Allison Zmuda
In our new book, The Quest for Learning, we ask teachers to consider how they might make their instructional practices more contemporary. We’ve talked to literally hundreds of teachers as we explore some of the facets of “right now” interests and skills, and we’d like to share some of what we’ve discovered. Note that this is not an exhaustive list of questions, just a few that were generated from our work with teachers over the last few years and have influenced what we wrote in the new book. If you have some of the same questions about how you might make your practices more contemporary, we invite you to consider the following: Read more
Allison Zmuda
Why Games Work: Game Design Theory and Why It Can Be So Enthralling
Categories: 21st Century Skills, Instruction, Technology
Based on The Quest For Learning: How To Maximize Student Engagement
Have you ever tried to pry yourself or someone else away from an immersive experience? You might hear back, “Just a few more minutes … then I can stop,” or “When I figure this out, then it is a good time to take a pause.” The real value of games is in how they balance problem solving and engagement. They do this with no sense of failure but rather a commitment to hope and gamers’ genuine belief that if they keep trying and working, they will win. Read more
Try This Activity: Contemporary Curriculum with Game Design Lenses
Categories:
Based on The Quest For Learning: How To Maximize Student Engagement
This blog post is also a self-guided quest on using game design lenses to make your current curriculum more contemporary. You, the reader, ultimately get to decide your destination and the impact that this will have on curriculum design, instruction, and assessment. We are going to lay out some thinking points, and you will get to apply them to your current curriculum. We invite you to share any “AHA!” moments that you have in the comments section, so we can collaboratively grow from each other’s ideas and expertise. Read more
Simplified and Personalized: Formative Assessments
Categories: 21st Century Skills, Assessment
Based on The Quest For Learning: How To Maximize Student Engagement
In many classrooms, assessment is still an event. It might be an end-of-unit event, a benchmark event, or a “because it’s Friday” event. Whatever the assessment reason, inviting a more formative approach gives opportunities for frequent feedback in a couple of different ways.
- It shows the learner how well they are progressing toward a particular target, skill, or standard.
- It shows the learner which strategies work best for the learner to reach their targets.
In The Quest For Learning: How To Maximize Student Engagement (2017), we propose a simplified descriptive rubric to help teachers manage formative feedback, both at the beginning of a learning scenario and throughout it. Read more
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Meet Generation Alpha: Teaching the Newest Generation of Students
Categories: Instruction
Generation alpha was born beginning in 2010 and is also known as generation glass, the iGeneration, or the global generation. These are the children of generation X and generation Y. This generation will be the first of recent generations that will definitely live into the twenty-second century, and they will be the most technologically literate generation thus far. Read more