What if school was like a video game? What if instead of earning grades, you collected XP and leveled up? What if badges replaced report cards?
3DGameLab makes these ideas reality. Students progress through the class by choosing engaging quests. Teachers reward mastery with experience points.
I have been using 3DGameLab for two months with four English classes. The most time-consuming part is the set-up. I spend about five hours every other week building new quests, using a combination of tools to plan out each module.
I start by brainstorming all the quests I want to include in a given module. For this particular module, I wanted students to balance time spent in Grammar, Vocab, Literature, and in-game. Students in my 7-8th grade class play Pirate101 alongside reading Treasure Island. The literacy value of gaming is not to be discounted!
After determining the point value for each quest, I then plan out the progression using an iPad app called PureFlow. It is crucial to map before building quests in 3DGameLab, because when the quests are built, you need to set the prerequisites to unlock new quests.
The final step is to build the actual quests in 3DGameLab.
A fully designed quest looks like this:
Once students have turned in all of their quests, different badges are awarded, which in turn unlock the new set of quests. Every module (2 weeks) students are graded on their progress in Grammar, Vocabulary, and Reading & Writing. The grades are based on the badges students earn (which show mastery) and effort.
Most of my literature-based quests involve using some type of digital tool. On any given day students can be found updating their blogs, creating comics, recording Tellagamis, annotating literature on an iPad, or making character maps. Students regularly hop into the game world to compare the world of the game with the world of their book.
I find that using 3DGameLab keeps my students motivated and engaged. In the words of my students 3DGameLab is: "Interesting!" "Fun!" and "Amazing!"
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