Task #10: Just What The Doctor Ordered!

Well, Level Up Book Club, it looks like it's THAT time of year again. After 8-10 weeks spent ignoring the alarm and basking in the glow of daytime TV, it's time to cast aside the joys of summer and head back to school!  Whether you've only got a few precious days of vacation left OR you're lucky enough to have a couple of weeks still burning a hole in your back pocket, you've no doubt already started thinking about a new year, new students AND, hopefully, new opportunities to ramp up your instruction with some of what you've learned this summer about game based learning AND gamification.

Which brings us to our next challenge.

While we certainly plan to continue Level Up Book Club into the school year, we feel like NOW is the time for all of us to start doing more than just reading about gamification and how it can empower, engage and impact students.

So... your task for the next couple of weeks is to do the following:

1. Get ready for an AWESOME school year - complete with new game based instruction that offers you and your students opportunities to level up! And as you do that...
2. Use the #levelupbc Wiki Work Space to share ideas, offer feedback and tease us with your shiny new instructional schemes.  There's already so many great ideas listed there.  Besides, as we get ready to head back to school armed with our new found GBL knowledge, who better to plan our attack with than our very own guild?!?!
3. Along the way, keep posting photos to our Tumblr - be they self portraits featuring our latest read or photographic eye candy of the things you're building and plotting at school.  Either way, let's share the story of how our summer of love learning is now being translated into action!
4. And finally, mark your calendar for our next Twitter Chat:  Thursday, Sept. 6th. 8:00pm EST.  We'll be discussing our latest read, I'll Eat This Cricket for a Cricket Badge: A Gamification Novella by Darren Steele and Christine Chung, in a way we've never done before. I promise you, IT'S GONNA BE EPIC!

In short - go get ready for the school year!  We look forward to hearing about how you'll apply gamification and game based learning to your instruction for a truly EPIC WIN!

Task #9: The Discussion Continues

Thursday's #levelupbc Twitter Chat was another great celebration of all the amazing knowledge each of you bring to the table. Thanks for transferring those relevant ideas picked up from reading James Paul Gee's What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy and applying them to your current instructional practice. We know lots of you were not able to join us for the Twitter Chat, so...

Task 9:

WIKI CHALLENGE: "Let's Talk Gee on our Wiki"

Directions: Join the new Level Up Book Club wiki (http://levelupbc.wikispaces.com), visit the Discuss Gee page, and respond to a couple of questions. You can add to our Twitter Chat discussion questions or respond to other questions submitted last week by #levelupbc members care of Task #8. Make sure you leave your name if you want Reward credit.

Reward: Let's level up together! Earn +1 level for joining the wiki plus an additional +1 level for every question you respond to (Remember to leave your name so we can reward you!).

Deadline: Respond to questions via the wiki no later than 11:59pm Monday, August 13th to claim your level ups.

August: I'll Eat This Cricket...

Join us as we read I'll Eat This Cricket for a Cricket Badge by Steele & Chung and you just may find it the perfect resource for all of those colleagues who raise an eyebrow and ask gami-what-ification?

We hope this 80-page novella will not only give you a chance to mentally prepare for the upcoming school year, but also a tool that can be shared with others to help draw them into this new and exciting adventure we're all taking.

As usual, we'll have photo challenges, unlockable achievements, and plenty of opportunities to level up.

Keep the discussion going on Twitter using the #levelupbc hashtag and don't forget to add gamification and game-based learning resources to our Diigo page, dig deeper with our Live Binder, and continue the discussion while supporting others through our Wiki.

Game on!