Past speaking engagements on topics such as gamification, use of virtual worlds in education and a review of some of my past projects.
Some of the things I've tried, past and present. Every one of them a stairstep towards trying to figure out the model that is the new instructional paradigm.
The slide shows I have used to present. Some are for presentations that were never recorded. A lot of them have very useful links to resources.
Presentation for UNC's MEITE program summarizing my major projects over the last decade.
Presentation for the Science Circle in Second Life on BioTown, a Virtual World LMS built in OpenSim.
Presentation detailing my vision for education in virtual worlds, challenges and needs.
At Chatham Charter the administration wanted me to design an advanced tech class for high fliers. Eventually this concept evolved into the Electronic Arts class. This series of courses taught students how to model in 3D using 3DS Max and Blender, how to animate those objects and finally how to design games in Unreal using those assets.
Some of the kids in Electronic Arts wanted something competitive afterschool but were not interested in traditional sports. In response to that I helped them form the CCS Sleeping Knights, a League of Legends team that participated in the High School Starleague. The team competed against high schools from across the country. The picture above links you to the Star League.
In this project, I tried produce an off the shelf solution for other teachers by designing a game that was tailor made to be used in gamification of the classroom. It borrowed a lot from my previous attempt at making my own game, except it was purely analog. See the rulebook by clicking on the picture.
A video game that gamified the content of Biology was a notion I had for a while. It finally resulted in Driftwood, a video game concept that took players through all the material for Biology. I even started building it in Unreal before realizing the enormity of the task. The game design document is linked above.
There was a summer where our school was transitioning to a new LMS. I was very busy learning it as I was responsible for teaching other teachers. However I did manage to use concepts from gamification in transforming the traditional LMS into a narrative, a story with a quest that transported the kids into a much more exciting place than a classroom.
This very ambitious project was our first attempt at using OpenSim. Insomnium had a grand, sweeping story, floating dormatories for the students to socialize and tutor, a castle with dozens of doors that transported to dozens of interactive challenges to learn content. However, despite a few hundred combined hours of work, it became too complex for me and my colleague to put together prior to the semester starting.
This was one of the only projects where I tried to take the gamification beyond the walls of my classroom. By borrowing from the world of Harry Potter, students were organized into Houses which competed both academically and through periodic challenges against one another for house points. Click on the image above for the site.
A digital, non-gamified project I undertook early on was a tool made as a result of a grant from my district. Here I simply used Adobe Captivate to interactively house resources for Biology. It was meant to allow other teachers to adopt a blended strategy by putting all the materials - digital texts, games, assesments and review - in one common place.
BioTown, which I speak about in one of my presentations, put all the content for a Biology class into a virtual world. BioTown housed different topics into thematic buildings. These contained digital texts, games, activities and formative assesments for the topic.
This was my first gamification attempt. It adopted rules, but no narrative, to give the kids some motivation through competition, badges and a leaderboard. There were achivements awarded for recommended behavior (much like PBIS) and grades were turned into XP to allow for leveling up.
This project involved using an off-the-shelf boardame and adapting it to become a vehicle for instruction in the classroom. The picture above links to the site where I explain the game.
My first attempt at a home made, analog/hybrid game for the classroom. Aquos pitted the students as sentient races trying to retake the world by mastering Biology content. See theworld map I prepared for the game by clicking on the picture above.
Mr. Cachafeiro has spent the last decade finding ways to evolve the state of the classroom as to take advantage of new instructional technologies and strategies. He specializes in the introduction of technology into the classroom, the use of innovative strategies such as blended learning and gamified learning, and in helping teachers and administration adopt these into their districts and classrooms. Mr. Cachafeiro continues to push the envelope by exploring emerging technologies, such as immersive worlds, Augmented Reality and Virtual reality, as well as video games and their application to the classroom. He has not only done this in his own classroom but has presented at various levels to various groups on the use and adoption of the technologies. He continues to be an advocate for change in education.
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