in this tutorial, you're gonna learn about an interesting tool for gamifying the classroom for gamifying education, and it's called Classcraft. Classcraft.com. As it says here, Gamify your classes, transform your classroom into an epic adventure your students play throughout the year, and it is free for teachers with unlimited classes. Now, some of the better features in Classcraft do require payment, and I want you to know that right from the beginning, but you can very successfully use this for free in your classroom. Here in the upper right, I'm gonna click Start Playing. It takes me to a screen where I need to sign up either as a teacher, student, or parent. I'm gonna select teacher, and I'll sign up with my Google account, but notice that you can also just use a username or email to sign up. Okay, I had to allow Classcraft to access my Google account in order to do that. That's typical. So, I'm logged in now to my brand-new Classcraft account. Next, I get a tutorial that I can click through.

talks about some of the basics. Students become warriors, mages, or healers, and they have powers. Special powers that relate to what they've chosen. Powers make class fun because they can grant special privileges like being able to eat in class, being able to chew gum, being able to have an extra hall pass for the week, or whatever it might be. In order to get powers, students earn experience points by behaving in ways that make them better learners, and teachers can set up what those behaviors are that earn the students experience points. So what behaviors would you like to promote in your class? You establish that students can also lose health points for behaving in a negative way, and there are consequences for the students. If a student loses all of their health points, they'll fall in battle, and they receive a random consequence. For example, having to turn in an assignment a day early. Okay, that would be awful, right? There are also team settings so that students play in teams, and when one student loses all of their health points, it penalizes their whole team.

there is that feeling of I've got to do my best to help my team not just for my own good but for the good of the team. So at this point, Classcraft recommends that we need to proceed by first setting up a class and then exploring some resources. So I'll click Next. It says, Get started with your first class. So I'll click Continue. My new class is, and this is gonna be Spanish one. If I've used this before, I could import settings from an existing class, but I'm not going to do that this time. I click Next, and it takes me to a screen where as a teacher, I can establish the behaviors that I want to encourage. It says, Choose three behaviors from the options below. So correctly answering a question in class. Okay, I like that. But notice when I click change, it goes to a different one, and these are kind of random. So it just randomly goes through some of the options that I have. So handing in homework on time, 50 experience points. I like that one.

next one helping another student with their work. That's another thing I would like to encourage: being positive and hard-working. So these are all really good. If you do click change enough times though, it takes you to an option where you can just type your own behavior that you would like to encourage. So maybe speaking only Spanish in class. Ok, I want that to be worth 90 points. I click Next. And if I want to go back, I can. You can see that it recorded that custom behavior that I put in. So I'll click Next. Now, what behavior is what I like to discourage? Being rude, arriving late, being negative. These are all good ones, but I could change them to something else and customize it however I want it to be in my own class. So, speaking English in the Spanish class is worth minus 5. I click Next. Now I get to choose my students' powers. So I'll click Next. The warriors can do these things if they earn a basic power, they can do this intermediate power, they can do this advanced power, they can do these things.

now if I want to change those rewards, if I'm not willing to allow them to eat in class ever, then I need to click Change and pick a different option. If I click it enough times, just like before, I can customize this to be exactly what I want. I'll click Next. Now I need to do the same for the healers and for the mages. Next up, I get to choose the sentences. Now, these are negative consequences for people who lose all of their health points and fall in battle. So, here are the negative consequences. Now, notice that there is one here that says nothing. If they're lucky, their consequence is nothing. They escape any sort of negative consequence. But if you don't like that, you can change it. And just like before, if you click enough times, you can customize it exactly how you want for your classroom. I'll click Next. So now I get to decide the game duration. How long does this class go? Let's say the class ends in about a year. And then how many hours a week are

they in my class. Okay, let's say five. I click Next. Okay, this is amazing work. Now let's add your students and create your teams. So add my students. It says my school is, and then I type in my school name. Now that I've selected my school, I can start putting in students' names. Now, I could type these in manually, or if I want to, I can copy/paste the names in. So you might be able to export them from your SIS, your student information system, your gradebook, or whatnot. Also, you might be able to import from Google Classroom, but it is also possible, like I said, just to manually put in the names of the students. Let's say that I've put in all the names. I'll click Next, and I can now create some teams. So here's one team, and it consists of Mary and Jason, and then team two consists of Sarah and Thomas. Now I can click Next, and we're ready to start the game. You can start a student intro. Now, the first time you use Classcraft with your students, you should

watch this video. It walks you through the necessary things that you'll need to do to help them get started using it. And you can see down here, there's a download rule summary, there are team sheets, there's a hero pact for the students to sign, and there are student codes that you can click. You can print and hand out to the students. And each of those codes gives them access to the game in your particular class. When you're ready, just click start. And this is an introduction for the students to watch to help them learn how to use ClassCraft. Welcome to ClassCraft. ClassCraft turns your class into a game that will last the whole school year. You'll be playing in teams as different characters. By working together, you'll level up and earn powers that give you real benefits in class. Let's take a look at the game rules. Your teacher is now the game master. Whenever they see you doing good actions in class, like answering a question correctly or being helpful to others, they'll reward you with experience points or expedient.

so you can show that to your students. So they understand how it works, and then just click Next. Again, this is for the students to review. And then it talks about the different characters and what makes each type of character unique. So warriors, healers, and mages. The teams get to pick a team crest. Okay, so team one gets to make their decision right in front of the class with you in control. The students pick their crest and pick a team background. So that's team one. Team two can customize their name as well. Team two maybe chooses this combination. Click Next. And the next step is for the students, each individual student to set up their characters. It's time for your students to create their characters. They can do this on their own devices, or you can set them up on yours. In most cases, I think it'll be more fun for the students if they create their own characters. And so, in the computer lab or on devices, they can go in and set up their characters. In this case, though, I'm just gonna click teacher create. It says

congrats finished setting up your students in the game dashboard and start playing so let's get started. So because I chose teacher setup for the student characters, I now have to go through and pick for each of these students what their character is like. So I'll click setup character. We'll have Mary be this person here. She can tell me if she wants to be a warrior, a healer, or a mage. And now her character is ready. I could do the same thing with Jason here. So male looked be a mage. Ok, there's different types of powers you can choose. Click finish. And then I would have to just continue to edit these other characters. And so you can see why it's really better for the students and for the teacher if the students customized their own characters. It's a big time-saver that way. Ok, at this point I'm ready to begin using this with my students. And there's a couple of different ways I could use class craft with my students. I could just begin teaching my class as usual, but any time

I see Mary do something good. I could click here on the plus sign, and I could say, Ok, she's helping another student with her work or his work, and she handed in her homework on time, and she's speaking only Spanish. Now each time I did that, her experience points went up. But let's say she does something wrong. She can also lose points. So that is one way to use Classcraft, simply to reward and punish the behaviors that you want to encourage and discourage. If Mary loses all of her health points, you'll have to go here to sentences. And let's see how that works. So let's apply a 150 health point reduction. It looks like Mary fell in battle. The team can try to bail her out in some cases, but in this case, let's let Mary fall in battle. So here is her sentence. She has to hand in her next assignment a day early. And that was randomly chosen. Let Mary accept her fate. So those are the basics of using Classcraft with your students, and that's how a lot of teachers use it. It is possible.

though to take class craft even further, what you could do is instead of just teaching your class as normal, but then noticing and rewarding and punishing the behavior you want to encourage and discourage, you could actually gamify your curriculum. You could take the content of your course, and you could turn it into an adventure game, basically. And I've seen this done in classrooms where the teacher will draw a map on the board and talk about how they have to go defeat the enemy and so forth. And in order to defeat them, they have to know Spanish or they have to know math or whatever your content is. And if they do know the content, you can click the plus sign and reward them for that. Now you may need to add other behaviors that you want to reward. So I'm gonna go here where it says edit presets, and here in behaviors, I can add another positive behavior. Okay, that's gonna be worth 12 experience points. And so you can add in more than just the three positive behaviors. So anyway, there are teachers

that use this to gamify not just classroom management and behavior, but also their curriculum. If you want some help with that, you can start a premium trial with ClassCraft. But what this does is it helps you to gamify your homework, your assignments, and your class content, and you can turn your lessons into quests. So I've never done that, but it seems like it would be lots of fun and an exciting way to teach and learn. So I hope you've enjoyed learning how to use ClassCraft. Thanks for watching. I hope you found this video to be useful. If you did, please click the like button below and consider connecting with me on my social media websites like Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter, and definitely do subscribe to my YouTube channel for more videos about technology for teachers and students, and watch for another video from me at least every Monday. If you'd like to support my YouTube channel, please look in the description below and consider supporting me through my Patreon account.

Classcraft Tutorial - Gamification of Education

Classcraft Tutorial - Gamification of Education