This video is sponsored by Classcraft.
Hey Thom, I was just wondering if you knew of any classroom management apps. I love my kids,
but they're just so loud. I've tried a few things with them but they seem to get bored of any new
ideas I present. I'm hoping to find something I can implement as soon as possible. If it helps,
they're really into video games. Thanks! From, Maria. Hey Sam, a teacher emailed me
and she's kind of having some classroom management issues. Do you know a way of
gamifying classroom management? Oh yeah, for sure, you should definitely check out Classcraft. Do you
have a video on it that I could send her? No I don't, unfortunately. We'll have to think about
making one at some point though. Okay I'll go check out Classcraft and see what I can send her.
All right, let's check out what Classcraft is all about.
Okay this is totally gonna work for Maria, let me just send her a quick screencast. Hey Maria,
thanks so much for your email! I did a little bit of research and I think I found the right tool for
you and your students. It is called Classcraft and I want to show you a little bit of what
you can do with it. So you said your students are super into video games. Well Classcraft is a game
that you play throughout the school year. The students get a character, and then they can earn
experience points, and the way they earn their experience points is by doing certain behaviors
or actions in the classroom. And I know you're worried about the kids getting bored of this
after a few weeks, but I'm going to show you at the end of this what Classcraft does to actually
keep it engaging and exciting throughout the year. And I was also researching on Common Sense Media,
and they listed Classcraft as having a five stars on engagement, so the kids, the kids love playing
Classcraft. I'm not sure what LMS you're on, but Classcraft does integrate with a lot of the major
LMS's and quite a few schools have had success in getting a significant drop in their classroom
disruptions, and I think that can happen for you and your students as well. So a quick look
at the pricing, they do have a free plan that has all of the basic functionality that you'll need,
and just about everything I'm going to talk about in this video is in that free plan. So I made a
sample class here in Classcraft so I can show you what the teacher dashboard looks like and how all
of this works, and these are my students that I have here. If I hover my mouse over a student,
I can go ahead and give them points. So here are the ways the students in my sample class can earn
points, and you can completely customize this to be the behaviors and actions that you would
like to see more of from your students. So let's say the student completed online activities and
Mumbledore just got 150 XP. You can do this with individual students, or you can select
multiple students at a time, or even all of the students if you'd like to give the whole class
more experience points for a certain behavior. If I click on View Profile of that student, you can
see how many experience points they have, and when this experience point bar fills completely up,
they get a crystal, and crystals are what they use to purchase powers. And in my demo class,
these are the things that students can use their crystals on. You can completely customize this
to be the types of privileges and rewards that you would like to offer your students from the
crystals that they are earning. So in addition to giving your students experience points,
there's also some class tools here. Some of them are on the premium feature, but my favorite one
is the volume meter that is on the free plan. You mentioned that your students are pretty loud. With
the volume meter, they can earn points for being quieter in the classroom. You could say how many
points they can earn for being quiet the whole time, and then you can set your threshold, maybe
you say, maybe you say, okay everybody I would like you to stay under this level, if you get this
loud, that's too loud. And then you say start, and then if the students stay quiet, then they can get
their hundred XP. But if they get too loud, then their points are cut in half, so if I keep going
now the pot is only 50 XP, but if they get too loud then it is now going to drop down to 25 XP.
I love this because I actually used to do this with my students way before Classcraft was even
a thing. I had like a little decibel reader on my phone and then I just projected that onto
the screen, and then I said, "All right everyone stay under 50 decibels," and I think it might be
the audio engineer major in me that is just a nerd for all things audio, but I think this is
pretty cool. And so while Classcraft has a lot more to offer, that is all you need to actually
get started because Classcraft allows you to roll out new features over time. I told you that
Classcraft had a way of keeping the game engaging throughout the year and the way they do that
is they have four levels of implementation, or using their language, if you see down here, four
chapters of implementation. Everything that I just showed you is within Chapter 1. Stick with
Chapter 1 for a few weeks while you scroll ahead and start looking at the things in Chapter 2 that
will be implemented once you actually officially begin Chapter 2 with your students, like having
students pick their characters, or having a school store, having messaging, or quests.
So when the students are kind of getting bored with Chapter 1, be like "All right we've got
some new implementations in Classcraft," and then do that for a little while while
you explore Chapter 3. And when they get tired of Chapter 2, you can unveil Chapter 3 and be like,
"All right we're implementing classes and more powers," and then just keep going throughout the
year, adding new elements to the game to keep it exciting and interesting for you and for the kids.
I guess I should probably also send her that video on the five different apps to mix things
up this year, since Classcraft is actually just one of those apps.
She may like to check out one or two of the others.