+1 on cleaning the kitchen.

[mothwing]

Taking to heart this TED-talk as well as Jane McGonigal's book and this ExtraCredits episode on gamifying education I'm working on ways to make my class more motivating next year. If all things go well, I'll be teaching an 8th grade and I'm going to try to apply some of the things they propose.

Researching this is fun, too, because through this I've discovered awesome things like: 

ChoreWars - a browser-based game in which you can enter an epic chore competition with your roomies

and

Plusoneme.com - which lets others give you points for your RL stats.

Comments

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

YES, fun! And you're right, let's talk to Lars about this. I've been trying to overhaul my participation marks using a sort of Punktekonto-system, so nothing fancy and it wouldn't mean that I don't have to completely change the marking system of the entire school. This would be just a visualisation of what skills and competences they get "points" for, anyway, as well as the staples (done your homework? +1. Raised your hand in class? +1. Had something good to say? +1-3, depending on Anforderungsbereich, even. Made a significant personal progress in one of the skills? +1.). If the students go for it, that is, they might feel too old for this.

I was also thinking of assigning them teams and award rewards based on their combined points number as the Extra Credits people suggest and put up my combined points chart up on the wall for both teams. This would give them a direct visual reward for doing stuff in class, too.

The biggest problem Crocky sees with this is that external reward can kill internal desire to do something, so I need more studies on this. On the other hand, I'm not sure if my stickers can really have that effect on someone who loves English already. It'd just be an extra incentive for those who, well, don't.