🤩 Gamification resources galore

👀 A $19 course with TONS of fun gamification ideas

"This is a wonderful course with TONS of resources to help teachers make classrooms more engaging for students. I had heard of many of the sites presented, but Matt got me to think about how to use them in new and exciting ways. I can't wait to start planning for the fall!" -- Elizabeth J. Britt

• Tools to make review and practice more like a game

• New, creative uses of those tools

• Ideas for turning the day-to-day classroom into an ongoing game

• Design tips to make instructional materials feel like students' favorite games

• Inspiration to build your own games with your students

Get details and sign up for Gameshow Classroom here.

💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

Easy ways to gamify your classroom

Gamifying your content immediately dials up the engagement of a lesson. Students want to play games (so do adults!) and the more we can make learning fun the more we can grab the attention of even our most reluctant learners.

But who has time to gamify every lesson or activity? I sure don’t. And honestly gamifying everything would most likely take the fun out of the whole concept.

So here’s how we can gamify our classrooms in meaningful and time-efficient ways.

🤔 Identify the important, powerful lessons and activities you want to put the time and effort into gamifying.

Choose concepts that you want to make stick. These might be your focus standards, foundational skills, or something your students find interesting that you want to expand on.

🛠Familiarize yourself with tools that make it easy to gamify

There are lots and lots of gamification tools out there. We are here to tell you that you don’t need to learn them all!

Your class goes crazy for Kahoot? Are students still loving Gimkit? Then keep doing what you’re doing! These tools are constantly adding fun additions and leveling up anyway.

However, if you do want to add some new tools to that gamification idea box then we have some that will give you lots of fun with little prep.

❓Quizizz Chrome Extension

The Quizizz Chrome extension is a great tool for creating quick AI-generated quizzes. It allows you to turn any website into a quiz with just a few clicks. It’s easy to use and can be personalized for students.

📊Flippity

Flippity is another useful tool that turns a simple spreadsheet into a game. There are demos, instructions, and templates for each tool. Here are some of our favorites and ideas for using them:

• Crossword Puzzle: Use the vocabulary words from your unit of study to make a crossword puzzle.

• Matching Game: Create visual representations of important concepts or words and use the tool to make it into a matching game.

• Randomizer: You can use the quick and easy randomizer to throw in a bunch of options to choose from. For example on a numbered worksheet put all of the numbered questions into the randomizer and then spin to see which one the students will answer.

🐤Blooket

Blooket is an innovative tool that can turn any content into engaging video game-style quests. It fosters collaboration and competition among students with rewards and tasks. (Read our full post about Blooket and how to get started)

There are several game modes your students will love. Here are some that we have used:

• 🗼Tower Defense: A cooperative game where players work together to defend their tower from enemies.

• 🏭Factory: A unique categorization game that emphasizes digging deeper into specific topics to unlock and upgrade Blooks that make you some cold, hard, virtual cash.

• 👑Crazy Kingdom: A head-to-head competition where players compete to be the first to complete a task.

• ⚔️Battle Royale: A head-to-head competition where players compete to be the last Blook standing.

• 🏯Tower of Doom (Homework only): Answer questions to collect cards that help you defeat evil Blooks and ascend the magical Tower of Doom!

🔗 For more ideas and tools on gamification check out:

• The gamification page on the Ditch That Textbook website 

• Our new gamification Wakelet collection

• Ready to use game templates in our templates library

💻 Tech Tip

Provide instant feedback with AI!

🤖What is Curipod?

Curipod is a digital slide and presentation tool that uses AI to generate lesson plan slides which teachers can then edit and refine.

Give Curipod (curipod.com/ai) a topic, and it will generate an interactive slide deck for you in seconds, including:

• Polls

• Word clouds

• Open-ended questions

• A drawing tool

• NEW AI Feedback

🤖What is Curipod AI feedback?

Curipod AI feedback is a feature that uses AI to generate ideas for engagement questions (or you provide your own) and provide instant and specific feedback to each student based on their answers.

Here is a 6th-grade science example:

🤔 Question: Give a specific example of an organism that lives in a certain climate area and explain how it is adapted to live there successfully.

👦🏽REAL Student Answer: An animal that lives in the polar climate is a polar bear. It has adapted to it's climate by a structural adaptation causing it's fur to be white. This helps the polar bear be successful in it's environment by helping it camouflage. Another animal that has adapted is a penguin. They live in the poles and they stay warm by a behavioral adaptation, huddling together and rotating in and out from outside to middle. Those are only some of the magnificent animals adapting to their environments.

🤖AI Generated Feedback:

Positive Feedback: Great job identifying two polar animals and explaining their adaptations to their climate!

Content: You've clearly understood the assignment and provided relevant adaptations for the polar bear and penguin.

Evidence: You provided specific examples of both structural and behavioral adaptations, which supports your answer nicely.

Organization: Your response is organized, presenting each organism and its adaptation clearly.

Language: Be mindful of the correct use of "its" without an apostrophe for the possessive form. Otherwise, good use of language and terminology related to the topic. Keep up the good work!

🟠 Try it out!

1. Sign up or sign in to Curipod with a free account.

2. Find the Personalised Feedback - generator or click on this link.

3. Choose your topic and grade level and then click “do magic”.

4. Edit the question or leave it as it was generated.

5. Present the slides and let the students join at curipod.com with the PIN on their devices.

6. Add or decrease the time as needed and click the play button.

7. Students will answer the questions individually by typing their answers on their devices.

8. Once students have submitted their responses they will receive instant AI-generated feedback.

9. Review the students’ responses and feedback on the report page.

🔗More resources:

• 10 ways Curipod engages your students with AI

• Personalised feedback video from the Curipod YouTube channel

👋 How we can help

There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:

1. Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.

2. Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.

3. Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!