went and did the application process. I think, for people that are thinking about doing it, number one, it's not a huge time investment. I didn't feel like it was essentially like me sitting at my computer for a couple hours one night and going over feedback. Like there was a little bit of a process but it was not a huge time investment. And the time that I did put into it, I felt was legitimately rewarding because I got awesome feedback from you Zach, so thank you. But I would also say if you're at the point where I am, where you're working with other teachers who are getting into modern classroom And they're actually getting help from you, like I've worked with some of my colleagues that are, you know, needed help recording videos, or just wanted to ask me how the process was, if I'm okay describing to them and helping them get into things. If I can teach it a little bit, then I would say to me, then that would put me on a track where I am a distinguished modern classroom educator. And that's kind of, I guess, what I felt about the process, I felt that it was awesome. I felt that it was useful. And I feel like anybody who's been doing this for at least, you know, I don't know what the average length of time teachers who have done modern classroom has been in before they've applied. But a year is definitely, to me, I feel like you can have some good experience in the program by that point.

Zach Diamond  50:48  
Yeah, absolutely. And we've talked about this before on the podcast, you don't even have to have taken the mentorship program, you can still apply. And I try when I review these to like, not only leave critical comments, and I think this is part of the reason why you came back to me with so many comments, because on a lot of things, you know, I'll mark like, Yes, this is correct on the rubric or mastered on the rubric. And I'll also leave a comment that's like, hey, I really love how you did this and this thing, specifically, right? And then you would put in comments for those too, and be like, oh, yeah, it was just a dialogue in general, it wasn't like, it's bad needs to be fixed, you know. And I feel like I tried to use language that was very much like, No, this is actually amazing. It's just missing this one little thing that happens to be on our rubric. And I think for good reason. But like, yeah, I was just so into the idea of it being a dialogue. And I hope that that's coming across to our listeners It is to me in what you're saying. I think that like applying to DMCE isn't like a, it's not a judgment on your teaching, or your character or anything like that. It's entering into a dialogue. And I love that. So I'm just really happy to hear you say all that. And I, I wanted to ask you, because it was a sort of a different experience for me, reviewing DMCE applications. So super awesome.

Chad Collins  52:07  
Thank you. And I went ahead, and I don't think I told you, but I went ahead and applied to do the expert, mentor, great to be a mentor. Because after again, like having that cool dialogue and everything. I was like I could do that, like I can help some other people like get into modern classroom. And I'm kind of looking forward and seeing where, you know, that goes to, because I think talking to other people about what they're building again, like I've talked about this whole time, would make me a better educator to it, I get reward out of it. 

Zach Diamond  52:36  
Absolutely. 100% I, I fully endorse you to become a mentor. I hope that I don't get I don't get to choose on that one. I'm not on that committee. But I'll put in the good word for you. Because yeah, it's just it's so amazing what you've built. I was so impressed looking through it. So tell me, I guess what's next, you mentioned before, that you feel like you're beta testing these, which I think is, first of all, it's indicative of that same growth mindset that we've been talking about that you have that you're approaching this with, that I that I'm so impressed by. But also, like, I love the idea that there's more beta testing is something that happens in gaming, right? It's like you are early access, right? You put out a game in a kind of unfinished state, and get feedback on it from from play testers. And so I loved that as a sort of framework for thinking about it. Because it is a game in some senses. But yeah, like what else? What do you see in changing like, what do you what's your next step? 

Chad Collins  53:41  
The thing about this is that I have 85 beta testers that are testing every single day in the class, giving me feedback, letting me know what working what's not working. And I can make adjustments on the fly, which is another cool thing about gamifying a classroom, I guess. I also had some monitoring classroom mentors, they did kind of like a site visit here in Spencer County where I work. And they came into my class and they loved the program, they gave me some neat feedback to one of those points of feedback was to try to build in some collaboration in the class that was kind of like cross subject areas. So I could have something where like our magician class students who are learning math, maybe team up with students in science, the rangers and they do like a project together. We do have, you know, some students they want. They don't necessarily want to do those like collaborative things. They want to be in their own zone. And I think we have to respect that but also give them some opportunities to kind of like, branch out and work with some others. I really loved that idea. And tried to do the thing with that where I was like, oh, let's try that and see where that hat where that goes. So I'm planning on doing that. I'm also a lot of the stuff that I'm doing on the website is I'm using like ChatGPT and things to put together things like rubrics and things to sort of speed up the process and then going through and tweaking those. But I read an something recently about where teacher was using a to do like a d&d style dungeon crawl for their like students in like a club or something like that. And so I've been playing on it, and it's been one of what I've managed to get it to do. And I tested it a little bit with students today was to do put together like a little adventure. get like five of my students together one from each character class, one from each subject area, and go on like a little mission. So they would, you know, start out they're going into the cave to explore, have like a riddle come up. If they solve it, they get an atom A monster attacks, well, they have to answer a science question, to be able to attack them austere like it, it's extremely cool. Because yes, I could sit with like papers and come up with a campaign like people do for d&d and stuff like that. But if I'm really wanting to have something that I can use, like, let's do this every Thursday and have just like a fun little mini campaign and get five students involved, like I was able to do it just like that. And I'm planning on kind of experimenting with that off and on and seeing where it goes, and maybe implementing something like that next year. I think, AI. There's definite pros and cons. One of the pros for education, I think, is just being able to try out stuff quickly like that and seeing what works. So those are two of the ideas I have. And I'm open for more feedback, too. 

Zach Diamond  56:44  
Yeah, I mean, that's really interesting. I'm kind of into everything AI at the moment, that would be super interesting. I'd be curious to like, see, is there something that you can like link me to or point me to because I'm curious to that DND AI thing. I'm curious just to see how that works? 

Chad Collins  56:59  
Yeah, I'll send you some of the like prompts, stuff that I put together to get that to work today. I'll just kind of copy and paste like how far we got with that. And some of the stuff I put in. But I know there's some like modules and things that are built in and people that are probably way better at this than I am. But as somebody who's completely new to it, and again, hasn't even played Dungeons and Dragons before, I still felt like we were able to do something that was very cool. And the kids who had done that were like, Oh, this is just like it, but I'm actually being tested on like math skills. It I think it has the potential to be something that is a neat recurring activity.

Zach Diamond  57:36  
Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I mean, this has been such such a cool discussion. Maybe it's because I'm just a gaming nerd, like talking about games. But I mean, teaching to what what a very cool discussion. This has been. Thank you so much for joining me, Chad, you mentioned that you'd like feedback from others, I would say also, if listeners would like to reach out to you for advice on on gamifying their classes or checking out your materials, that would be a great rhythm, because you are such an incredible resource and looking at your class that you've built is also just such an incredible inspiration. So how could they chat if they wanted to connect with you to either give you feedback or get advice? how can listeners connect with you?

Chad Collins  58:25  
A few things real quick, you could go to the KY at RPG website that Adam Watson who I mentioned earlier put together for stuff that's not just it, he's got a little showcase for what I'm doing. But also some other amazing things that teachers in Kentucky are doing with gamification. It. I would also if you want to go to social media stuff. My Twitter is at Collins class SC one word. And I'm just kind of posting some like pictures and examples of some things that the kids in the class are doing. So hopefully some of that is you know, inspiring or helpful. And my YouTube channel is coffee shop classroom as one word, you can go there and see some of the kind of like little narrative trailer videos and stuff that we put together some of it with Canva. And a add that the kids really really lacked to, to kind of set up this framework, so or just reach out anyway. And I'd love to talk about this with others. 

Zach Diamond  59:21  
Awesome. And I'm gonna have links to all that in the show notes. And again, speaking of the show notes, listeners, please do yourself the favor of taking a look at what Chad has built, if not for any other reason than just to marvel at it. And to read some of the lore that you wrote, because it really feels like reading a fantasy novel. It's just an incredible piece of work.

Chad Collins  59:41  
Thank you for the positive positive review. I appreciate the good vibes.

Zach Diamond  59:45  
Yeah, yeah, I loved checking it out. It was so cool. And I'm so glad you were able to come on the podcast and tell us about it, Chad. This has been wonderful. Thank you so much, listeners. Remember, you can always email us at Paul I'd cast at modern classrooms.org. And you can find the show notes for this episode, which you should at podcast dot modern classrooms.org/ 177. We'll have this episode's recap and transcript uploaded to the modern classrooms blog on Friday, so be sure to check there or check back in the show notes for this episode if you'd like to access those. We are also asking our listeners to leave a review if this podcast has been helpful in supporting you to create a blended, self paced mastery based or maybe gamified learning environment. It does help other folks find the podcast so that would be super helpful. Thank you all so much for listening. Have a great week, and we'll be back next Sunday. 

Zach Diamond  1:00:43  
Thank you so much for listening. You can find links to topics and tools we discussed in our show notes for this episode. And remember, you can learn more about our work at www dot modern classrooms.org. And you can learn the essentials of our muddle through our free course at Learn dot modern classrooms.org. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at modernclassproj. That's p r o j we are so appreciative of all you do for students in schools. Have a great week and we'll be back next Sunday with another episode of the Modern Classrooms Project podcast.