Participate and share: Poster 
Educators will learn new ways to engage their students in community building activities at the beginning of the school year to create a positive class environment. Both digital and analog games are incorporated to increase student motivation and foster communication skills through active teamwork. Games include the use of a variety of tools like Blooket, Flip, Jamboard, Goosechase EDU, Canva BINGO and old-fashioned mechanical buzzers. In the culminating project, students design animations and videos using the artificial intelligence features in either Canva or Adobe Express to celebrate their favorite things and goals for the year. They build digital nametags using generative AI in Adobe Express or text to image in Canva. They design videos in Adobe Express using generative AI and recording a video from their recorded audio. Students work asynchronously through a project website, checklist, rubric, and tutorial videos. There is a lot of student choice baked into the activities throughout this unit to improve student accountability. The rubric is a single-point rubric designed to provide better feedback and reflection for their projects.
There will be an overview of the process of how I created these activities, tips for the tech tools that I used, and the activities themselves. Activities shared will include a Goosecahse EDU scavenger hunt, app smashing with Flip and Blooket to create student trivia, app smashing with Canva and Jamboard for a session or "Love it or Leave it", Canva BINGO, old school game show using mechanical buzzers, and the culminating project where students created digital nametags in either Canva or Adobe Express as well as animated videos in Adobe Express. I will also share tips on creating with artificial intelligence in Canva and Adobe Express (60 minutes). Student examples of their culminating projects (animated videos and digital nametags) will be shared (15 minutes). Educators will have access to a plethora of resources that they can use in their classroom to incorporate games and community building activities. This includes a curated playbook of gamification and game-based learning strategies for any classroom and the project website, checklist, and rubric (15 minutes).
How to Use Gameplay to Enhance Classroom Learning: https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-use-gameplay-enhance-classroom-learning/
Using Gamification to Ignite Student Learning: https://www.edutopia.org/article/using-gamification-ignite-student-learning/
Columbia CTL - Community Building in the Classroom: https://ctl.columbia.edu/resources-and-technology/teaching-with-technology/teaching-online/community-building/
Building Community Before the First Day of Middle School and Beyond: https://www.edutopia.org/article/building-community-middle-school/
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