TetzMathPortfolio

Do Astronauts, like Canada’s own Chris Hadfield, look down at the Earth and see a world of possibilities?  Do they look out into Space and feel that it is endless?  That feeling of the possibilities being astronomical in number is where I find myself today.  It may be easier to count the stars, than to narrow my focus down to the three components that are my vision for my future learning.  My Mission to complete Grad School has taken me five years and earned me two Masters Degrees, and while I won’t rule out the possibility of another Masters Degree or Educational Doctorate if the right opportunity sparks an interest, I believe for now that Mission can be marked as a success.  That being said, I believe that learning, like the stars, is infinite.  Learning is as essential as the air we breathe.  The question then becomes, what is worth knowing?  What star of knowledge is worth the effort to strive to grasp?  My Mission has moved from one of acquiring knowledge to one of using that knowledge to create new experiences that are Insightful, Innovative, and Inspired.  I want to gain more insight into using game elements as an underlying structure in the classroom.  I want to be innovative by finishing the creation of the board game I started in my Serious Game Design Certificate courses and then move on to new games.  I want to help other teachers be inspired to use games in their mathematics classroom. However, this learning seems like a journey into the unknown as for the first time in five years I am in charge of what I learn and when I learn it.  I am both the astronaut and ground control in this new mission, and while that thought is very freeing it does come with some trepidations about ensuring that my learning trajectory isn’t eclipsed by other life events.

 
For the last twenty years, I have marveled at the resiliency of people playing video games, both adult and child alike.  Playing online in a multi-player environment, it was not uncommon to do the same quest multiple times before reaching the end reward.  Sometimes, you would even do the quest after completing it the first time to ensure that you had mastered the quest and not just gotten lucky.  Then when I started teaching, especially math, I noticed that this resiliency was missing in students at school.  You could tell from their conversation that they exhibited it in the games they played, but this was not being transferred to their school life or perhaps even in their life beyond the game at all.  I became intrigued by figuring out a way to harness the resiliency that students exhibited in games for use in my mathematics classroom.  I started out with leveling some of the work in my classroom and giving those levels names reflected in the world of video games; Regular, Challenge, and Extreme.  Just as I started my Grad School Mission, I discovered the blog of Michael Matera.  Mr. Matera is a World History & IR teacher at University School of Milwaukee in Wisconsin.  He has turned his class into a live action video game in which his students are the players and his course content make up the quests.  After discovering his blog, I decided to purchase his package of excel spreadsheets that were designed to run the experience portion of his classroom.  I started using experience in my classroom, but that is as far as I got into my exploration due to time constraints of Grad school.  Now I want to dive in depth into his blog to see how he makes the structure of a video game support learning in his classroom.  As well, Mr. Matera has just published a book, Explore Like a PIRATE: Gamification and Game-Inspired Course Design to Engage, Enrich and Elevate Your Learners (2015) which will be next on my reading list. I will also explore the new website he created to go along with his book.  I am eager to explore what game elements could support questing in a mathematics classroom.

The exploration of using game elements in my classroom leads me to my next goal of finishing the game I designed in my Serious Game Design Certificate courses.  With the finishing of my game comes a lot of learning.  I need to learn how to create a game to be printed and if I so choose published.  I have to investigate the legal parameters of Intellectual Property to determine if I can publish my game or if those rights belong to my School Board through my contract.  My first step; however, is to get enough copies of my game produced to be able to use it in my classroom.  To this end, I am exploring how to use the website Game Crafters.  There are a lot of parameters to investigate before my game can be published as well learning to better use the Adobe Suite of applications in order to create the artwork and layouts for the game.  I think I am most excited to see the game look real, regardless of whether or not it gets published.

That excitement leads me to my next goal of making other teachers inspired to use games in their classroom.  To this end, I am going to look into speaker proposals for the Mathematics Council of the Alberta Teachers Association (MCATA) as well as for the Calgary City Teachers Convention (CCTCA) for the upcoming years.  As well, I will continue presentations about gaming and differentiation in the  mathematics classroom to the aspiring teachers of St. Mary’s University, and look to see if similar presentation opportunities are possible for other Education programs around the area.  I am also hoping to continue my present position of Learning Leader to be able to share my love of mathematical games with my colleagues.  

Looking at all I hope to accomplish, I believe I will be as busy as when I was in Grad school.  Now standing at the edge of the vast possibilities that span before me, I can only

breathe,

believe,

and step out into the void with only the stars that are my goals to guide me.

Matera, M. (2015). Explore Like a PIRATE: Gamification and Game-Inspired Course Design to Engage, Enrich and Elevate Your Learners. Dave Burgess Consulting Inc.