Save Silicon Valley

This was an attempt to gamify the year for Computing Year 9 students.  The idea is that students view their every effort in the subject as related to their final goal of making it in the field.

Introduction

At the start of the scholastic year, students were introduced to our scenario:

Then each student was given an avatar outline and asked to personalise it. Each avatar was eventually placed at Bletchley Park with Alan Turing in Level 1 of our game.

The idea was that eventually, students gained points and hence moved to Levels 2, 3, 4 and  5 etc, earning a certificate of achievement at each level.

At the beginning of the scholastic year students were told how they could win or lose points according to the chart below.

During the Scholastic Year

During the scholastic year students were awarded points as per the above chart.  This helped create a sense of goal to our activities.

Critical Reflection

Students took to the idea: they were keen to see their points go up with their achievements. 

This project also helped make household (read ‘Lab 5’) names of the personalities in our game and showed the history of Computing as an ongoing story that impacts humanity.

Future Implementation

Though the idea was good, it was not quite practical enough and I soon realised that I will need to refine on it.

Points I’m currently considering include:

• Improve on point system: narrow down to 5 to 7 points and make the point system clear to students.
  • Tie in ongoing course efforts e.g. students’ own blog.
• Make the point system available on the class blog/team and/or give each student a hardcopy.
• Make the point system easier for myself as a teacher to use and for students to access (e.g. by implementing via the VLE, ClassDojo or other online means)
• Introduce more ‘game-like’ elements :e.g. an element of chance related to students winning ‘Chance cards’ for good efforts.