Comments on: School Rewards 2.0?

By: Ben Dunford

Ben Dunford — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:52:00 +0000

Thanks Daniel, the feedback from schools so far has been great and like you say we’re up against some strong competiton. Let me know if you’re interested in having a proper look about and I’ll send across some login details.

By: Daniel Stucke

Daniel Stucke — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:32:00 +0000

Hi thanks for you comment. Your site looks good, good work. Our school currently uses Vivomiles (http://www.vivomiles.com) and it’s got it’s good sides. Popular with students although the UI leaves a little to be desired. I’ve been impressed with Class Dojo (http://www.classdojo.com/) too – fantastic UI.

By: Sand2040

Sand2040 — Thu, 05 May 2011 15:21:56 +0000

At the school where I work we started 2 years ago with an online rewards system called vivo miles https://www.vivomiles.com/ and it’s been very positive for us. I was one of the most affected by lack of motivation and indiscipline and at some point I was feeling the situation getting out of control, the absenteeism in my class was alarming, and that was kind of the general picture at the school as is a public school and most of the kids come from problematic family lives and most of them from parents living from benefits who do not encourage them to learn and take the best of their studies as way to progress. Now things are very different, with this token system the students receive points for every positive action, even for attending class and they can accumulate and redeem those points in rewards they want. Is very engaging and also engage parents which is important as with previous rewards systems we tried before at the school all was limited to the school time and we experienced very poor back up from parents.

By: John McLear

John McLear — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 01:18:30 +0000

sorry my URL didn’t post! http://mclear.co.uk/sites/xparena-a-decentralized-learning-reward-platform/
that should work -10xp for me!

By: John McLear

John McLear — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:46:39 +0000

I did something on this exact subject you might like: mclear.co.uk/sites/xparena-a-decentralized-learning-reward-platform/
My idea is to keep it as open and free as possible. Not restricting to resources provided by the reward mechanism itself.

By: Henry

Henry — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:38:23 +0000

Hi Mr Stucke, Thanks so much for the shout out on myStickers. At School Stickers we’ve certainly heard the need for a simple merit reward system and we’re been quietly getting on and creating one! As we were in development before I didn't want to talk about it before; but the site is now in beta I thought you, as well as your readers, might be interested in checking it out. We’d certainly value any feedback you can give us. The site is called CarrotRewards (www.carrotrewards.co.uk). It works with myStickers.co.uk. For those that are unfamiliar with it - all our stickers and postcards can come with a small 6 digit code. Your pupil logs them on myStickers to create a virtual sticker book. The new bit is that you - as a teacher - can then see that data on CarrotRewards. From there we’ve developed systems so you can run any competition you want: Whole school, year, subject, form etc for any specified time system. Your pupils then see their position on myStickers and you can get instant updates in CarrotRewards. Allowing you to encourage pupils with daily updates. The great bit is you run all these competitions but you don't need to spend all your time counting tokens! Apart from competitions we also built in general behaviour management and reporting tools. You can see how pupils are doing individually, how a class is doing, or how many rewards a certain subject has given out. We’ve also built the functionality to export the data to SIMS for integrated reporting. Now right now we’re in Beta (so a few bugs!) but I’d really value feedback so I’ve set up a demo account for you: Username: tryme@carrotrewards.co.uk Password: carrot You can get dummy codes to try out here: http://www.carrotrewards.co.uk/codes/ You can try registering as a pupil on mystickers.co.uk and see them appear in the Carrot Demo School. (The codes link the pupil automatically to the demo school). I look forward to hearing your comments. Henry Shelford. Henry (a) schoolstickers.co.uk 0121 333 3600.

By: Steve Urmston

Steve Urmston — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:13:05 +0000

I’ve actually been running an experiment at York University (part of my dissertation) that deals with this idea. I have two groups of students (undergraduate politics class of 110 split into 2) using a relatively simple custom VLE, one group with additional game rules/mechanics (points, trophies, levels, leaderboards).

The experiment still has a couple of weeks to run, but the results have been pretty good for the game stuff; significantly higher logins / page views / time spent, and a lot more participation, although general levels of student contributions are still quite low!

I’m doing some qualitative evaluation, and the students do seem to really like the game like features and rewards. I keep hearing the word fun anyway!

By: Michael Acton Smith

Michael Acton Smith — Thu, 07 May 2009 04:06:07 +0000

Good post @mrstucke (+10 experience points!)

I'm a huge believer in the power of games to aid many different types of learning. I think we've barely scratched the surface with what is possible and would love to see more game designers tackling education projects

Kids spend much of their leisure time playing games so it seems sensible to explore the elements that makes these experiences so popular, and attempt to adapt them for the classroom. Many non-gaming websites are applying the secrets of good game design to their sites, and reaping big rewards. Amy Jo Kim has a fantastic presentation on this subject (Putting the Fun into Functional):

http://www.slideshare.net/amyjokim/fun-in-funct...

We had a very simple reward system when I was at school - we got a physical gold star if we were good, and one removed if we were bad. An online reward system could offer much greater granularity to reward many different behaviours, but also wider visibility so parents and other classmates could keep track of progress. There's little point in being awesome if you don't get to show off your awesomeness.

I love the widget idea but one problem might be that older kids (12+) would be less inclined to display their progress at school to their friends on Bebo/MySpace/Facebook, while younger ones aren't generally on the types of social network that host widgets.

It needs a little more thought, but I think the idea of a standardised virtual reward system has a lot of merit. I haven't heard of any projects like this in the pipeline, but we'd be happy to lend our advice and support if anyone is planning something.

By: Michael Acton Smith

Michael Acton Smith — Wed, 06 May 2009 21:06:07 +0000

By: wildblu

wildblu — Wed, 06 May 2009 06:11:23 +0000

Virtual rewards sound a great idea! At present we have Merits (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond), with a once a term reward trip (morning/afternoon cinema, swimming, ice skating).
Most staff also send 'postcards home' ~ very much appreciated.
We also have G codes (Green or Good), as well as R codes (Red for bad behaviour).
Headteacher awards are also given out for exceptional good deeds/performance.
Yes, the merits are mostly collected by the Yr 7's and drop off as you progress through the school, but postcards home are certainly prized.
We have just begun to introduce Kaleidos, our VLE, to students since the beginning of the year, and they do like making their own avatar, which is built in.
The idea of collectible widgets would appeal immensely!
How would it work??
Would love to be involved if you find anything!