It is all Connected

Overview:

SCVNGR is the type of app that highlights the power of being mobile.  The main goal of SCVNGR is going places, doing challenges, and earning points.  You can do other people’s challenges or create your own.  The heart of the program is connecting the challenge to a physical place that then turns into a social experience.  The website also allows you to create Treks.  Treks are a collection of challenges that can take place at one site or cover different places to travel to.

SCVNGR has done a great job in the design of their app.  Every challenge has the same four parts to it: Check-in, Social Check-in, Say something, and Snap a picture. When a place has been tagged in a challenge, every player has these options.  The fun comes in the unique challenge you create at that location.  There are two ways to create a challenge.  The first is by gaining enough points at that location and unlocking the bonus Create a challenge option.  The second is to make an account on SCVNGR’s website and build challenges or treks through the site.  You get four challenges with your account; you can email SCVNGR to ask for more challenges.  There is also a reward option you can unlock by contacting SCVNGR (click here for more info).

Why I like it:

It is fun.  It represents how mobile technology can be used to create a social and engaging experience.  Each Challenge or Trek has an activity feed that allows you to see how you stack up with other players. I used SCVNGR as the backbone of my Creative Apps workshop.  I built a Trek that introduced SCVNGR and then used it to enhance the workshop.

The first part of the Trek was a photo challenge.  The participants had to find a specific plant.  I uploaded my picture of the plant, and they had to take their own picture once they found it.  Next, I had two trivia questions they had to answer by asking specific colleagues during breaks in the workshop.  If you were wondering, no, their answers were not on the activity feed, just their points.  I then incorporated three discussion questions around other parts of the workshop.  These challenges were added to the four template aspects mentioned above.

One aspect I enjoyed was adding media to the challenges.  You can add movie files, pictures, or audio to your challenges to create even more personal touches.  I filmed the instructions for one of the challenges and attached them to the game.

Use in the classroom:

I think this app has great potential for schools. Below are some ideas.

Create Treks for athletic teams, band concerts, or the speech team.  Time is not a factor for SCVNGR, so a Trek can be active for as long as you want.  For example, to get fans to follow your team, create a season Trek that has each game as a challenge.

Create a reading Trek for a semester.  The location would be the classroom, but each book can have its own challenge.

Visit historical sites, or set up a Trek before a field trip allowing you to ask trivia questions, gather photos, and just create a more engaging trip.

Collect samples of plants for science class.

SCVNGR is one of those apps that reveals the power mobile technology has to enhance our everyday life, let alone what it can do for the classroom.  I think you will find SCVNGR to be a great resource. Share your SCVNGR successes with me via Twitter (jdog90).

In case you are ever in Kearney, NE, and enjoy coffee, I have a Trek, “Better Latte Than Never” you might enjoy.

I think it has happened.  I am a grumpy teacher.  Many of my phrases start with “Back in my day,” or “Kids these days.”  To be honest, some days I feel drained after teaching instead of energized.  I get grumpy grading papers.  I am becoming that teacher.

How did I get here?  The answer is not easy to write, but I think it reveals some important aspects of education.

I teach all my classes over a DL (distance learning) system.  I juggle different start and end times for periods, 14 different school calendars, and one period with six different schools on the screen.  Not to mention technological issues or other factors that affect the environment of the class: lighting, all students on screen, and even just trying to answer a question from their computer screen.

I have, at best, shallow relationships with my students. I’m on line with them three days a week for 45 minutes.  I don’t get to have those conversations in the hall or at lunch.  They cannot ask for help in the morning.  I do not get to see the light bulb moments.  Learning is about moving to higher levels of understanding and articulation of that understanding.  It is scary to make that jump sometimes, but a teacher is that foundation that gives students the courage to make it.  I don’t seem to be building that foundation, and that is hard to live with because that is what a teacher does.

Connected to the environment is my approach to grades.  Lessons are just as much a part of the culture of a classroom as the desks and paint on the wall.  And with lessons comes grades.  I have tried to create a more project-based environment for both of my classes.  To create activities that builds the students’ skills without worrying about the grade.

 

Here again I get tired of battling all the different grading issues, from the student cliché. “How long is it suppose to be?” to justifying every assignment that is not “graded” to schools.  In some ways I have made it even harder on myself because I’ve tried to run my DL classes as if it was a normal classroom.  So, I have kids go outside to write and take pictures.  Students hand in homework by taping it to the walls in their classroom.  But it is not so simple to correlate these activities with six other schools for that period.  Or to make sure all students post their work on the wall.

Grades are important, but I feel that improving their skills is more important.  Life doesn’t give us a midterm report.  We don’t get a grade for how well I did as a parent, or as a friend.  Yes, we do get evaluated for those things, but it is reveled in our sense of pride, the smiles and laughter at the dinner table.  Our skills help us create a life filled with love and strength to handle rough times.  I know a single classroom cannot measure up to life, but it can be a place to build the work ethic for students to strengthen the skills that will be needed in life.  I would rather see them work hard on an essay then filled a page requirement, but to create that freedom takes a relationship that is built throughout a school experience.  And I’m just some guy on a screen…

So I get tired, I get grumpy, I feel like a failure. But this feeling highlights what matters most in education and in life: the relationships we construct with students to help them reach their highest expression of talents and skills.  I might still be grumpy, but I know that all I can do is keeping trying.  Because I won’t get a grade for this moment in life, but will know how I’m doing by the smiles and pride my students express in their own life.

Robert Frost once wrote, “Two roads diverged in a wood…”

I wish life was that simple.  That each day was layout in two paths and that was it.  I’ve discovered that throughout a day we are given many opportunities or roads to travel.  But maybe Frost meant something deeper.  That there is always an easier path, and that path is more traveled by.

 

Everyday we are given the opportunity to choose our road, the easier path or the other.  The other path can lead anywhere and can be in any condition.  It can be a battle that leaves us bruised at the end of the day.  On another day that road is a walk in the park and we are filled with joy.  But the uncertainty of the outcome scares us and we shy away from choosing that path, especially if we have traveled that road and it has been a battle for too long.

So, we will choose the easier road.  That path is familiar to our feet.  No matter what the day might bring we can get through it by walking this road.  The day may not be fulfilling. It might irritate us, or stress us out, but it is easy.  It is a passive path.  It allows us to do almost nothing as the world moves on around us.  We know we could have done more with the day.  There is emptiness to the scenery, we don’t have to think, we don’t have to risk anything.  No failure, no heartache. Just a nagging emptiness that we don’t seem to mind because of the easiness of the walk.

But we find out, sometimes too late, that the road is a dead end.  A vacant lot filled with what ifs that blow across our hearts like tumble weeds.  The other path, for all its uncertainty, is the path we know we should choose.  No matter the wear of the road, or the obstacles, or sunshine streaming through the trees, this road leads to deeper fulfillment of our lives.  It is not always easy, but it leads us to a life of achievements, a life without regrets.

So we have another day before us.  There is an easy path through this day.  There is also the opportunity to do what it takes, no matter how difficult or different roads we end up walking to achieve a day we are proud of.