SXSWedu Teacher of the Day: Shawn Young, Classcraft
This week at SXSWedu, Teach.com will be featuring one teacher per day who is bringing creativity and innovation into their classroom. Be sure to read more about our other Featured Teachers and learn how you can bring their practices in your classroom.
SHAWN YOUNG
Founder & CEO, Classcraft, Quebec, Canada
Presentation: Unlocking Play: Going Beyond Gamification
"As a culture, we’re drawn to the addictive interactivity of FarmVille and Words With Friends, but classroom learning remains a highly individualized experience. How can we inject mechanisms used in social games into the classroom for a more collaborative and engaging learning experience that keeps students coming back for more? We'll support this talk with a custom-built game attendees can play to show the power of using real risks/rewards and teamwork in games to create engaging experiences."
Meet Shawn:
Shawn Young is a high school physics teacher in Quebec, Canada, as well as the co-founder of Classcraft, an online educational role playing game that provides teachers with fun behavior and classroom management tools for classrooms of all ages. Shawn notes that his main focus is to ensure that Classcraft uses play, engagement and collaboration to "create a truly positive force" in the classroom.
According to Shawn, 86 percent of teachers see classroom management as a challenge and 40 percent of students are "chronically disengaged." Games like Classcraft help address this engagement issue in the classroom.
Shawn created a version of Classcraft for his presentation at this year's SXSWedu. See below for screenshots of his conference-focused app. Check out Classcraft's site and Twitter for more information on how they're (literally) changing the game.
Source: Kelly Fong, USC Rossier
To learn more about the great work Shawn Young is doing with Classcraft in classrooms across the world, read FastCompany's feature article "How One Teacher is Making High School -- and Physics -- Fun by Gamifying the Classroom."