## Want to share your insights on education with us? Email [stephanie@classcraft.com](mailto:stephanie@classcraft.com) to get started!

*Voted teacher of the year at his school for 2015, Dan Koch helped pilot the 1:1 iPad initiative for Citrus County, FL, in which students were issued an iPad to take home for the school year. Dan works with Apple and FASA and has helped design an iTunes U course for other educators linking to apps and ELA standards, and he leads professional development technology trainings throughout Citrus County. He was named an Apple Distinguished Educator in 2015.*

## Thanks for talking with us today, Dan! To start, tell us a little about yourself as an educator and what classes and grade levels you teach.

I teach 8th grade language arts at Citrus Springs Middle School in Florida. I’m the yearbook advisor for the school, and this is my fifth year teaching.

Our school has been 1:1 with iPads since 2012, so this is our third full year with the devices. Next year, we’ll have all three grade levels with devices that they [can] take home and bring back to school with them every day.

## How did you find Classcraft?

I was at a professional development session where this woman was giving a presentation. She talked about gamification and giving rewards for students in the classroom and making the whole environment a game. That’s something I latched onto.

I was intrigued to get something going in my classroom and get the kids motivated. I searched online for different ways to do that, and some people had their own XP system and Google sheets, and there were huge algorhythms they were using. I thought, “It’s going to take me a long time to do this.” So I kept clicking around, and I came to one website that talked about a new, up-and-coming ed-tech startup called Classcraft — it’s like World of Warcraft meets Class Dojo. I thought, “That is cool. I used to play World of Warcraft, and I’d get sucked in for days. So if I can get the kids sucked in with that type of mentality …” I was all over it.

## What changes have you seen in your classroom since you’ve started using Classcraft?

When I first started implementing it and starting tying XP to getting [assignments] in on time or early, I saw 100 percent work completion for my classes. I was like, “Oh my god, this is excellent!” That’s good for teachers, too, when you talk about evaluations. You always want to differentiate your classrooms, and your administrator is looking for viable [methods]. “This gamification thing is great, but can I tie it to any sort of data?” And that’s data right there.

## Especially with the Analytics!

Yeah, I was just playing around with that before. That’s even better. I can pull that [data] up for any student.

## What other ways has Classcraft made your job as a teacher easier?

Honestly, teaching gets boring, especially if you’re in the same curriculum. You know your stuff and you try to make it engaging, but there are days that are just like, “Oh, man.” It’s Monday, and you feel the same way the kids are feeling. All I have to do is fire up Classcraft, and it makes our morning interesting. It just supercharges me, the kids, and it gets us going. Even on those days where it’s like a rainy Monday and nobody wants to be there, it turns the day around for us.

## What customizations have you made in the game?

I have added so many random events and so many death sentences [when falling in battle] because, for the kids, that’s their favorite thing. I have a Google form that attaches to a “suggest a quest” form that I made. Students will submit [ideas], and I’ll see them right on my iPad when I check the spreadsheet. I have [events where] the kids have to talk in quotes from the movie Mean Girls, or they have to plank on the ground for a minute … random stuff like that. A lip sync battle is another one that a kid suggested.

They enjoy [helping me] customize the game and tailoring it to the things that they want to see. And when they feel a part of the process, just like anything else, it makes them want to come to class and makes them feel more a part of the community of the learning that’s going on. So I appreciate it for that, too.

## What’s your favorite event or sentence?

They have to arm wrestle me in a death sentence.

## Have they ever won?

Nobody’s won. [Laughter] And there are kids who are like, “I’m gonna do it this time.” There’s that moment where everyone goes, “Oooooh. You have to arm wrestle Mr. K.” I like that just because it’s funny. And I’ll ham it up and act like I’m losing.

## Has this changed at all how they see you?

They enjoy the comradery they have with me, because I take their suggestions seriously. … Just seeing me as the Gamemaster, and the fact that I introduced it to the class and tried to make it more fun — they appreciate that. They understand that it’s for them to have a good time in class. It’s meant to make it more immersive than that. They do appreciate that, and they tell me that.

## What advice would you give a teacher who’s thinking about using Classcraft?

Do it. Don’t be afraid. I had some reluctance, and if I had just said, “Oh, I don’t have time,” I don’t know what I’d be doing right now, honestly. I’d just be going through my curriculum, and I’d be teaching and doing the best I could, but I don’t know how this year would have been.

And I didn’t start in the beginning of the year. I started October, maybe November. After I started this, it just changed how class runs for me every day for the better.

So don’t be afraid. It’s a risk to try something new, but you miss all the shots you don’t take. So you should do it.


Dan Koch

Classcraft Makes Teaching Easier and More Fun

## Want to share your insights on education with us? Email [stephanie@classcraft.com](mailto:stephanie@classcraft.com) to get started!

*Below is Part 2 of our interview with teacher and Classcraft ambassador Laura Trauth, who teaches at the college level both in the classroom and fully online with students.*

*Laura Trauth has been a total geek since childhood, from seeing The Empire Strikes Back 10 times in theaters to playing Dungeons & Dragons during lunch in high school. She has a PhD in modern European history and Master’s degrees in humanities and geospatial information sciences. In her spare time she reads comic books, hikes, gardens, and plans out more ways to gamify her classes.*

## How do you use Classcraft with your fully online courses? Has it been beneficial to that setting?

I’ve had to adjust things a little more. My students love the daily random events, like naming three spaghetti Western films, but you can’t really do those in an online class because they’d just Google spaghetti Westerns and email you the answers.

The other thing I’ve discovered is that Classcraft worked amazingly well in the winter. It was a three-week long, three-credit class. It was astoundingly fast. The students got really engaged, they worked as teams, and I think only one person dropped. No one failed, and not only did no one fail, no one even got a D. They all earned a C or better. It was beautiful.

When I hit the spring, now I have a 15-week class. And I discovered that there was a completely different problem. Classcraft isn’t going to engage the students if they’re only logging into their class once every two weeks. And that’s what they tend to do in the 15-week spring [class] ... and then of course they become very disconnected with the class and disconnected from their teammates.

So what I realized partway through the semester is that I can use Classcraft to motivate them to log in more regularly. So I’ve been changing the daily random events. So instead of, “All Healers take 10 health damage today,” I’ve changed that to, “All Healers take 10 health damage today unless they log in and post something about ancient medicine on the study blog.” Or instead of, “A random team gets 100 XP today,” I’ll say, “Everybody who logs in and shares their favorite study tip gets 100 XP today.”

In the fall, I’m looking forward to trying it from the start to see if I can keep those log-ins at a higher level by giving them those little rewards ... . We’ll see how that goes, but I’m very optimistic, given the little bump I saw in log-ins this semester, that I can also use Classcraft to motivate the online students to log in more. Once they log in, then they start looking around the class, then they start interacting with their classmates, they post on the blogs, that sort of thing. The danger is them getting so busy with their lives that they don’t ever log in.

## It sounds like it’s worth the challenge.

Absolutely. I would recommend it to anyone. You’re going to have to customize some with the online classes because most of the Classcraft events are geared for in the classroom, but you can do it. All anyone has to do at whatever grade level to use Classcraft is take a minute and think, “What do I want my students to be doing? What do I not want my students to be doing? How can I reward them for the things I want them to be doing? How can I discourage them from the things I don’t want them to be doing?”

## Overall, how have your students — both online and in the classroom — responded to Classcraft?

Most of my students are in their 20s or early 30s. A lot of them play computer games; some of them have young children. A lot of them like superhero movies, and their children like superhero movies. So by and large, they have really taken to it. I’ve had a few students leave my class and then go to their math class or their English class and tell their teacher, “You should be using Classcraft like Laura does.”

I had one person work with a friend who’s at a local four-year school, she was getting help in her math class from this friend who’s a physics major, and she told him about Classcraft, and he said, “This is amazing! Every teacher should be using it.”

They like the fact that they have ownership over things. They don’t have to come beg me for an extension or for a chance to rewrite a paper. They just know, “I’ve earned it. I can use it.”

## How else have you seen Classcraft help your students?

The other group that I’d say is a big success so far are my athletes. Student athletes in college always struggle because they have to make tremendous commitments to their sport — practicing every day, traveling for tournaments. The classic student athlete is a person who’s really good as a jock but struggles academically, and certainly that stereotype </p>has been true to some extent for me in the past, in that a lot of my student athletes have struggled to attend class regularly and keep up with the work while they’re trying to do all these other thi

But this past couple of semesters, my student athletes have done much, much better. This semester I only have two, but they’re both in online classes, which made me worry. Both of them are acing their classes. And last fall, they did better than usual too — As and Bs. I think it’s because they get the competition aspect and the need to work with a team.

## Do you have any advice for other teachers who may be thinking of using Classcraft with college or online classes? What’s important for them to know or keep in mind?

**Classcraft is definitely one of the biggest-impact things I have tried. Just for the amount of time I’ve been trying it, I see more difference in my students than just about any other activity or approach I’ve worked on in the past [21] years.**

My first advice is to meet your students where they’re at. It’s going to fit better in some schools and some settings than others. If you’re teaching advanced pharmacology, it might not be as good a fit as if you’re teaching these college freshmen. The issue is they have extrinsic motivations, not intrinsic. They haven’t reached the point yet where they say, “I love learning. I’m going to take a history class.” They’re at the point where they say, “My parents said I gotta get a degree or move out of the house, and I kind of like computers, so I think I’ll go into computer science. But now I have to take this history class.”

My best advice would be, don’t be afraid to experiment, and don’t be afraid to trust your students when you do. So try the game. Give it a shot. And get your students’ feedback on what’s working and what’s not. If something isn’t working, change it. Your students are your best collaborators in Classcraft. And that may be the greatest advantage I see from it: It gets rid of the adversarial relationship between the student and the teacher. “I’m here to beat you and get an A” becomes “I’m here to beat the game, to best myself, to reach new heights in my achievement and get an A.”


Laura Trauth

Using Classcraft in Online Classes

## Want to share your insights on education with us? Email [stephanie@classcraft.com](mailto:stephanie@classcraft.com) to get started!

*Mrs. Buffington teaches Middle School in Savannah, Georgia. After having been a nurse for many years, she decided her true passion is education and began this second adventure. She is an old-school gamer and loves using technology in the classroom. Since discovering Classcraft, she has become even more of a tech addict, taking the platform to edcamps in her district to promote its use.*

## Thanks for talking with us today, Larah! To start, tell us a little about yourself as an educator and what classes and grade levels you teach.

I am a educator at a STEM school. I teach research for science purposes for 8th graders. It’s actually an 8th grade class, but we teach it at a 9th grade level, so we’re an accelerated curriculum at our school.

## What kind of trouble did you have with bullying before introducing Classcraft?

Before introducing Classcraft, we had issues with harassment and mostly verbal bullying going on at our school. Some people call it teasing, but we don’t like to call it that because verbal harassment is verbal harassment, one way or another. And it can be considered bullying when people start getting emotionally injured by it. So we had a lot of that going on at our school.

In my classroom, that looked like stronger kids teasing kids about their style of dress, or what their hair looks like, or the girl who has the best, finest, coolest jewelry teasing the girls who can’t afford it. And it became harassment to the point where we had people whose feelings were getting hurt. And threats of fights. There were threats between kids of “I’m gonna knock you out if you don’t stop harassing me.” So we needed to get that under control in my class.

## When you introduced Classcraft, how did that help with the bullying?

The introduction of Classcraft made a big difference in my classroom. It allowed students to use their position within their team as leverage against the people who were harassing them. I purposefully put people who weren’t getting along on the same team, because I knew that they would have to work together to have all the members of their team benefit. And in doing so, we had situations where someone was being harassed, and they would come to me and say, “So-and-so harassed me,” and I would say, “Oh man, you’re gonna have to lose points now.”

The apologies immediately started following. And after that initial introduction to it, I noticed that the harassment and the bullying decreased weekly because they knew that if they harassed somebody or bullied someone in my class, and I got told about it, they would lose points. And I made the point [loss] for bullying and harassment so high that it has decreased to almost nothing in my classroom. There is no bullying or harassment in my classroom because nobody wants to lose points.

## How have students started to act against that? Have you seen them call each other out on that?

Oh, they call each other out. I call it “policing” each other. And I will say, “Way to police your people.” Because if somebody across the room hears someone else across the room even start that nonsense, they’ll go, “Ooohh, Ms. B, you need to take points away from so-and-so because I just heard them say …” and they’ll tell me whatever they heard that person say. And if they have backup, if other people heard it too, I immediately go in. And I’ll stop mid-class if I need to and take points away.

It has helped them not only to police each other, but it really has helped some of my students learn how to self-police, how to keep themselves under control. Because they start to say something and they’ll think to themselves, “I don’t want to lose points.”

## Why is it so important for students to act against bullying? What do they need to know?

They need to know that whether they feel like anyone’s getting hurt or not, bullying hurts. Not only does it hurt the person that they’re bullying or harassing, it hurts the entire classroom environment. The vibe of the whole class goes down when a single person in the classroom starts that nonsense. You either have a reaction where the whole class starts the shark-tank mentality, where they all start harassing and snarking at each other, or a reaction where everybody starts to feel bad about themselves because they never know when somebody is going to start harassing them about something that they don’t like about them.

So it affects everybody around you. You’re not just harassing or bullying one person. It creates an environment where nobody can feel safe.

## It sounds like if one student stands up against that, then it starts a wave.

It does. And that’s what we’ve noticed. Other teachers that are not using Classcraft yet — and I say “yet” because we have a whole bunch of teachers who are interested in using it next year — they have also noticed that if they tell the kids, “I’m gonna tell Ms. Buffington that you’re doing that in my class and then you’re going to lose points,” it stops in their classrooms, too.

## Has Classcraft done anything else to promote positive social change in your classroom?

Absolutely. I had the greatest experience with a student who really had not found her social niche yet. And she was a wall flower and felt like she didn’t have any friends yet. When a particular random event came up, she was terrified because her name was chosen at random. The random event was to sing a song in front of the class. She started to fall apart. She was gonna cry because she didn’t want to sing in front of the class.

And her teammates, who really did not know her that well at that point, because she was new to the school, rallied around her. They all went over and started saying, “We’ll help you sing. We’ll help you. You don’t have to feel sad and upset because you don’t know anybody or feel nervous that you’re going to have to do his. We’ll help you.” And they helped her start singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” and by the end of that, the entire class was singing, and then everybody knew who she was and started to befriend her. They knew that she was vulnerable and that she was human just like them. And now it seems like everybody in that class is friends with her.

Up until that point, she told me that she really felt disconnected. So just having that one random event pop up — which is really interesting that it happened for her — made a great difference in her life and in the classroom because those students may never have sought her out and become friends with her. But just that one random event made a difference in that one student’s life and then of course made a difference in everybody else’s life because they now get the chance to know her.

## I love that story.

It’s one of the reasons why my principal is promoting Classcraft now, because he just thinks it’s wonderful that it can have that type of impact on students.

## What advice would you give to teachers who struggle with bullying their classroom?

Bullying and harassment almost seems to come naturally with being a preteen — where they’re trying to have a power struggle to figure out who’s on top, who’s the king of the hill, and who’s on top of the food chain. And I tell the teachers: Every tool that we have in our arsenal that lets them know that there is no food chain here, that everybody’s on equal footing, we need to use. And it’s going to be the best thing we can do for these kids right now at this point in their social development.

And I’ve really found that Classcraft, even though it’s competitive — and even though some of them are like, “I’m a Level 12 and you’re only a Level 11,” or whatever — they know in a single day or a few days that could change, depending on what’s going on in the classroom and who hands in what and who’s on time and who’s not, et cetera. Any of that could change. So Classcraft puts everybody on equal footing. You all start at the same level. You all have the same opportunities to earn and gain, or to lose. So it literally gives them a place in the school where they are all on equal footing regardless of their race, creed, color, national origin, religion, sexual preference, social class, any of that. In Classcraft, none of that matters.


Larah Buffington

How Classcraft Stops Bullying in School

## Want to share your insights on education with us? Email [stephanie@classcraft.com](mailto:stephanie@classcraft.com) to get started!

*Luke Henke is passionate about growing students into young mathematicians and leaders. He teaches algebra through calculus in high school and also for a local community college. Coaching math team, cross country, and track allows him to stay below the obese level according to his Wii Balance Board. He is starting his doctorate in educational leadership while also enjoying spending time with his wife and newborn son.*

## Thanks for talking with us today, Luke! To start, tell us a little about yourself as an educator and what classes and grade levels you teach.

I have my Bachelors of Science in education and mathematics in 2008. I stuck around and got my Masters in pure mathematics in 2010. I ended up teaching middle school for three years and then moved up to the high school I now teach at now. I teach algebra, precalculus, and calculus.

## How has Classcraft affected your classroom?

It really gives students a way to visualize their progress in class. It also engages them outside of the classroom, which is awesome. To make students even look at a book or their homework outside of the classroom can be very difficult, but when it’s all online through Classcraft’s learning management system, it makes it a lot easier for them to check homework and ask questions of each other and of me.

## That seems useful, especially with math, where they might have more questions as they do their homework.

Sometimes kids go home and they don’t have anyone nearby. I work in a rural school district, and there are a lot of students who live outside of town. They can probably text their friends, but that’s not really good for getting math help. I can post their assignments, put a picture on there, put a short video, I can link to Khan Academy … I can do those sorts of things so students have ready-made resources at their disposal.

## Has Classcraft changed your students’ attitudes toward math in any way?

Yeah. I’ve been reading through [Lee Sheldon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TedJwQdj8PA)’s [book on storytelling](http://www.amazon.com/Character-Development-Storytelling-Games-Series/dp/1592003532), and it says that the three main components of a good story are that it takes the person to a new place, allows them to be someone they could never be, and lets them do things they could never do before. So [in Classcraft], students are able to create an avatar that allows them to be someone else, and they can visualize the math portion of it by gaining experience points through homework, quizzes, tests, or reviews.

They’re able to use the special powers that they gain for their character to basically take down one of their biggest foes in life, because it seems so many students have a dislike of math. They’re able to conquer their fears through their character even though they themselves might not have viewed it as conquerable before.

## So it seems like it makes students feel more capable.

Yeah. Especially with the avatars. By accomplishing the work, they have a direct visual component to allow them to see that when I do this, it really does have an impact. Especially with math, I always get the question, “When am I going to use this in real life?” So it actually makes it a little more real for them, which is really good. Because sometimes they have a hard time seeing that.

## Why would you say students struggle with math more than other subjects, and what can we do to alleviate that?

There’s a big issue in our society where we have this stigma about how math is this set-in-stone idea. [Dr. Carol Dweck](http://mindsetonline.com/abouttheauthor/) has just issued a lot of research about our mindsets and the ability for our brains to grow, that they’re not set-in-stone. And when we make statements like, “I’m not good at math,” it puts us in a mindset where we’re not going to do well at math because we have that idea.

Our parents perpetuate this, and even our teachers do — “that student’s really good at math.” Well, that actually puts a stigma on them that when they don’t succeed, they begin to think, “Maybe I’m not good at math,” so then they have a negative attitude toward it.

Students have to understand that they can grow: Just like their character in Classcraft is growing as they gain experience points, their brain is growing, and there’s a direct correlation to their character’s progress and their own mental progress. They’re able to achieve more than they had before because their brain is growing, and they can change.

## There’s a lot of conversation about how to get kids more interested in STEM topics. What do you feel is important to do to encourage kids to be more interested in math?

We have to make math more applicable to their lives. We can engage students as learners and teach them those lifelong learning skills, and that’s good. But not every student is going to reach that point quickly, and the way that we get them there is by integrating application into our topics whenever possible. They see that within science and how it directly affects their world. They see that with technology — they have it in their hands and in their pockets every day. With engineering, they understand how it’s necessary to have these engineers that are building, constructing water treatment facilities, and taking care of our utilities.

But with mathematics, it’s a discipline purely in and of itself. It’s integrated in all of those, but it’s unique because it’s not a direct application in most cases. If we transition to more application, I feel that’s going to make the difference for mathematics — showing students how it is science and technology and engineering.

It’s interesting that math is listed last there [in STEM]. It’s actually the first, as it’s most foundational. But we focus so much on the foundation, we forget the bigger picture of the entire blueprint that we’re trying to build with the student.

## Have you made any changes in the game to customize it for math class?

I’m pretty sure that next year I’m going to be using the random events more specifically as a random selector of review materials, and maybe quizzes. It could be a math history lesson. So kind of a selector of the intro activity, and then I’ll also have another setup for brain breaks. Students need to get up and move every 10-15 minutes in the classroom. They say your attention span is only as long as your age, so it’s really hard for students to concentrate.

I teach in a block schedule over long periods of time, and using the random events is a great tool for that just to break them out of that comatose shell they might try to slip into. And then we can jump right back into the math.

## What advice would you give other teachers who are thinking of using Classcraft with a particular class subject like math?

Just go for it. You’re not really out anything. You're not changing how you teach the class; you’re not changing what material you’re covering. You’re just changing how you’re interacting with students.

As teachers, our primary goal is always to build positive relationships with students. With upward of 90 percent of your students having a mobile device and engaging in mobile games, they have an understanding of games already. So you’re bringing the classroom to their level. Even though you're not changing anything, you’re engaging in a medium that allows students to see directly how their learning is helping them grow and change through hard work and effort.


Luke Henke

Improving Math Skills with Classcraft

## Want to share your insights on education with us? Email [stephanie@classcraft.com](mailto:stephanie@classcraft.com) to get started!

*Mallory Kessen is nearing the end of her first year of teaching English and using Classcraft at Logan Hocking Middle School. This fall she will teach English at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati, OH. She founded Gamindex in 2014 to connect teachers to video games for education through reviews of games from an education point of view.  You can find her online [@mallorykessen](https://twitter.com/mallorykessen) or [@gamindex](https://twitter.com/gamindex).*

## Thanks for talking with us today, Mallory! To start, tell us a little about yourself as an educator and what classes and grade levels you teach.

I’m in my first year of teaching. I teach eighth grade English in Logan, Ohio. Next year, I’m going to be in Cincinnati, but I don’t know what grade level yet. In addition to teaching, I am getting a Masters in computers and educational technology, and I run [my own website](http://www.gamindex.org/) where I review video games for educational use.

## How has Classcraft made a difference for your students?

Even within the first few weeks of using Classcraft, there was a huge jump of how many kids participated in class. As soon as they saw that one person who participated got 50 XP, suddenly all the hands went up and everyone was engaged.

It’s also made my class more fun. We’ve had random events where we have to do things like speak in an accent, or sing a song that they choose, or do a dance. And because they’re more engaged, because they have some fun at the start, it keeps them there for the rest of class.

I’ve also seen it make a difference in some of my students individually. I’ve had a couple students who are very aggressive outside of class, usually getting into fights and things like that. One of my kids who used to get in trouble a lot now comes in and is asking, “Can I protect my team? I want to make sure they’re OK.”

And then another kid who was completely unengaged in class, now that he’s been given a little empowerment with Classcraft, he’s really engaged in class and wants to be involved in what’s going on. He does not want to lose Health Points (HP). He would rather me call his mom than take away his HP.

## How did Classcraft inspire you to create new content for your classroom?

I really loved what Classcraft was bringing. … I wanted to bring out more of the gaming in my classroom. I liked the idea of a boss battle because in a game, it’s your form of assessment. There wasn’t quite anything yet [in Classcraft] that would match that, so I figured I would fill the gap myself, especially since I’ve played so many games. So I decided that I would design a boss that they could fight. We actually had that as our end-of-semester assessment last term.

They loved it. It was amazing. By bringing in and allowing the chance for us [teachers] to do things like quests for our kids, have daily events, or make them be Warriors and Mages and Healers, it opened up for — OK, we’ve gamified this, and we’ve empowered our kids to do this … what else can we do? Which is how things like boss battles and the bounty board started in my class. We started here, so what else?

[Ed. Note: Boss battles are officially coming to Classcraft this year!]

I think it helps [that Classcraft is] so customizable. The fact that it’s a space where you can customize so much, and it’s meant to be tailored to your classroom … It felt like something that the community and Classcraft really embraced, like you loved seeing what we were doing.

Everyone is able to be their own designer for their classes.

## Has Classcraft helped your students to become more creative?

When they’re more engaged, they’ll get more creative because they’re working on what they’re supposed to. It’s also helped because I’ve had students come to me with ideas for quests on [our] bounty board, or they have ideas for sentences and daily events.

One of the quests I have that kids can do is write the backstory for their character. And the next day, I had a kid come in with a five-page story about the background of her character and how her character came to be where they were.

And I have kids who when they customize their avatars, they’ll talk about, “I’m making him look like this because he’s really tough,” or “She’s looking like this because she’s really pretty and she likes the water.” So they start adding attributes to their characters. It’s fascinating to see that they’re really taking [their avatars] on like that.

## What new additions are you working on next for your class?

We started reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I asked the kids if they had any recommendations on how to improve [the lesson] using Classcraft, or what they would change. They were all saying more boss battles, which is interesting because their boss battles are their tests. So it felt like they were asking, “More tests and quizzes, please.”

So I created mini-bosses. Since it’s the end of the year, they get 500 XP for defeating them, so they’ve been leveling up quite a bit from it, which they enjoy. At the end of class, they always have to summarize their scene and answer a focus question on it. And they’ve been facing different Greek monsters. Because we talked about how someone’s playing the part of a lion in the play, the Nemean Lion showed up and was going to attack them. So if they defeat him, they get 500 XP, and if they don’t, they would lose 10-15 HP. [Whether they win] is determined by whether the class could get 7 or 8 out of 10 on their work. Then they’d pass their boss battle.

After that, they’re working on portfolios, and I’m going to frame that as the “big bad one” has brought back all of their past bosses, and they have to defeat their past bosses one more time by putting together this portfolio showing how they have the strength to defeat them. Basically they put together a portfolio of their work, and then they’re going to meet with me for 5-10 minutes individually and talk to me about what have they learned, how have they improved, that kind of thing.

And then we’ll have one more big boss battle, which is a whole review of this semester.

## Has it reduced any of the anxiety your students feel about tests and quizzes?

It has immensely. I used to have kids who’d come in here freaking out about tests and things like that. They come in for boss battles, and they are amped. They are ready to go.

Even if it’s not anxiety, just the dread of taking a test and the frustration of it.

## What advice would you give to teachers looking to use Classcraft to make their classroom a more creative place?

Open it up for student suggestion. The rule is that the Gamemaster’s [the teacher’s] final word is all, but it’s still important to have student input because if they see that it’s only something coming from you, they’re never going to open up to be creative about it. I’ve had kids tell me who we should have for bosses and what we should do next, and they really contribute.

Then when they see that their suggestions were taken and their creativity was applauded, they’re not only more creative, but also more engaged and more interested in making it succeed.


Mallory Kessen

Increasing Creativity in the Classroom

## Want to share your insights on education with us? Email [stephanie@classcraft.com](mailto:stephanie@classcraft.com) to get started!

*Jeroen Heremans teaches Dutch, English as ESL, and history in the 3rd and 4th year of secondary school. He’s been teaching for 10 years and started his blog last year with geeky suggestions and lesson ideas. In addition to teaching, he’s an improv actor and gives workshops on “Improvisation and class management’” and “Improv Class for Teachers.” Jeroen is the main contributor to Classcraft's Dutch translation.*

## Thanks for talking with us today, Jeroen! To start, tell us a little about yourself as an educator and what classes and grade levels you teach.

I’ve been teaching for 11 years now. I teach history, Dutch, and English as a second language. I don’t know how the American system works, but we have six years of elementary school and six years of secondary school, and I teach in the third and fourth years of the secondary school. So most of my students are between 14 and 17 years old.

## Can you give us a snapshot view of what education is like in Belgium?

There are three areas in Belgium: a Flemish-speaking part, where I teach; a French-speaking part; and a small German-speaking part. Each community has its own focus and system, and we have four different education levels. The biggest one is ASO, or General Secondary Education. Then we have TSO, that’s Technical Secondary Education, and then we have BSO, or Professional Secondary Education. The last is KSO, which is “art school” — dance, music, drawing, architecture.

So in the General stream, we teach languages, economics, mathematics, science, et cetera. In the Technical stream, we also have those subjects, but science is more like industrial or biomedical science, or computer science. So it’s more practical than the general stream. And then you have the Professional stream, where they have a lot of practical [career] lessons, for technicians, factory workers and even nurses.

## What made you decide to use Classcraft? How does it work with your goals as a teacher?

The way I learned about it was while doing research for my blog. I was looking for geeky stuff on the Internet that teachers could use. I actually can’t remember where I found Classcraft, but it was when it was just starting and they were looking for teachers who wanted to test the beta version.

I started by testing it out for four weeks. I was already into role-playing games, and I liked how students could level up and the powers they could unlock. I really wanted to give it a try, so I did. And My students were very enthusiastic [when we started playing].

I’m still enjoying Classcraft. I had my last lesson with my English class today, so I ended by asking my students, “What did you think of Classcraft? Did you like it, and do I need to do it again this year?” There was only one thing they didn’t like, and it was the power to open or close a window. [Ed. Note - Powers like these are customizable by the teacher!]

… They said, “Yeah, you should definitely keep doing this. The random events are fun; sometimes they’re a bit strange, but it’s OK because it’s you who’s teaching us.” It definitely meets my goals because it keeps my students motivated.

## What kind of customizations did you make to the game? What did you like?

I’m thinking of changing the “Hunting” power … Students can’t eat in [our] school, in classes or in the hallways. So it was a big, big privilege, and it was only a Level 1 power. So if I would use it again I would move it down the ladder or give it something extra.

Other modifications were the events of the day. Not every event appealed to me, and I also wanted to do something different. … I definitely used the online classroom, the LMS [learning management system]. I really, really liked it. There are some updates coming, so I’m very interested in that.

It’s so manageable. You can reward them with Experience Points (XP), with Gold Pieces (GP). You can set a clear deadline. There’s a time stamp, so you can say, “Hey, you’re too late, or you’re too early.” There’s this thing where they can respond to each other [in the comments], and I can respond to them. They can ask me something when they are not in my classroom. And it worked. They liked it. They thought it was clear what they had to do — there was the assignment, their homework, they could upload their homework and didn’t have to print it because their dog always ate it. … It did the trick for them.

## Would you give any advice to any other international teachers interested in using Classcraft?

The very short answer is just try it, because it’s worth it. It’s a very interesting system. It works in a world that students are familiar with. It looks great; the artwork is fantastic. It seems like a lot to manage, but once you’ve tried it or had a small introduction from someone who knows it, it’s really not that difficult.

… You have to remind yourself that when starting, [the students are] only Level 1. They only have one power. It’s very manageable. And they don’t use their powers every minute; they use their powers maybe three times in a lesson. And the first powers they have, you can only use them once every lesson or two. So it is manageable.

You [learn how to use] Classcraft together with your students, so that should comfort some teachers who want to try it. It’s a very, very interesting system that I really love.


Jeroen Heremans

Using Classcraft in Belgium

## Want to share your insights on education with us? Email [stephanie@classcraft.com](mailto:stephanie@classcraft.com) to get started!

*Below is Part 1 of our interview with teacher and Classcraft ambassador Laura Trauth, who teaches at the college level both in the classroom and fully online with students.*

*Laura Trauth has been a total geek since childhood, from seeing The Empire Strikes Back 10 times in theaters to playing Dungeons & Dragons during lunch in high school.  She has a PhD in modern European history and Master’s degrees in humanities and geospatial information sciences. In her spare time she reads comic books, hikes, gardens, and plans out more ways to gamify her classes.*

## Thanks for talking with us today, Laura! To start, tell us a little about yourself as an educator and what classes and grade levels you teach.

I’ve been teaching a long time. I actually started back in the late 1980s as a teaching assistant for biology classes. Since then, I’ve taught, TA’d, or tutored everything from biology to chemistry to math and history. Mostly, I’ve taught college freshmen and sophomores, although I’ve also taught SAT prep classes for a few years. Of course, that was high school and even some middle school students.

I started teaching full-time at the Community College of Baltimore County in 1998, and I’ve been there ever since. I teach U.S. history classes, Western Civilization survey classes, and the occasional sophomore-level history class as well, like Diseases in History. I’m currently working on a History of Crime and Punishment.

Right now, I use Classcraft with everything. So this semester and summer, that’s five history classes, some online and some face-to-face.

## Why did you choose to use Classcraft with your college courses? What about it appealed to you?

First of all, I’m a total geek. I started playing Dungeons & Dragons when I was a high school freshman, and in college I discovered other RPGs, like Champions and Call of Cthulhu. Even before I found Classcraft, I’d started integrating the theme of heroes in my Western Civ I classes. I got this idea that if we focused on Greek and Norse legends in our primary source readings, my students would find that an accessible way to get into the hopes and fears and beliefs of people in the past.

To be honest, I was also pretty darn burned out. I’ve been teaching the same three or four courses for over 15 years. I’ve taught History 101 over 75 times. You just get bored, and I needed a way to reinvigorate my course and a way to engage my students.

I was searching online, and I found Classcraft, and it seemed like a perfect fit, both with my personality and with the themes I had already started integrating with my class.

## It sounds like the theme of heroes works really well with the avatars.

It does. It really ties in. I’ve started doing more things beyond reading and talking about the myths. I’ve also had students read a little bit about Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces, and then one of the assignments they do is they write up their own hero’s journey and the obstacles they’ve faced and overcome in triumphing. I want them to see themselves as epic — as someone who can achieve anything they set their minds to.

All of our students are not just in their first year of college; they’re the first person in their family to ever go to college. They’re coming from backgrounds where their parents really struggled bringing them up. As a result, they’ve never been exposed to college culture, and they’re very intimidated. They don’t know how to ask questions, they don’t know how to come to office hours, and they have this idea that it’s going to be just like high school. When they find out it’s not and that they need to be a lot more responsible for their own thinking, scheduling, and learning, they can get overwhelmed and give up. And I’m trying to get them across that gap, to where they know they can do it.

## What customizations did you make so it would be appropriate to the adult age level?

Lots! Fortunately, the way Classcraft is set up, it’s very easy to do. First of all, we don’t have guidelines and regulations that our students need to follow, like getting a hall pass or asking permission to open a window, or having an assigned seat. So I had to adjust those sorts of powers.

Students also felt like the distribution of powers was a little unfair. Originally there was only one character class that had the power to use their notes on a test. Well that’s a really big deal at the college level, and a lot of my students have test anxiety. They said partway through the first semester, “We think every class ought to have, at the highest level, the ability to use their notes on the exam.” So I listened to them. I thought, that makes sense.

Then I thought, what do they request or need all the time? They frequently want extensions. So by making extensions on writing papers a Classcraft power, they now have ownership of that. They have control of it. They don’t have to come and see me. I tell them, if you earn the power, you can use the power. You’re in charge.

Our students show up in the morning, take a few classes, and then rush off to work. So it’s hard to create collaboration, especially in the online classes where they never meet each other personally and physically. So one of the things that I do is I give them the power to revise a test or a paper, but they have to work collaboratively with at least one other student. So that encourages them to get to know their teammates.

And if they can’t meet physically because of their schedules, there are neat sites online like PrimaryPad, which is an online shared text editor where they can chat. Some of them have actually built on this and gone off on their own and set up PrimaryPads where they share their notes and go over their notes and clarify things for each other, so they didn’t just stop at revising the occasional paper. Some of them have actually formed study teams, and they work together on a regular basis.

## How else do you encourage them to learn how to be responsible for their own learning?

I have some issues with sentences, too, with adult students [when students fall in battle]. I can’t keep my students after class to clean up. I can’t send them to detention. Most of my students are working adults, and because some of them are struggling financially, I wanted to avoid anything that required them to bring in a treat for their classmates.

I also don’t have the [luxury] of being able to talk to their parents if they’re not serving their sentences. So I was thinking, how am I going to make these adult students, who can just walk out at the end of the day, motivated to complete their sentences if they fall in battle? And my solution there was simply to let them set them. We talk about it in the first week of class, and they for the most part decide what the sentences should be. I tell them to focus on things that they feel will help them get back on track if they start having a little trouble in the class.

They’re very creative. They’ve created sentences like writing up notes to share with the class on Blackboard, creating a timeline online and sharing that, giving a short presentation. And then I always add to that an option for coming to my physical or online office hours to ask questions, because I know that someone who’s having a lot of trouble may be a little nervous about doing that. So if I’m telling them to, hopefully they’ll use that as an opening to come on in.

I never want to put them at a greater disadvantage, so if they fail a test, I’m not going to give them fewer minutes on the next test. They need every minute they can get on my test. They’re writing until the last minute and I have to pull the test out of their hands.

## Those are good skills for them to have when they graduate, too.

Absolutely. Or even when they leave school for the day and go to their jobs. Those are skills they need in their daily lives. They need to collaborate and be meta-cognitive and think, “How did I get to where I am right now and how do I get to where I want to be?”

So if I can take some small steps in getting them to move in that direction with Classcraft, then I consider that a major victory.


Using Classcraft in College Classes

## Want to share your insights on education with us? Email [stephanie@classcraft.com](mailto:stephanie@classcraft.com) to get started!

*Tyler Waller is a computer engineer with several passions — hunting, fishing, and playing live music to name a few. His biggest passion is teaching students the wonderful world of technology. To Tyler, there is no greater success story than one told by actions of successful students after they graduate your class.*

## Thanks for talking with us today, Tyler! To start, tell us a little about yourself as an educator and what classes and grade levels you teach.

I’m starting my eighth year as a computer technology teacher at Dawson-Bryant High School. I teach computer repair, computer networking, and now we’re bringing in a new class next year, which is video and sound.

I went to Marshall University to be a computer engineer, finished that up, and got out of school with a few certifications under my belt. I tried to find a job in the computer engineering market around my house, and there pretty much weren’t any. So I looked in my local newspaper and found out that the high school I went to was looking for a computer repair teacher. I applied, and literally two weeks later, I was teaching high school.

## Why did you decide to use Classcraft, and how has it been useful to you?

I was researching the idea of gamification in the classroom. … Through my childhood, I was a really big gamer, and I like the idea because kids nowadays, 95 percent of them play games. I was looking for a way to bring that into my classroom without going overboard.

I ran across Classcraft, and by that time there was about six weeks left of our school year. I had a group of seniors I really liked, and they had already certified. We were just basically doing above and beyond what we needed to anyway at the time, so I started on a very small scale. I had about 12 students in that class. I wanted to do it with them to see if my older kids would take on to it because I knew my younger kids would.

The seniors that I had really enjoyed it, and said, “I can’t believe I’m graduating now that you found this. I wish you would have had it when we were freshmen.” When I go around talking to people about Classcraft, people are amazed. I show them some of the results I’ve got with it with raising grades.

## This year you did a fun experiment in your classroom that had you growing a beard! Can you tell me about what that was and how it went?

I was growing a beard, and I was kind of fond of it. It wasn’t like I had a big, giant beard. I was going to shave it off because I felt a little weird growing a beard because some people don’t think that growing a beard is professional, especially in the area that I live in. But I was thinking one day, “Wow, it would be cool to make a random event called ‘The Bearded Gamemaster.’”

When it happened, the event was that if at least one person in the class got a 100 percent on any of the exams or quizzes, then I couldn’t shave. When they started that, I had this small five o’clock shadow going on, and I didn’t think it was going to last more than a couple weeks. I didn’t make the quizzes any harder or any easier. Next thing I know, seven months later, I’ve got this giant beard.

My administration asked, “What’s this all about? You probably should shave that off.” And I told them about it, and they immediately said, “You just let that thing grow.” Because that means as long as the beard was growing, at least one kid was doing well. And it was the kid that was actually taking it to heart and really doing well with it. They were doing better than they ever had before, just because they had a little bit of control over me. The kids thought it was funny, and it didn’t hurt me at all. It was just something I came up with going to school one morning that changed the way the kids reacted in my class.

I would have kids studying at lunch before my class, all day as a group, just so that I couldn’t shave. The funny thing about it is that on the day I finally got to shave, the person with the highest score got a 99 on the exam. So they were one point away.

## What was the value for you in trying something off-the-wall with your students?

Parents were coming in for parent-teacher conferences and seeing me with this big beard, and basically judging a book by its cover. When I would tell those parents what was going on, they were immediately onboard with it.

I’m lucky enough that I have administration at my school who understands the whole being wild and crazy thing, because the kids that I deal with ... our school is very low income and there’s not a whole lot of stuff that the kids get to do on a daily basis. The six hours at our school may be the best six hours they have all day. So I’m trying to make it not only educational but also worth their while to come in. I want students to want to come in to my classroom, as opposed to just happening to be there. **Being spontaneous helps to keep the kids more interested than if it were just a straight lecture class.**

## What role do teachers play in student motivation? How can we foster healthy motivation in the classroom?

Teachers play one of the biggest roles in student motivation. When I first started teaching, I wasn’t trained formally in any way. So when I first started teaching, I looked back at my high school and college career and said, “Which teachers did I like, and which teachers didn’t I like?” And I took the teachers that I liked. I took their mentality and how they taught and how they were upbeat, and it made me realize that I really liked them because they made me want to come to school.

We’ve all had those teachers that just come in and read out of a book and lecture to you the same stuff that you were supposed to read the night before, and they don’t put any effort into making the class fun. If they make you feel like they don’t want you to be there, then you’re going to get the same response from the students. If you just come in and bore them to death, you can’t expect them to do well on exams or state testing.

There are days that I don’t feel good, and I don’t want to be there. But I never let them see that. I just go about my ways and try to make those days even better.

## Do you have any advice for teachers who struggle with motivation in the classroom?

That’s a tough question to answer because all students are different. One of the very first things that I do with my students is I give them an hour of class — I have an hour and a half — just to write a narrative about themselves. They tell me what they like, what they don’t like, what makes them tick. And a lot of times I’ll read through those, and I get to know those kids on a personal basis.

I can say this person here is a gamer, so I know they’re going to take part in Classcraft and do really well. Then I might see somebody who, his parents are extremely big farmers. His idea of fun may be different, or maybe he doesn’t have the opportunity to do certain things because he’s working on the farm with his family. I’m going to have to motivate him totally different than somebody else who is a gamer or likes technology.

Find out what kids like and figure out some way as a teacher to incorporate it. I live in a very rural area. One of things I did that worked very well was I talked to the guidance counselor and the principal about making laminated passes that had my signature on it. The guidance counselor made these passes that would get the student into any home sporting event for the remainder of the year. I made three of these, one for each of my classes, and the student with the highest XP for a given week got that pass. So they could go to the home football games for free, or the volleyball games. I didn’t cost us any money. But just because they could get in for free, it motivated them to go to these events and support their classmates.


Tyler Waller

Motivating Students with Classcraft

## Want to share your insights on education with us? Email [stephanie@classcraft.com](mailto:stephanie@classcraft.com) to get started!

*Laura Smith is a Technology Instructor and Facilitator at Trinity Lutheran Christian School in Joppa, MD.  She is a mom of three, a member of the Discovery Educator Network, and loves sharing and learning with other technology using educators. [She blogs about education](https://agentlaurasmith.wordpress.com/) and [tweets](https://twitter.com/agentlaurasmith) about trending education topics at @agentlaurasmith.*

## Thanks for talking with us today, Laura! To start, tell us a little about yourself as an educator and what classes and grade levels you teach.

My degree is in early childhood education. I taught for two years in Harford County Public Schools before leaving to pursue my goal of becoming a computer teacher. I’ve been teaching technology skills at my current school, Trinity Lutheran School, for 15 years, and I teach students in kindergarten through eighth grade. I also help the faculty with professional development and any other technology needs that they have.

## How do you use Classcraft throughout the day?

I piloted Classcraft with just my sixth grade computer classes here. Usually when they would come in, I would have the random events screen up on the projector. They would all get excited and sit down. I would give them a few minutes to log in and check on their pets, and check their points, and compare points with each other to see where they all were. Then I would start the class with the random event. That was a good way to get us all on the same page, and it’s something fun and engaging.

I mainly used it as a motivation tool for the students. I would keep the teacher’s screen up on my computer as the students were working, so I could very easily come over and have my entire class list in front  of me and either assign or detract points for them based on their behavior and how they were doing in class.

As the year progressed, I started to add in a few other components, such as the discussion forums. Students could ask questions on work that they had, talk to each other, or ask me, and I could answer them even from home.

## What kinds of things did you post in the student forums?

We mainly used the discussion area, where I could post a question for them and have them log on at home, answer the question, and discuss the topic so that we could be prepared for what the next lesson was. It was kind of like a flipped classroom idea, where I would give them the topic and give them a little heads-up on what was coming up the next day or the next class period.

It gives them a chance to look at what the upcoming topic is, and sometimes I might give them some research to do — “find out about this topic X, Y, and Z, and then when we come to class next time, be prepared to discuss it. So, “Find five Internet safety tips, and then the next time we come to class, you can share the tips that you found with the class.”

It gave them a positive place to talk to each other outside of class, and it could be monitored as well. So I could watch and make sure that the discussion was staying on track and that everyone was staying appropriate. It was nice to have that feature.

## What customizations did you make for using Classcraft in this setting?

With the Health Points (HP), I took my classroom rules and made those the things that I would either take HP or give Experience Points (XP) for. One of my rules is, “You don’t touch someone else’s computer.” The minute I saw someone messing around with someone else’s keyboard, I would just walk to the front of the room and start taking away HP. As soon as they saw me walking toward my screen, they all froze.

## What are some things you might give XP for?

I would give XP for students who went out of their way to help other students. Sometimes I would just do it for motivation. If I saw one student doing a good job paying attention while a few other students were talking, I would go over and give them some XP and say, “You are really paying attention and you're closing out all those other distractions, and I appreciate the attention you’re giving me.” So then the other students would suddenly get quiet, and they would want to get that praise as well. So it became a motivational tool.

If they completed their class work successfully, I would also award XP for that.

## What advice do you have for teachers thinking of using Classcraft in a computer lab or class setting with online components?

I spent some time at the beginning of the year, and I gave them an entire class period just to log on and explore, and ask questions of me and each other. Since it was new for all of us, we took that class period to learn together. So giving them the time upfront to make sure they understand how it works, it saves some of those troubles further on in the school year. And once they’ve had that chance to get to know how it works, then it can really run smoothly and in the background for the rest of the school year.

Another piece of advice would be for teachers to really try out the learning management system (LMS). I really want to use the class content more next year because I think having all of that in one place just makes things so streamlined and easy for the teacher. You can have your lessons all in one place; the students know where to go. They can find their lesson activities for the day. You can even give them points for the grades they receive. Everything is built in.

It takes a little time at the beginning to learn everything, but once you do, it can really make lesson planning and execution so much easier for the rest of the school year.


Laura Smith

Using Classcraft in Computer Labs

## Want to share your insights on education with us? Email [stephanie@classcraft.com](mailto:stephanie@classcraft.com) to get started!

*Zsófia Alibaux-Jakab began her career at Britannica International School in 1999 as a French teacher and then started to teach English as an Additional Language (EAL) to various levels and age groups. Her interests include horse riding, motorcycling, reading, hiking, and spending time with her husband and two sons.*

## Thanks for talking with us today, Zsofia! To start, tell us a little about yourself as an educator and what classes and grade levels you teach.

I am the Head of Secondary and EAL [English as an Additional Language, similar to ESL or English as a Second Language - Ed.] and Mother Tongue Coordinator in an international school in Budapest, Hungary. I started teaching in 1999 at this very same school, then moved to France in 2004 and continued teaching in an international school there, then moved back to Hungary in 2011 to teach again at my former school.

I currently teach Year 8 to 11 (grades 7 to 10). I am a passionate educator and a lifelong learner, always eager to learn more and try out new things.

## How has Classcraft changed the way your students view coming to class?

It had a tremendous impact. I was desperate to find anything that would bring Dungeons & Dragons to the class. I’ve tried to devise my own resources in my early days of teaching, but it needed a platform and didn’t quite work out.

Last school year, I did a Google search and found Classcraft. It was unbelievable. I started using it with my Year 9 French class, where I had some disengaged students, and it worked its magic. Students were a bit skeptical at first, but some of them were really enthusiastic and got into it straight away. This class has been playing now for the second year, and we stuck to their characters.

The atmosphere of the class has changed. Now coming to class is like an adventure, with its surprises. The daily event starts the lesson, and some events are really popular, like the “Feast of the King,” or making the Gamemaster sing. They have a lot of fun too using their powers. Classcraft also helps them work together and apply positive peer pressure. I’m planning to use more classes with Classcraft soon.

## Have you found other ways to foster positive student attitudes toward learning and attending class?

I always try to put the student at the center of the learning happening in class. I know some of my students pretty well, their strengths as well as their weaknesses, and I always try to have a positive and supportive atmosphere in class. I also like to lead by example, and being a lifelong learner myself, I hope to give some of this passion to my students.

There is also always a second chance with me, whether it’s retaking a test or handing in an assignment again. Also, I strive to include fun elements in my lessons. Classcraft definitely adds to this, as we have major fun with some of the events and powers!

## Why is it so important for students to want to learn and make the most of school?

Without an inner desire to learn, there is no real deep learning happening. It is challenging to motivate students and infuse in them a love of learning, or make them the masters of their own learning. The intrinsic desire to learn is vital, and this is why schools — and teachers — have such an important role.

It is this passion for learning that students need to come and pick up at school because learning never stops throughout their whole lifetime. They need to see their school diploma not as an end point but as the beginning of more learning to come.

## Do you have any advice for teachers who are struggling to instill positive attitudes in their students?

I would encourage them to try out strategies that would work for them as students. To try and see how the students feel in their class. Teachers need to be constantly developing themselves and their strategies to keep up with our fast-paced world.

There is a lot to learn from students, too! Positive attitudes start with a teacher who can have positive relationships with students. When a student is confidently going to class, without fear or negative feelings, then learning can happen. It’s important to create an environment that’s safe and allows for mistakes to happen.


Zsófia Alibaux-Jakab

Getting Students to Love Coming to Class

## Want to share your insights on education with us? Email [stephanie@classcraft.com](mailto:stephanie@classcraft.com) to get started!

*Joe Wiles served on the Board of Directors for Seattle’s Rock School and is the former Head Mentor at The Rock n’ Roll Conservatory, a music mentorship program south of Seattle in Auburn, WA. His music instructional videos entertain a viewership of over 40,000,000, and he currently works for the Auburn School District, south of Seattle, with special needs children.*

## Thanks for talking with us today, Joe! To start, tell us a little about yourself as an educator and what classes and grade levels you teach.

I’ve been teaching for about 10 years privately in music education, with a focus on mentorship and special needs. I got a job in this school district about a year ago, and it’s been nothing but awesome. This year, they placed me with the boy I’m working with now, “Tommy.” [Tommy is a pseudonym to keep the student’s identity private - Ed.]

I’m a paraeducator, which is like an assistant teacher. It’s one-on-one, and he’s special needs. He’s the smartest kid in fourth grade. From all of his testing, all of his scores, he’s the best in math and reading. My challenge is getting him to apply that intelligence. He’s so smart, but he gets so bored so easily that he starts to cause behavioral problems in his classes.

## What is the school experience like for Tommy and other special needs students today?

They don’t send special needs kids to a special room anymore. When I was going to school, all the special education kids went to a room and learned on their own. What they do now is they integrate them into the classroom. It’s good because neuronormative kids need to be around people like this to understand the world. And it helps kids who are not neuronormative to have experience functioning in the real world. It’s way more effective for increasing empathy in the general education classroom.

Tommy is not so unsociable that kids look at him with disdain. He functions normally enough that he can fit in. The other kids love him; they think he’s really cool. He has his blow-ups now and again, a lot less now than he used to. I think everyone knows he’s the smartest kid in class. He has social challenges and a few emotional challenges.

## What changes did you begin to see in Tommy when you introduced Classcraft?

I introduced Classcraft about a month in. It was early October. I had to figure out his IEP, or his Individualized Education Program. Every special needs kid has one. I had to figure out what was going to work with him — his interests and his hobbies.

All he is interested in is video games, seemingly. So I started looking online for something that could help me integrate what I wanted to do — this adventure-themed thing through his day that would keep his focus off [the pressures of] school and more on this game, which is helping him do his school work.

Classcraft made a lot of sense. The challenge was adapting it to one kid since it’s team-based. … The principal and the fourth grade staff gave me a lot of autonomy. We rearranged his schedule and my schedule so I’d get at least a half-hour in the morning. We’d go straight to the resource room, which is where special needs kids go to get extra help. We’d log onto a computer, and we’d go onto Classcraft. I’d ask, “How’s your day going to be?” We’d set our goals. Tommy’s been getting 1-4 scores throughout his day from all the teachers he interacts with. The three categories are working independently, his attitude in class, and the performance of his classwork.

About a month into working with Classcraft, there was a noticeable spike in his performance. It’s enabled me to translate all those 1-4 scores into Experience Points for his characters. He doesn’t lose too many Health Points these days. In fact, he recently had his first all-4s day — every single category in 18 different areas, he got 4s. When he gets all 4s, he gets double bonus points in Classcraft.

It took him about a month, three or four weeks, to warm up to the idea and get excited. Now he comes up to me and says, “I finished this test. Do I get the points for it?” I have to tell him, “Well, did you use your Fire Charm Pencil to take the test? Sorry, buddy, you didn’t get those bonus points.” That’s one of the trinkets he’s earned by leveling up. That’s how Classcraft has been super awesome.

![](http://41.media.tumblr.com/98114e021cbc5e5bb3169046cb0db6f8/tumblr_inline_nn81th1Jda1sdwtb8_540.jpg)

JOE WILES: This chart shows the student’s behavioral scores across each of his individual classes. The blue line shows his average behavioral scores in his first month of school before Classcraft and Alpacland were introduced to his daily routine. The orange line shows his behavioral scores after his school day was gamified by Classcraft. The only class you see a dip in is his music class. He had been doing great in that class and continues to do very well, but he had a couple meltdowns due to the volume of the classroom environment.

![](http://40.media.tumblr.com/a0d3853fc9995581b9a6239a5e378ff1/tumblr_inline_nn82a9VcfY1sdwtb8_540.jpg)

This chart shows the student’s average daily behavorial scores by weekday. The student is rated 1-4 by each of the teachers and specialists he sees throughout each day. The blue line was data gathered in the first month of school, before Classcraft and Alpacland were introduced into his daily routine. The orange line represents the student’s behavior after his school day was gamified via Classcraft. Averaging the overall scores, there is a 22% increase in his attitude, classwork, and independence after introducing Classcraft.

## Can you explain “Alpacland,” the story you created for use with Classcraft, and how they work together to help Tommy?

The game that we played is called Alpacland. The school is called Alpac. He named it that.

I wanted to prep him for Classcraft. Once he earned the right to sign a Hero Pact, then he was in. Then we introduced Classcraft around Alpacland. I spent the next couple weeks with him drawing pictures of what Alpacland might be like. We came up for different names for classes he would go to because he loves drawing. I scanned them into the computer and made an island map. So instead of the office, we have the Mountain of Wisdom and Justice. Instead of the gym, we have the Arena of Skill. Or his reading class is the Swamp of Readwell. Throughout his day, he has a journey he has to go on.

Classcraft and Alpacland are basically the same thing. But in Classcraft, you get the added bonus of training cool pets, having cool outfits for his character, and his adventure-specific spells that are appropriate for him and his day. The other cool thing is that I’ve been able to integrate different teachers. When he unlocks his teacher, they become a character in Classcraft so they can cast powers and level up with him.

Classcraft has been super helpful because I don’t have to do any character management anymore. It takes that load off of me. I’m so relieved because Classcraft introduced the Android app. So now I don’t have to take all those notes throughout the day as I observe him. I can just put it on my phone right away.

## Has the game changed his relationship with his teachers at school?

Yeah. He knows these teachers are a direct line to his Experience Points in the game. I’m not with him all day. The goal is to get special needs kids working independently.

He had a couple triggers that would cause him to crawl under the desk or throw things across the room, and that was writing things down or anything that has to do with math. When I first started making Alpacland, the enemy was Mathematron, or Ms. Syslo, his math teacher.

Through the narrative, I’ve been able to introduce this fictional Ragnor, a person not in the school. In order to beat Ragnor by the end of the year, he has to gain the trust of Mathematron because she’s a person in Alpacland. He’s had to do special missions. He had to become a count of Mathematron. He had to start by memorizing his times tables. That’s something he never did. As a fourth grader, he just had such an aversion to math, he never wanted to sit down to do it. Finally, he had them all memorized.

Once he was able to recite that for Mathematron, he gained her trust. So I was able to work that into a context where he could accept math. And now he doesn’t have a problem with math. He doesn’t go in there freaking out and having a hard time with it.

## What’s an example of something you might give him XP for?

In Classcraft, he gets 20 Experience Points — which is a lot — for apologizing to any teacher. He gets 25 points for changing his poor behavior.

So it’s become really easy for me to go, “You have to take responsibility for your problems, and let’s go apologize for that teacher and call it a day.”

## How else has Classcraft changed his attitude toward school and learning?

Where at first, we had to keep Tommy contained and make sure he didn’t disrupt class so much that other students are having a hard time learning. It felt like a battle. Now it’s the complete opposite. I’m working with him.

Tommy hated school. The first month this school year was, “I hate school. I hate math. I hate the principal.” I didn’t know how to confront all this hate. But I realized it’s very shallow for him. He doesn’t hate it, it just doesn’t feel good for him, and therefore he doesn’t like it.

So I wanted to make it feel good for him — school and learning, and really, accepting the responsibility of his intelligence.

A couple weeks ago, his dad told me when he dropped him off that Tommy said he liked school and he liked math. Which blew my mind. I thought he misheard him. But later that day, Tommy said, “Something’s really weird. I’m starting to like school.” It was one of those teacher moments, where you just feel like, “It’s working!” He’s having fun, and I’m having fun. It was really cool to hear that.


Joe Wiles

How Classcraft Helps Special Needs Students

## Want to share your insights on education with us? Email [stephanie@classcraft.com](mailto:stephanie@classcraft.com) to get started!

*Carina Hilbert is finishing up her Masters in the Art of Teaching in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages through the University of Southern California. She is a presenter and instructor on blended learning and is certified in both English and Spanish, 6-12. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with her two brilliant children, a needy dog, and a loud cat.*

## What is school like for your students, and how does Classcraft help?

My alternative high school is over 90 percent free and reduced [lunch], and my middle school about 77 percent. … It’s very hard for most adults to be able to understand how schools have changed. Schools have dramatically changed, even in just the last five years, let alone the last 10. When most adults think back to what high school was like for them, they think it’s still that way. It’s not. The stress loads are higher, the graduation requirements are higher, the test scores and all of that. The stress is off the charts for all students, not just the ivy-league bound kids anymore. And the stress is really taking a toll.

We have kids who move three and four times a year. When you’re just starting to make friends at this school and you’re switched to another school, what do you do? A lot of kids just become isolated. So I look at things that could seem silly like Classcraft, and they really don’t seem so silly. That’s a positive thing. For my kids, they really like their phone. That phone is their lifeline. They don’t have a landline because they might not have a home. If you tell them they can use that phone as part of the game in class, it’s huge for them because it’s part of their identity and makes them feel normal.

They’re more likely to pay attention and try to learn something if they think that they can be themselves. That’s why the avatars are so important. If there’s any way they can see that they’re important, like they are to their teammates … Then it’s, “I have power in this class. I am somebody in this class.” To a lot of kids who hear the opposite on a daily basis, that means a lot to them.

## How else has Classcraft has helped your students socially?

My middle schoolers love it. They ones who are serious gamers are actually teaching the others how to log in. I’ve got one sixth grader who has no Internet access at home at all, and he has friends who are inviting him over to their homes just so that he can log in on their computers and customize his avatar and train his pets, which is helping him get more connections socially than he had had before. It’s really turning into this positive thing for him.

## How has the excitement over Classcraft changed the attitude in your classroom?

I can take that excitement and we can divert it, twist it, do whatever it takes, and then it’s, “Yay, I get to talk with partners today!”, and that excitement builds. The kids who are angry or who don’t want to be there, they’re not cool anymore. They’re not as cool as the kids who are helping everybody figure out how to gain more points. They’re not as cool as the kids who are excited about the class and trying to learn more so they can gain more points. So they’re silent, and they’re starting to turn around.

## How does that new social dynamic help students who are usually left out?

I don’t care what the make-up of any district is, there’s always this thing of the rebel is the cool one, and the smart kid is made fun of. What I’ve been finding is the smart kids are getting respect in ways I rarely see so that it turns into, “Can you help me with this?” “Wow, how did you get that many points?” A couple of my students who started the trimester trying to be invisible now walk in with their head held high, and kids who normally never socialize with them are coming up to them.

This is the way it should be. We should be making it so that our strongest students have that kind of social power. We as adults can’t do it. It has to come from the kids.

## What customizations have you made in the game to help your students?

The urban district that I’m in, I’m very hesitant to remove Health Points (HP) when students haven’t done their homework. When you have kids who live out of their cars, there are going to be times when they don’t have their homework. So I don’t think that’s exactly fair. A quick way to lose points in my class is if they get sent out. They lose a lot of points if I have to send them out of the room for whatever reason, or if they’re tardy.

I mostly try to run the game in such a way that they lose Health Points if they’re disruptive. They don’t lose a whole lot, but that’s as many times as they’re disruptive. But then they can also get Experience Points (XP) if they turn their behavior around. So for some of my students who are used to only getting negatives, they start seeing those positives.

I don’t give out extra credit. I give out extra points in the game. To them, that’s the same. … I had a student last trimester who was one of those seventh graders who thinks he never does any wrong. I pulled up the Analytics one day, and I said, “Look at this.” Once he saw all of his behavior on a list … “Oh wow, I’ve been losing a lot of points.” … For them to be able to see that for themselves and see how they’ve been doing, that has been a powerful change.

## How does having an avatar in the game make a difference for them?

The change that was huge this year was being able to pick their skin color. That was massive. For my students, especially in the urban environment where I am, for them to be able to pick their skin color and look more online the way they really look, or the way they wish they looked … They love that.

Anything to make them feel good about themselves. I know a lot of adults worry, “Are we always telling kids that they’re better than they are?” That is not my problem. My problem is the other way around. My problem is I have kids who do not see how smart they are. They are beaten down emotionally and mentally every day. So anything that is positive and beautiful and amazing, they need. … That’s how some of my alternative kids, even though they’re older, have gotten into the game.

We have kids with serious life issues going on outside of school, so anything positive ends up becoming very powerful.


Carina Hilbert

How Classcraft Helps Underprivileged Kids

## Want to share your insights on education with us? Email [stephanie@classcraft.com](mailto:stephanie@classcraft.com) to get started!

*Sam Schneider is a middle school music teacher in Central New Jersey, where he instructs General Music, Guitar, Piano, and Music Technology. He attended Vanderbilt University, where he earned his Bachelor’s in Musical Arts (Blair School of Music) and Master’s in Secondary Education (Peabody College of Education).*

## Thanks for talking with us today, Sam! To start, tell us a little about yourself as an educator.

I knew that I was going to go into education since high school, and I picked music because it seemed like a unique and fun way to share my passions and reach students.

One thing that I feel is important is the changing culture of learning. Students are constantly being introduced to new technologies. They’re expected to have better research skills. Even outside of the classroom, students have greater access to information than ever before. I’ve always felt it’s important to stay on top of these changes in technology. I try to keep up with it all, and that’s actually how I stumbled across Classcraft.

## Why is one of your goals as a teacher to help your students build character in the classroom?

In full honesty, I’m willing to admit that my subject area is not crucial to every student. I think that being able to appreciate art and culture is a wonderful thing that every person should be able to do. However, I know that more than 90 percent of the students that I teach are not going to become musicians professionally.

I get a wide variety of students, ranging from really enthusiastic musicians to students who just got placed in my class because they didn’t turn in their elective form on time. While I’m going through all this material, I don’t expect every student to walk away and further research jazz or rock ‘n’ roll. I want them to have a more developed sense of how to be critical of music and each other and share their opinions in a constructive way instead of just being dismissive of subjects they might not have full interest in.

## Why is good character important for students to learn?

The generation I’m teaching right now has a real interest in being social with one another. That’s the polite way of saying they really like to talk to each other during class and that they like to be social outside of class and involved in each other’s lives.

One thing that I try to make sure that I’m focusing on is how they need to respect boundaries. For instance, if a student comments that, “Oh, I really like this tune,” I don’t want another student saying, “I’d never listen to that.” Immediately, their reaction puts that other student in an awkward position, saying it’s not socially acceptable to like this material. If they have a negative opinion, then it needs to be more justified than “this is not cool” or “this is not current.” I want them to appreciate the material for what it is, and I want them to have an understanding of why other people have a positive opinion.

My class has opportunities where they can share their own stuff. They can bring in examples of materials from home or videos that they want to share. I want to create a community-learning atmosphere where they can gain from each other.

## It sounds like you’re not only building community but also helping them to develop life skills, like communication and respect.

Absolutely. Unlike many music classes, I have to deal with communication and writing a lot, and one thing that Classcraft has helped with is the Content Manager. It’s a great chance not just for informal writing but for students to put their opinions out there — for them to respond and have conversations. We live in a YouTube generation, and one of the biggest things that I harp on is that they need to communicate their ideas clearly to one another.

I try to lay out the rule very clearly: If you’re going to speak, speak like an educated individual. Ever since that rule has gone out there, students have been actually active calling out each other when they don’t lay out their opinion in an educated way. They aren’t rude by any means. They’ll say, “You just wrote ‘this is stupid,’ but why do you think it’s stupid?”. It’s fun to watch these conversations take place. Now that I’ve called out the individuals about putting their comments up there without grounded support, they’re starting to do it to each other. They’re starting to become self-aware of their writing habits.

## Can you give an example of how you teach them to think critically?

I pull down videos that either they’ve never seen before or they’ve seen so many times they’re sick of, or things I know they’re not going to be into. Yeah, they’re going to groan at first, but I throw that opinion away if they just say, “This song was terrible.” Well, what made it terrible?

Rebecca Black’s “Friday” isn’t a good song, but it gets the ball rolling. I would put it to the students and make them think, “Well, what does it feel like to be her after all the fallout from that song?” Yes, there were news articles and stories about it, how the entire world ganged up on this 13-year-old girl. That’s the exact age I’m teaching. I would say to them, “Some of you are posting videos on YouTube. You want to be liked. What would it feel like to be one of those people who bears the brunt of the attack?”

Part of it boils down to the topic of bullying. When I was in middle school, yes, I was bullied. But bullying was a different animal back then. It used to be just one or two people repeatedly attacking someone over and over. Nowadays, bullying is like being stuck in a swarm of wasps. It’s pinpricks coming from all over, and the second someone starts attacking, it can build and spiral out of control. That’s the scary and unfortunate nature of the Internet and our social culture.

## What can other teachers do to help their students build character?

You don’t get into the field of education not just to hand down knowledge or to discipline students. You go into education because you know you might have an impact on someone’s life. I try to make students more aware that their individual actions and behavior aren’t just affecting them. When I discipline them, it’s not because I’m mad at what they’re doing. Rather, I’m frustrated with the ripples in the pond that they’re creating.

One of the great things that Classcraft allows me to do is, if there’s an outburst, it immediately shows the ripples. If someone makes a negative comment and they lose Health Points and that person falls in battle, the ripples are right there. Everyone’s affected.

The change in behavior is not a result of me calling out individuals on disciplinary things. Instead, these incidents wear away at their classmates, and their classmates get frustrated constantly trying to repair the damage. It gives the troublesome student a responsibility to the community, and it gives the community a chance to build character.

The old adage “It takes a village to raise a child” is uniquely true in the classroom. The teacher has a village of children and can steer the individuals in a certain direction, but eventually the rest of the class should understand the directions and help keep the group on course.


Sam Schneider

Building Character in the Classroom

## Want to share your insights on education with us? Email [stephanie@classcraft.com](mailto:stephanie@classcraft.com) to get started!

*Meaghan Walsh teaches social studies at Stargate School in Thornton, Colorado, a public charter school for identified intellectually gifted children. She has a degree in Education and History from Simmons College in Boston and a Masters in Middle Level Education from the University of Maine at Orono. She enjoys travelling the world to visit the places she teaches about, having been to many places on three continents.*

## Thanks for talking with us today, Meaghan! Tell us a little about yourself as an educator and what subjects and grade levels you teach.

This is my 11th year of teaching and my 7th year at my current school. I teach sixth and seventh grade social studies. I incorporate Classcraft in all my 7th grade classes, so all the 7th graders in the school are playing Classcraft. We’re a small school. There’s only about 75 kids, so I have them all.

## How has Classcraft changed the social dynamics of your class?

One of the biggest things that has happened has been bringing the kids together. Since I have a population of all gifted kids, there’s some interesting social dynamics at times. Students don’t always know how to make friends. When they work with their Classcraft group, they are building those connections. They learn each other’s names faster, they learn more about each other, and they have started hanging out with their group outside of just playing the game. That’s pretty amazing.

Socially, they like to come to class a lot more now. I have a comment from a kiddo from the forums, and he said, “Classcraft is pretty much the first program that lets me want to go to social studies.” And this is a kid who socially doesn’t have a whole lot of friends. But he’s making friends through the game.

I also have a student teacher this year, and it’s always hard for them to meet the kids and interact with them and figure out who they are in a very short time period. I let her watch Classcraft for a week, and now she’s running it. And it’s helping her make those connections with the kids, and now they’re much more comfortable. They go to her for questions. It’s bringing her into the classroom in a way that would not have happened before. So that’s been very exciting to see.

## How has Classcraft helped your students emotionally?

We have several kids in the class who have some emotional issues that they’re dealing with, whether it’s anger issues or anxiety, or just not getting along with their peers. Classcraft has helped them want to be in class.

We have a couple kids who have been dealing with some pretty intense situations, and they don’t always make it to school. They have made more of an effort this year to be in class and be in school because they want to participate. They want to see the random event. They want to be able to help save their friends if their friends take damage. They want to be able to be there and participate in the class. So even if there’s things going on outside of the classroom, Classcraft lets them escape that. And inside the classroom, it doesn’t matter whatever their situation is at home. They are playing the game, and they’re involved with the game, and they’re learning while they do it.

There’s a specific kid that I think about who, at the beginning of the year when we were looking over the powers, he saw the power that allows him to leave the room for two minutes. And he’s the kid who, in the past, has had some anger issues and knew that about himself. So he chose that class of character and that power as his first specifically so that if he felt himself getting angry, he could go use his Classcraft power. He could take himself out of the situation, calm himself down, and bring himself back into the classroom.

I think he’s only used the power twice all year, so he knows that it’s there. And it has helped him stay in class. Just knowing he has the ability means that he doesn’t have to use it all the time.

## Have you seen any other changes in your students since you’ve begun using Classcraft?

Absolutely. Behaviorally, my school has such an interesting population that our issues are not the issues of the outside world. Our issues are much smaller than what a lot of teachers deal with. I have a Smart Board, and so what I do is I leave Classcraft up. If there are behavior issues, I just have to click on the kid’s character, and they stop whatever it is they’re doing.

If there’s a kid not doing their work or distracted or having a conversation or getting upset about something, whatever it is, I click on their name and they say, “Oh! I don’t want to lose HP. I’m going to behave.” And it brings them right around.

On the flip side, I also reward good behavior a lot. I tend to focus more on rewarding good behavior than punishing bad behavior. So if a kid is working really well, maybe they’re the only kid working. I click on it, I give them XP for working on task. Other kids see that happening, and they start getting on task so they can get the XP as well. So behaviorally, just having it running in the background constantly, I don’t have to yell at the kids anymore. They police themselves because they don’t want to have damage, and they don’t want to cause damage to their team. So that’s a huge difference to see how they really have taken ownership of themselves.

## What would you say to other teachers looking to try Classcraft?

If you can get the kid in the classroom, you can teach them. You have to get them there first. Don’t be intimidated by Classcraft. It looks like something that only gamers will be able to understand, but it’s really not. Once you get into the game and you figure out the flow of the game, you don’t necessarily have to be a gamer to be able to play it. And the reward that you get in your classroom from behavior and social and them supporting each other outweighs a little bit of uncertainty with the language and how it works.

Rely on your children. These are children who grew up in a gaming age. If you say to them, “Hey, what does it mean by XP?” They’ll be able to explain it to you. The game is simple and easy to play, and it gives you huge rewards for the few minutes that you play every day.


Meaghan Walsh

How Classcraft Helps Students Socially and Emotionally

## Want to share your insights on education with us? Email [stephanie@classcraft.com](mailto:stephanie@classcraft.com) to get started!

*Carina Hilbert is finishing up her Masters in the Art of Teaching in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages through the University of Southern California. She is a presenter and instructor on blended learning and is certified in both English and Spanish, 6-12. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with her two brilliant children, a needy dog, and a loud cat.*

## Thanks for talking with us today, Carina! Tell us a little about yourself as an educator and what subjects and grade levels you teach.

This year, I am teaching in two different levels. I teach in an alternative high school in the morning, and in the afternoon, I teach in one of the middle schools. I teach Spanish this year at Kalamazoo Public Schools.

## What changes have you seen in your students since you’ve introduced the game?

Last spring, I had a class that was just angry. They were angry that they had to take a world language. They were angry that it was a requirement they had no say in. They were mostly freshmen, some sophomores, and it was in a different school district, and they were angry that we’d switched teachers. … Starting Classcraft turned them around a total 180. It turned into, “What’s the random event of the day?” They would run into the classroom, when before I had to stand at the door and basically shove them in at the bell.

What was funny was, I had several students who were mad about the game. “This is stupid. This is juvenile. We don’t want to have anything to do with this.” And the kids were the one who turned them around. “You’re on my team, you better buck up.” … A lot of kids these days are gamers, so they’re very comfortable with the platform. They’re very comfortable with the set-up.

## What customizations have you made to the game to adapt it to your Spanish classes?

They get XP for speaking in Spanish. It’s not a lot, but it’s anytime I catch them. I always tell them, though, “It can’t just be ‘hola’”!

Then they get points for helping a fellow classmate in any way. So if they do a group project, they get points for that. If they’re sitting and working with a partner, if they’re doing a speaking thing and they speak with a partner, they get points for that. … If they refuse to speak in Spanish when I call on them, they lose Health Points that way.

They have to sing one of our songs, or I have to sing one of our songs — they love that one. “Let It Go” in Spanish is very popular with my sixth graders.

## How has Classcraft improved how you teach your world language classes?

Classcraft has helped in a lot of ways. I would say one of the big things that it has helped me with is lowering what we call in language as the Affective Filter. Stephen Krashen is a huge theorist in second language acquisition, and he has a theory that says that if students feel bad about a language … if they’re not excited about learning, if they attach negative feelings to the experience or to the teacher or to what they’re learning, that they won’t learn it. And it makes everything that much harder.

One of the problems that I run into in teaching Spanish is that it’s a requirement. Here in Michigan, they have to take two years of the same foreign language. I have students, especially at my alternative high school, who have taken Spanish and failed it more than once. I’ve got a couple kids who have failed it as many as four times before. So when they walk into the room, they don’t want to be there. They don’t like Spanish; they don’t like what we’re doing. Classcraft gives them a reason to be excited about coming into the room.

## What would you tell other teachers who are considering trying Classcraft?

When I talk with other teachers, their concern is that you lose a lot of instructional time. But last spring, I actually came out ahead. I had kept track of how much time I was losing — especially with my worst-behaved class — just for discipline. And then I kept track of how much time I was spending on Classcraft, and I came out ahead on instructional time because I spent less time on Classcraft and overall less time on discipline than I had spent on discipline without it.

We are told to put a lot of time and effort into team-building at the beginning of any term. Well, that’s what Classcraft is. It’s team-building. So if you sink the time in at the beginning, you’re still ahead, or at the very least it’s neutral. It’s not like you’re losing massive amounts of instructional time. Although I will say that when I have to start spending more time on waiting for the kids to calm down or whatever, I take away Classcraft. And that gets them quiet fast.

## For world language teachers, what is the one reason to give Classcraft a try?

The big thing I tell them is that if you have reluctant learners, you want this game because it’s going to turn them around. It used to be that kids only took world language because they needed it for college or because their parents made them do it. Then you had a decent subset of students who took it because they wanted to. They wanted to learn that language because they wanted to travel to that country or they really liked the food or the culture.

Now we’re in where a lot of states require it for all students for graduation, not just the college-bound ones, and it turns into a situation of kids who are already struggling in school now are thrown into a subject that’s going to be the hardest that they’ve ever had. … It’s very easy for them to give up.

Classcraft gives kids a reason to want to come to your class. And if they learn some of the target language while they’re there, awesome.


How Classcraft Transforms World Language

## Want to share your insights on education with us? Email [stephanie@classcraft.com](mailto:stephanie@classcraft.com) to get started!

*Jessica Anderson is a connected science educator from Montana. She has been teaching for eight years, both online and in the face-to-face classroom. As a BetterLesson Blended Master Teacher, she’s made her blended and gamified practice available to educator’s across the country via the BetterLesson website.*

If you were standing in the hallway outside of my classroom, you’d see a motivational poster on the door, a white board with new tech tools to try, and a sign that says “#YouMatter.”

However, as you step through the door, you enter Isle of Nosredna. What’s Isle of Nosredna, you might be thinking? It’s a theme that encompasses our earth science curriculum and our classroom goals of mastery and self-directed learning. It’s a game that was created to help keep students motivated while moving self-paced through the earth science content. I created it after gamifying for two years without a storyline. After research and interactions with several gamifiers, I was inspired to add a storyline to drive my classroom game.

![](http://40.media.tumblr.com/260a36228bf4082f6a6a7f1db7dac3d7/tumblr_inline_nm8y42csxn1sdwtb8_540.jpg)

There are five zones in my classroom: the shelter (futons), the beach (carpeted area), the lookout (stools by window), the jungle (table area), and the crash site (my desk).

![](http://41.media.tumblr.com/285ff34d1f30d486fe5988d19b7317df/tumblr_inline_nm8xmwkX4Y1sdwtb8_540.jpg)

Students sitting in Isle of Nosredna. We are 1:1 with iPads.

## Academic game

In the game, my students are an elite group of plane crash survivors that are now stranded on a deserted island. The island is broken up into two games, academic and behavioral. The below video sets up the theme for the entire school year:

The academic game revolves around a series of scenarios asking students to master battles in each level. The level on surface water and groundwater starts out like this:

*I’m glad to say that your efforts at Paracini Ponds paid off. You now have enough food to sustain the PCSs [Plane Crash Survivors] for an entire month. You’ve found a safe place to store the food and have started planting seeds in some of the soil areas you collected from. It will be awhile before you can use the grown food, but it will be worth it once you’re able to.*

*While you were gone a group of PCSs became ill. They’re not exactly sure what caused their illness; however, they suspect it was the drinking water (Insert suspenseful music: dah, dah, dahhhhh). Since you’re the only scientist on this island it will be your job to create a water filter and filter the water. You’ve got your work cut out for you before the rest of the PCSs become ill.*

*Instructions: Find a source of water and use a homemade filter to purify it for drinking. Navigate to the Quest Contract to see what you’ll be required to master in this level.*

Scenarios like the one above drive the battles (activities) within each level. In each level, students are required to master a certain number of battles, depending on their chosen quest contract (grade contract), before moving onto the next level. If they are unable to master a battle, they find a different way to demonstrate their understanding. In our classroom, taking risks and making mistakes is acceptable as long as students work hard to master the content.

![](http://40.media.tumblr.com/13cdb22950898aa1d74e31978c460be5/tumblr_inline_nm8xruM0HV1sdwtb8_540.jpg)

This is a screenshot of how our course is set up in our learning management system.

## Behavior game

The behavioral side of the game is embedded in Classcraft. In the game, students are represented by avatars, earn Experience Points (XP), and sometimes fall in battle if they’ve lost too many Health Points (HP). If they are lucky, someone on their team will have the power to save them from falling in battle.

![](http://36.media.tumblr.com/c8e16d6e84ba39e5c26c65ac3341e7a5/tumblr_inline_nm8xsoHysL1sdwtb8_540.jpg)

Classcraft is the backbone of behavior management in our classroom and the driver of our self-paced class. Its most beneficial attributes are its ability to help students self-manage their behavior as well as keep my students’ progressing through their levels. I also love that students must work collaboratively with their peers to earn Experience Points, which is one of the main ways we build positive classroom culture.

Within Classcraft, I have added events to connect our academic game to our behavioral game. For instance, I’ve added an event that all of the Mages can drink on the beach today. The beach is the section of our classroom with the bean bag chairs where students love to sit.  Both the academic and behavior games work to engage and motivate students to work collaboratively and be self-directors of their learning.

With the incorporation of gamification into my blended classroom, I’ve noticed three things:

My students are motivated to move self-paced. They love that our classroom is different than other classes in the school. They like that there are no deadlines and that they can learn at their own pace. Many have said that the scenario in each level brings more meaning to the content and encourages them to move quickly to get to the next scenario. They also love that they are recognized with Experience Points for doing what they are supposed to be doing during class.

**They’ve become more collaborative as a result of the team dynamics of the game.** They actually get angry with their peers when Health Points are lost and their team falls in battle. Students do everything in their power (if they have the power) to protect their teammates. They’ve figured out that if they help each other they are rewarded with more Experience Points. It’s a great strategy!

**They are starting to think it is OK to take learning risks and make mistakes the first time through a battle.** This makes me particularly happy as it is a goal I’ve set for our classroom. I’m happy to see that with the elimination of number grades, an increase in verbal feedback, and the addition of Classcraft that we are finally reaching this mindset. Students are starting to see the true meaning of school: learning.

All three observations are goals I set for my students at the beginning of the year. Five months in, I’m now starting to see the shift of classroom culture that I’ve been working so hard to achieve. It’s a great feeling! It truly is amazing what a fancy name, storyline, and some team dynamics will do for a classroom environment. I’m looking forward to seeing what else is in store as a result of Classcraft and my academic game as the year continues!

Jessica Anderson is a connected science educator from Montana. She has been teaching for eight years, both online and in the face-to-face classroom. As a BetterLesson Blended Master Teacher, she’s made her blended and gamified practice available to educator’s across the country via the BetterLesson website.

Photo credits: Jessica Anderson


Jessica Anderson

Gamifying the Blended Classroom with Classcraft

View deep analytics around positive and negative behavior, collaboration, and absenteeism. Measure the impact of interventions in real time and make better-informed, data-driven decisions.

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Students can mix and match gear to create unique characters that level up with their progress in class. Watch students transform into epic heroes and super learners!

- Darren McQuaid, South Korea, @darrenmcquaid1

The result of a year-long project, the “Well Played!” guide provides a research-based approach to preventing bullying in schools through gamification. Free download.

Get your kids to cheer each other on! Motivate your students by making learning fun and fall in love with teaching all over again. Get started - it’s free!

Transform teaching by taking the video game mechanics that provide rich & interesting play experiences & applying them to the classroom setting. Learn more.

Keep the game safe and fun by enabling IP address tracking and profanity filtering for messages and comments.

Award students Gold Pieces for going above and beyond, and they can unlock tons of awesome gear and pets for their characters. Students can display pets next to their characters to achieve the ultimate look.

###Games and Culture

With the advent of video games, games have returned in full force as a cultural product, with more people in North America consuming video games than movies and music. In point of fact, 58% of Americans play video games, 45% of gamers are women, and 58% of parents play video games with their kids as a way to socialize with them (1). Games are part of the cultural landscape, and they aren’t going anywhere. While Classcraft isn’t a video game, it is inspired by them, and its power on learning is very similar.

##Gamifying the Classroom

With that in mind, it makes sense to want to bring gaming into the classroom to ‘gamify’ learning. Teaching is all about relating to kids’ experiences and tying that to course matter. All kids have played video games – they understand the general rules and memes in gaming and enjoy playing them.

###Criticism

This idea isn’t new. Indeed, numerous examples of using games in educations have cropped up over the years, such as using Spore to teach evolution, simulators to teach physics, or game quizzes to interact with subject matter. Some systems have implemented attributing points and giving out badges to students when they reach a certain number.

However, gamification has received its fair share of criticism. Many have decried it as tool for implementing carrot-and-stick behaviorism, saying that the game is just a reward and punishment system with icing. Others put forth the idea that students should be motivated by the desire to learn, not by some external tool. We also hear that games breed competition or that they lead to students learning about the game rather than the course matter.

These criticisms have merit. We do see a lot of gamification efforts leading to those outcomes. However, we believe that this is because those games are badly designed, not because gamification or using games in education is inherently a bad practice.

##Design Principles Behind Classcraft

###Creating Experiences

In this modern era, students could learn everything in the curriculum by staying at home and surfing the Internet. Schools need to offer students experiences that they can’t get at home. In the same way a music lover will buy tickets to a concert even though he already has the album, we have to give kids an experience that they want and can’t get anywhere else to keep them engaged and involved in their own learning. There are a myriad of different ways of doing that. We believe well-designed games represent one of the most effective approaches.

###Classcraft Is a Designed Learning Experience

Any educator and researcher will tell you that students learn much better when they are motivated (2). Recent studies (3) have explored what makes video games so addictive. It turns out it’s because video games fulfill three basic needs: the need for autonomy (being able to make choices), the need for competency (to overcome challenges), and the need for relationships (which add a perceived value to the game). Studies in education (2) show that the needs fulfilled by video games are actually the same three factors that one has to take into account to stimulate motivation in learning. Games can be used to motivate students in surprising ways.

That’s what makes Classcraft different and innovative. Rather than being a simple system for scoring points, Classcraft empowers students to take control of their learning process. It fosters significant relationships by reenforcing teamwork and collaboration rather than competition. It’s pervasive and affects all aspects of a student’s life. It’s fun because unexpected things happen during gameplay.

These aspects make Classcraft unique and make for a gamified learning experience that adds a layer of meaning and engagement to a student’s school experience.

1. http://www.isfe.eu/sites/isfe.eu/files/attachments/esa_ef_2013.pdf
2. Viau, R. La motivation : condition au plaisir d’apprendre et d’enseigner en contexte scolaire, 3e congrès des chercheurs en Éducation, Bruxelles, mars 2004.
3. Ryan, R. M., Rigby, C. S & Przybylski, A. K., (2006). The motivational pull of video games: a self-determination theory approach. Motivation and Emotion. 30, 347-364.
4. https://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world


Footnotes

As games become a bigger part of culture, the potential they have to transform students’ experiences in school grows. By the time kids are 21, they’ve played 10,000 hours of video games, the same amount of time they’ve spent in school. Because of this, they’re more likely to respond to the use of games in other settings, like the classroom. This is called gamification, or applying game principles to non-game situations. Gamification is more likely to be successful today because students are more willing to be active participants in its implementation. They naturally gravitate to the aesthetics of games and immediately understand and respect their mechanics and rules.

Why Use Gamification in Education?

Students encourage positive behavior and 21st-century skills from teammates to earn game points and level up. As students become more accountable, you can focus on what matters: teaching.

Powerful tools gamify your lessons and build a positive classroom culture. Make formative assessment fun with epic Boss Battles, keep class quiet, and discover treasure with the Volume Meter, and lots more. 

Chief Innovation Officer, District 62, Des Plaines, IL

- Jessica Anderson, Montana, @TriSciCurious

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Empower staff through custom professional development, both on-site and remote. These sessions help educators refine their teaching approach to achieve targeted outcomes.

To play Classcraft, each student must choose a character from three different character classes: the Healer, the Mage, or the Guardian. Each has unique properties and powers and is designed for different types of students. These are customizable as the game progresses and can be accompanied by pets.

Classcraft is played in teams of five or six students for the duration of the year. This encourages students who might not normally socialize to work together to win the game. All team members benefit from cooperative efforts and learn to consider the needs of others before they take actions in the game.


Character Classes

Teams &amp; Strategies

Over the course of an hour, game management occupies roughly five minutes. The Classcraft web-based and iOS platforms enable teachers and students to easily manage all the complexities of the game. The class is taught normally, and the game runs passively in the background, collecting points and managing powers. Classcraft can be played with one computer and a projector or deployed on every student’s tablet or laptop.


Classcraft is relevant to students because the risks and rewards in the game are real. Do well academically and help your teammates with their homework, and you can gain experience points that can unlock real powers like eating in class or asking a question on an exam. Show up late too many times, and you might fall and need to come to detention. In Classcraft, participation is a must to survive!

\* *Powers and consequences are customized by the teacher.*


Don’t change **what** you teach, supercharge **how** you teach it.

How it works

Playing in the Classroom

Real Risks &amp; Rewards

When I started Classcraft, my AP Biology scores were in the C range. The average increased to an A in a month.


My students' attitudes have completely changed: They're cheering each other on, and kids who weren't friendly before are eager to help their teammates.


The transformation has been profound. My whole classroom are enthusiastically trying to participate in order to get XP and not let their team down!

Classcraft saved my classroom! My class immediately changed behaviorally and academically after implementing it in my courses.

Classcraft integrates seamlessly into your classroom work flow.

* Keep assignments and resources organized with interactive forums.
* Assign students points directly in the forums when they answer questions correctly and help each other out.
* Give parents a clear view of how their child is participating in your classes with integrated student analytics.


Teacher Tools

by placing students in teams and making their success interdependent.

by gamifying the classroom experience and making learning fun!

Increases student motivation

Teaches meaningful collaboration

Improves classroom behavior

Classcraft Works Because It:

Parents can follow along with their child's progress and extend the game experience to the home by awarding Gold Pieces on the parent app. Students can earn points for finishing homework and helping out with chores.

For press inquiries, please contact us at <a href="mailto:press@classcraft.com">press@classcraft.com</a>.

Press Inquiries

Press

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##Classroom Content
Teachers and students may make postings in various sections of Classcraft. Common examples of this would be links to videos hosted by YouTube or Vimeo, links to Wikipedia or other reference material, and so on. It is the responsibility of the teacher to ensure that this content is appropriate and free from links to sites which may compromise the privacy of their students. Classcraft does not monitor the classroom content and has no responsibility for this content. The Classcraft software has features within it to allow teachers to monitor and control all content posted by the students in their class. Furthermore, students may flag inappropriate comments from within Classcraft and their teacher will be automatically notified. Classcraft does not actively monitor classroom content.


**_Website Content_**

1. The Website and Content are intended solely for the educational use of Website users and may only be used in accordance with the terms of this Agreement. Content is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. 
1. You shall abide by all copyright notices, trademark rules, information, and restrictions contained in any Content accessed through the Services, and shall not use, copy, reproduce, modify, translate, publish, broadcast, transmit, distribute, perform, upload, display, license, sell or otherwise exploit for any purposes whatsoever any Content or third party submissions or other proprietary rights not owned by you (i) without the express prior written consent of the respective owners, and (ii) in any way that violates any third party right.
1. The Website is protected by copyright as a collective work and/or compilation under copyright laws and international conventions. You may not modify, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce (except as expressly provided in this Section 6), create derivative works based on, distribute, perform, display, or in any way exploit, any of the Content, software, materials, or Services in whole or in part.
1. You may download or copy the Content (and other items displayed on the Website for download) for use within the Licensed Classes or for personal home-use only, provided that you maintain all copyright and other notices contained in such Content, but shall not store any significant portion of any Content in any form. Copying or storing of any Content other than for the purposes permitted by this document is expressly prohibited without prior written permission from Classcraft or from the copyright holder identified in such Content's copyright notice.
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1. You also hereby do and shall grant each participant in a Licensed Class a non-exclusive license to access your User Submissions through the Services, and to use, modify, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display and perform such User Submissions as permitted through the functionality of the Services and under this Agreement. Furthermore, you understand that Classcraft retains the right to reformat, modify, create derivative works of, excerpt, and translate any User Submissions submitted by you, subject to the terms of the Privacy Policy.
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**_Website Content_**

1. The Website and Content are intended solely for the educational use of Website users and may only be used in accordance with the terms of this Agreement. Content is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. 
1. You shall abide by all copyright notices, trademark rules, information, and restrictions contained in any Content accessed through the Services, and shall not use, copy, reproduce, modify, translate, publish, broadcast, transmit, distribute, perform, upload, display, license, sell or otherwise exploit for any purposes whatsoever any Content or third party submissions or other proprietary rights not owned by you (i) without the express prior written consent of the respective owners, and (ii) in any way that violates any third party right.
1. The Website is protected by copyright as a collective work and/or compilation under copyright laws and international conventions. You may not modify, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce (except as expressly provided in this Section 5), create derivative works based on, distribute, perform, display, or in any way exploit, any of the Content, software, materials, or Services in whole or in part.
1. You may download or copy the Content (and other items displayed on the Website for download) for use within Licensed Classes or for personal home-use only, provided that you maintain all copyright and other notices contained in such Content, but shall not store any significant portion of any Content in any form. Copying or storing of any Content other than for the purposes permitted by this document is expressly prohibited without prior written permission from Classcraft or from the copyright holder identified in such Content's copyright notice.
1. In the course of using the Services, you and other users may post or upload information to student forums. Information uploaded to these forums will be visible to certain other users and may also be used by Classcraft in connection with the Services. Classcraft will only share your personally identifiable information in accordance with the Privacy Policy.
1. You also hereby do and shall grant each participant in the Licensed Class a non-exclusive license to access your User Submissions through the Services, and to use, modify, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display and perform such User Submissions as permitted through the functionality of the Services and under this Agreement. Furthermore, you understand that Classcraft retains the right to reformat, modify, create derivative works of, excerpt, and translate any User Submissions submitted by you, subject to the terms of the Privacy Policy. 
1. You understand that all information publicly posted or privately transmitted through the Services is the sole responsibility of the person from which such information originated and that Classcraft will not be liable for any errors or omissions in any information. 
1. You understand that Classcraft cannot guarantee the identity of any other users with whom you may interact in the course of using the Services. Additionally, Classcraft cannot guarantee the authenticity of any data that users may provide about themselves. It is the responsibility of your teacher to provide access to the students and parents of students in the Licensed Class.
1. You acknowledge that all Content accessed by you using the Services is at your own risk and you will be solely responsible for any damage or loss to any party resulting therefrom. Under no circumstances will Classcraft be liable in any way for any Content, including, but not limited to, any errors or omissions in any Content, or any loss or damage of any kind incurred in connection with use of or exposure to any Content posted, emailed, accessed, transmitted, or otherwise made available via the Services.
1. You acknowledge that you are responsible for the security of your user id and password and agree to keep these confidential. 

As an implementer of Classcraft, I feel it is one of the easiest ways for new education gamifiers to start exploring and, resultantly, gamify their classrooms. As I ventured into gamification, I felt a need to separate my academic game from my behavioral game. I wanted my game to motivate and reach all of the learners in my classroom. As I explored avenues to do this, I found Classcraft to be the best fit.

Classcraft focuses on team collaboration and competition and on conquering goals. Students work to collect experience points (XP) to level up and gain powers, which in return helps their teams prosper. Within my blended science classroom, I saw students' work ethic change as they made strategic academic choices in an effort to move up to the next power tier. I also saw a change in their vocalization of positive collaborations amongst their peers as they wanted to help their teams. Overall, I saw students embracing the game, working together to accomplish a common goal, and making academic leaps as a result. Whenever I'm asked how I gamify my class, I make it a point to recommend Classcraft! 


Science, Grades 9-12, Powell County High School, Deer Lodge, Montana, USA

Reviewing for AP exams is always difficult. Although the desire to score well on the exam is a motivator, many students are so worn down from the year of rigorous curriculum that they lose steam during this critical review period. Enter Classcraft. With the introduction of this amazing program in my AP Biology classroom this year, students had a renewed energy. The atmosphere during review sessions was alive with competitive enthusiasm. I had two students who struggled the entire year with the material and would become frustrated when they did not do well. ClassCraft made learning fun for them again. 

During our first review session, I had students come up to the front of the room to answer review questions, drawing out different biological processes using the white board. For each part they answered correctly, they earned points. At the end of the session, the team with the most points received XP in Classcraft. My two frustrated students quickly went from an attitude of "What's the point? I won't do well anyway" to jumping out of their seats to cheer on their teammates and stifle their desire to blurt out answers to help. And they weren't the only ones! The class was so lively that other teachers and administrators walking the halls stopped and gathered at the doorway to observe the action. Needless to say, I was absolutely thrilled. 

One student asked why we hadn't been using ClassCraft all year (I had just discovered it, unfortunately so late in the year). Another student asked if I would be using it the whole school year next year, and that I really should if I wasn't already planning on it. The level of student engagement and motivation when using Classcraft is reason enough for any teacher to try it in their classroom.

AP Biology, Anaheim, California

I am a middle school teacher of gifted math and science in North Aurora, Illinois. I had tried to gamify my classroom in 2012-2013 but got bogged down by all of the data collection and tracking it required. My students loved the idea, but I wasn’t able to sustain it. When I read about Classcraft, I thought that it sounded too good to be true. I had been looking for an all-in-one platform that offered all of the aspects of a gamified classroom, and Classcraft did not disappoint. My students love the user interface, engaging characters and powers, and the daily events. I loved the increased participation level and the motivation it gives students.

As we played over the first couple weeks, I saw some ways that the game could be improved for our classroom. The customization that is offered through the game was extremely helpful. Students were able to suggest events, and I could tweak how many points they got for various things. If there wasn’t an option for a change, I was able to share that idea using the online forum. Many of the ideas presented on the forum have been implemented this year. It is great to see how much the input of users is valued.

The improvements to the game this year excited my students. The pets and character customization will help drive students to keep logging in and being engaged throughout the week. I’m excited to see what other improvements Classcraft will have in the future!

Gifted Math and Science, Grades 6-8, Jewel Middle School, North Aurora, Illinois, USA

I have been teaching Chinese for about 10 years and have always been concerned about my students’ behavior, as well as getting them to participate and learn efficiently. I am also a teaching instructor who helps teachers when they have trouble. When I discovered Classcraft, I was thinking, “This is a little crazy,” especially in an educational system where innovation is not always seen as positive.

The result was so much better than my expectations. I am still amazed by the radical change in my students’ behavior. Since using Classcraft, they’ve learned how to work as a team and depend on each other. They all want to participate in a positive way. They run to come to class and are always happy to do a preparation or assignments. They feel they are involved in an adventure. They don’t see it only as a game, but much more as a fun and positive way to study and help each other while accepting risks and consequences.

My students’ reactions are so positive that some parents, who were sceptic at first, became convinced very quickly. They see their children spending time sharing knowledge. Even the dean of my school wants to see Classcraft with her own eyes.

The improvement is priceless, considering the little time needed to put it in place during class. I am so convinced by this concept that I am extending it to most of my class groups. It has been such a success that students I don’t even know want to come learn Chinese and play Classcraft. This experience overall is a great way to make learning interesting and fun, and students never get bored.

Chinese, Grades 7-12, Chevreul School, Lyon, France

I discovered Classcraft by chance from an article on a gaming website. As an avid gamer myself, I am extremely interested in integrating video games in my classes as both my undergraduate and postgraduate thesis was on using video games to teach the English language. I tried Classcraft in my Grade 7 English class, and to my surprise the kids were extremely excited from the very first day until the end! My lessons became much more interactive, engaging, and fun. Classcraft enabled me to insert role-playing game elements into my lessons, and it turned my assignments, homework, assessments, and quizzes into fun quests and missions.
One of my best moments from implementing Classcraft was seeing one of my most disengaged and socially awkward students working together with his teammates to complete quests. As a result, I saw a jump in grades and the quality of work among my students. I look forward to playing Classcraft with my Grade 8, 9, and 11 students. I’m also looking forward to conduct CPDs (Continuous Professional Development) to introduce Classcraft to the rest of my colleagues.

MYP English, Grade 7, Fairview International School, Malaysia

When the computer was first introduced to my grade 5 class, I thought to myself, “What a useless thing,” and quickly dismissed it. Obviously, I was wrong. I quickly learned not to dismiss new ideas without giving a second thought as to how they could impact my life. That idea still holds true today when I look at new ideas that come and go in the field of education.

Gamification and specifically Classcraft has been one of those amazing ideas. After reading about it and discussing it with a colleague, I decided to jump in. Gamification has always been present in our classrooms in some form since childhood, and Classcraft takes it to a whole new level. 

My students took to the game right away. Participation, while always good in my classes, really shot up, with quieter children taking chances at answering questions or jumping in to protect teammates in the event of someone losing HP. Minor behavioral issues faded away slowly, and the kids really enjoyed the daily events and randomness of what would pop up on the screen. 

Overall, Classcraft has had an immense effect on my classroom. It’s an easy way to start off classes on the right foot, and it allows kids to work together and help make decisions that can benefit the team as a whole rather than the individual. The foundation of teamwork and the ability to simply realize that education can be fun and rewarding, which Classcraft helps build, will no doubt continue to serve the children as they move ahead in the future.


Health Grade 6, Geography Grade 7, and Modern World History Grade 8, Korea Kent Foreign School, Seoul, South Korea

I found Classcraft pretty close to the end of the school year, and you might think that would be a disadvantage, but it was actually really good timing. It’s often hard to keep 5th graders engaged even when things are “normal," but the last three days of school are even worse. They know it’s almost over, and they begin to get lazy … even the star students! I introduced my students to Classcraft with four days left in the school year, and it had the effect of a shot of adrenaline.

Instantly, they cared again and wanted to do well because Mr. Peoples was offering quadruple XP! My shy student was suddenly directing her teammates on strategy and helping them choose their characters. My troubled child was polite and attentive, even giving praise to other students when they earned XP. The rest of the year went by with no problems whatsoever, and I was even able to get my students to help me tear down the room in preparation for summer. All for a little extra XP. I am incredibly excited to start the next school year with Classcraft.

I’ve also been pretty successful using Classcraft at home with my own children. The possibility of earning XP and new powers that will earn them privileges and treats has made it so much easier to keep them off the video games and TV and to read more and care more about avoiding the summer slump. Plus, giving my son a big XP boost is definitely cheaper than paying him to mow the lawn!


All Subjects, 5th Grade, North Lakeland Elementary, Lakeland, Florida, USA

Classcraft has revolutionized my classroom. The game mechanics play a significant role in student engagement, both in the classroom and outside of the classroom. The game creates a perfect blend of teamwork and collaboration within the groups/teams but also provides an element of intrinsic motivation to individuals to work hard to earn more gear for their characters, level up, and earn more powers. I can’t tell you how many times my students were discussing among themselves about not forgetting their homework, studying for tests, and going the extra mile to complete some challenges that I created for them to earn extra XP. 

Since my implementation of Classcraft, my students have had fewer reminders to stay on task, a higher rate of completed work, and a renewed passion for learning.


Math, Language Arts, and Science, 5th Grade, Literacy First Charter School, El Cajon, California, USA

I had a student in my Computer Engineering that was struggling with the material. As a caring teacher, you do all that you can for students, but they still have to drink from the water. And as you may know, the students who need it most don't like to admit they do not know, ask for help, or come for tutoring. 

After one young man fell and dealt splash damage to his party for the second time, they rallied around him and forced peer tutoring on him. He was destined for a D; he earned a B.


Computer Engineering, Network Engineering, and AP Computer Science, Grades 9-12, Northern Guilford High School, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA

I have been stalking Classcraft since the very beginning or so. As an ex-gamer myself (I have a family now, no time to play … for now bwouah ah ah ah), the idea was so appealing to me, I HAD to use and integrate it into my classroom. I teach English to students with learning disabilities, and I was sure it would enlighten them as well.

The game was easy to integrate, and after a couple of weeks, it had become a second nature. The students liked it and were really enthusiastic. They made teams right away, signed everything, and got into it in a blink of an eye! They liked most of the game, how to use the powers and earn experience points (XP). Students are always eager to attend the class to get more XP and see what happens with the ‘Event of the Day’. It brought a lot of positivity to the classroom, academically and socially. It’s now a huge part of my planning, and I couldn’t teach without it.


English as Second Language, Grade 5, École Secondaire St-Martin, Laval, Quebec, Canada

I am beginning my 25th year of teaching; after 22 years of elementary, this year will my 3rd year of middle school. When I went to a technology conference in February, I heard about Classcraft and I thought, 'Wow! This would be something students would really be interested in playing.' When I returned home on Friday, I immediately went to the website and started looking into how to play the game. On Monday, I introduced the game to my students. When I brought the website up to show the students the characters and explain the rules that I had set up, they got really excited.

When we started playing, I noticed that I was not having as many students tardy to class, as many late assignments, or assignments not turned in. The students also started doing a lot of peer tutoring because they wanted the points in Classcraft, and they did not want to let their teammates down. The teams were starting to really work well together by the end of year. This year, I will have a prize for the team with the most points and the individual with the most points in each class. 


Robotics, Eco Architecture, and Computer Graphics and Animations, Grades 7-8, White Oak Middle School, Porter, Texas

We're a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) school, and computer management is not always easy. Students always want to be online to check for email or look at their Facebook accounts as soon as they get in class. 

Class management improved as early as the third period that I used Classcraft. Behavior also improved, and free time on the computer is now a reward for good behavior. Furthermore, students were waiting for the daily random event and were ready to begin class. They were eager to work to gain experience points and use their powers, like eating in class. Students were keeping their lunches to eat in my classroom, and some even asked me if they could bring take-out from a restaurant. 

I knew that Classcraft was a hit when one of my female students asked me why the other teachers didn't use Classcraft in their classroom!


Physics Grade 11, Science and Technology Grades 8-10, Collège St-Bernard, Drummondville, Québec, Canada

Classcraft has become an integral part of our classroom program because it's helped us to better organize the classroom and allowed me to evaluate learning skills in the process. It is a great way to involve all students in fun and engaging activities, both in groups and as individuals.

Initially, we created class groups to help manage class material organization and clean-up. The class management system occurred when some challenges resulted in students randomly falling. This caused batch damage (usually), which resulted in many students being assigned pledges from Oron's Lantern (eg., plug in devices to charge, answer the phone for the day, stack the chairs, fill a friend’s water bottle). No one ever worried about Oron's Lantern's responsibilities because they were simple tasks to complete, and all students helped each other complete them anyway. 

We played challenges using ClassCraft that we created as a class. Some of the challenges were related to goal-setting homework or in-class exploratory activities (such as being an active group member). We would start a ClassCraft challenge, and players would do their best to complete their challenges (some of which were used for Learning Skill evaluations, too). Students were never penalized if they performed poorly in a challenge. They just earned fewer points, but they always won to some degree. Performance challenges always resulted in great peer dialogue related to how to improve student performance on the same task next time (group reflective practice).

I am a proud user and ambassador of Classcraft, and I am always willing to share my experiences with others as well as find innovative ways to use Classcraft in the future.

Core Subjects, Technology, Social Studies, and the Arts, Grades 6 and 8, Centennial Sr PS, Peel District School Board, Brampton, Ontario, Canada

I can’t actually remember how I found out about Classcraft, but I was hooked immediately. I signed up and started thinking about how I would use Classcraft in my classes. Since there was only the English version available back then, I decided to use it in my ESL classes, and we had a blast.

The thing is, lots of people ask me why I’m such a big fan, and I always answer with the same reason: because it challenged me to think about the way I teach. When I had read through the powers, I wasn’t sure about using a cheat sheet, giving students extra time, etc. But why not? There’s no reason why you shouldn’t reward students when they’re working hard … and those powers are REAL rewards. Yes, they do need to pass a test, but why not do it extra motivated or with a little power? Seeing silent students find the courage to speak up because they can earn extra XP, or watching students smile when they get back a good result because they could ask their teacher if they were right on a test ... those moments are worth a lot, and that’s what I like about Classcraft.

Today, I’m an ambassador for Classcraft, and I’m proud of it. I’ve worked hard on the Dutch translation, and I’ve started my quest to tell people about Classcraft in Belgium, a country where there’s always room for an extra adventure! Even an adventure that has nothing to do with chocolates or waffles …


English as Second Language, Dutch, and History, Secondary School Years 3-4, Berthoutinstituut-Klein Seminarie (BimSem), Mechelen, Belgium

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