Student Ownership in Education - A Reflection

Over the past couple of months, my educational technology journey has focused on assessment and improving student achievement.  Topics explored included:

• formative and summative assessments
• personalized learning
• mastery learning
• digital portfolios
• student self-assessment
• rubrics
• using data to drive instruction
• game-based learning and gamification

Each of these topics has merit as a means of improving student achievement.  The real impact in achievement lies within students taking ownership in their education, but exactly how do we do that?  Based on all I've learned in the past few months, digital portfolios are a must.

A digital portfolio has the power to combine nearly all of the aforementioned topics for improving student achievement.  Alongside the teacher, students can use data to engage in goal setting.  Students and teachers can collect artifacts to document students' personalized or mastery learning pathways.  Our young learners can assess their work using rubrics to create written, audio, or video reflections.  Digital badging could even be housed on an online portfolio.

In the coming school year, I would really like to encourage student investment in their learning through a digital portfolio.  Best practices involve students setting goals and collecting documentation of learning through a portfolio.  This is easily achievable using free online tools such as Seesaw Learning Journal or Google Sites.  In a perfect world, I would love to roll out a school-wide digital learning portfolio that can be kept from year to year to document student progress over time.  

Collaborating with my colleagues, we drafted this sample Google site.  Student photos would be archived on the home page.  Each subsequent page would be tailored to what is most developmentally appropriate to document.  Grade level teams would collaborate on the "must-haves" -  the very least they want to have students include throughout the year.

Sample K-5 digital learning portfolio created on Google Sites.

Right now, teachers at my building are asked to pass on a piece of writing in response to reading to the next year's teacher.  That could be housed on such a site along with a rubric and/or a video/audio reflection completed by the student.  

A digital portfolio has the potential to warehouse:

• student goal setting
• student reflection on goals, achievements, projects, etc.
• work samples to document learning 
• projects students want to "show-off"
• written, audio, or video reflection of work samples
• multi-media projects that are otherwise difficult to share
• digital badges earned 

Let's consider something as basic as reading fluency.  Using a digital portfolio, students could upload a video or audio recording of themselves reading at several benchmark time periods throughout the school year.  After reading, students could listen to themselves and use a grade level rubric to assess their reading fluency.  Documentation of goals set for themselves and/or a reflection could then be included within the digital portfolio as well.  Reading fluency checks are already required.  Students are already doing this work, but the documentation and reflection are not currently part of the process.  Maintaining a digital portfolio adds that essential student reflection and ownership piece to the process that can boost student achievement.  This same process can document any sample of student learning that the school, grade level, teacher, or student chooses to include.

As a bonus, this process increases communication from school to home.  Parents can check in on their student's portfolio at any time. What a powerful tool to engage students in their own growth and achievement as a learner!  

Using Rubrics for Tech-Based Projects

A New Rubric Tool

"A rubric is a set of written guidelines for distinguishing between performances or products of
different quality," according to Grant Wiggins. Using a rubric leads to a more valid and
reliable assessment of student work. I began generating a rubric using  Rubistar to create a
tech-based rubric because I have used Rubistar in the past to create my own rubrics or to
find already made rubrics.  With a lack of options, I was unable to make the rubric look as I
wanted it to. I had the entire rubric created; yet, I didn’t like the way it looked in the preview
mode.  I felt it was not elementary student-friendly at all. Frustrated, I decided to explore
For All Rubrics which I had never used before.  I really found it easy to use, it had plenty
of options, and it had the capability for creating checklists and badges!  I was excited to
explore this new tool.

The Project

I created this rubric for the Greek and Latin root word study project. 

I assign this project to advanced 2nd or 3rd graders as they investigate Greek and Latin root words and affixes, but it can be adapted for various grade levels.  Leading up to this product, students complete a word sort. Once sorted, students create a category name for each group to explain how they sorted.  Next, students match the words with a set of definition cards. Afterward, they use what they know about word parts to help themselves figure out the meaning of the words. I encourage students to attempt this without using a dictionary. Once students have done this, they should use this knowledge to help them discover what each Greek or Latin root word or affix means by looking for similarities in their definitions. 

Students working on a word sort.

All of that leads up to the tech-based product that they will create to show their understanding of Greek and Latin roots and affixes. The product should also evidence students’ ability to figure out unknown words that contain the Greek and Latin roots and affixes they have learned. 

For the project, students will find a word (not among the words they sorted) that uses each of
the Greek or Latin root words or affixes from the sort, and they will write a sentence that uses
the words showing the meaning of the words.  For three of the new Greek or Latin word parts,
students plan and stage a photo that shows what the root or affix means. They should add a
caption to enhance the photo. Then, they choose one of the words to create a video that
teaches what the Greek or Latin word part means through the context of the video - not
directly stating the meaning. Students are challenged to enhance the video or photo by
using an appropriate digital image background and a green screen technology.

The Product

This product is typically created using Keynote presentation so students can easily insert
images, text, and video.  Students also use the camera on the iPad to take the images and the
Do Ink Green Screen app. Here is a sample product that my students created last year.  I have
slightly changed the criteria as I developed the digital badge criteria (see image) for the
Greek and Latin root words and affixes and this rubric.

Digital Badge Criteria for Greek and Latin Word Study

A Reflection

While creating my rubric, I wanted the criteria for my rubric to focus on assessing the
content of the product as Grant Wiggins blog post titled On Rubrics and Models, Part 2: A
Dialogue suggested.  With this in mind, I made the two content criteria (content and usage)
of the rubric worth twice as much as the delivery and multimedia sections.  Those sections
integrate the ISTE standards, but I really want to assess the Language standards for this
product. The delivery and multimedia sections are more about process and polish.  I really
wish I could eliminate points off the rubric altogether and just have the descriptors across the
top, but I was unable to do that using ForAllRubrics. Using this tool, I was able to list out the
descriptors under each criteria category focusing on the impact - the purpose of the
performance.  I think this makes the descriptors easier to read and clearly differentiates
between the various levels of performance by keeping them aligned across the rubric. Under
each category, I wanted to be as descriptive as possible about what I was expecting so
students can use the rubric to assess their own work and improve it before submitting their
work.

I think rubrics like this will aid students in their understanding of project expectations and
will help teachers be more consistent in the assessment of tech-based projects.

Gamification of Education - The Future of Learning?

"Just a few more minutes, I'm about to level up!" 

Have you ever heard one of your children or students say that?  They are so committed to reaching new heights and challenges in whatever game they are playing.  Can we leverage the power of games to get that same kind of engagement and investment in learning?  Can we gamify education?  Wouldn't it be great to hear our students say, "Just a few more minutes and I'll be a Master of Metric Measurement."  

The Gamification of Education
According to What is Game-Based Learning? gamification is "applying game mechanics to non-gaming scenarios."  Online tools such as Class Dojo or, even learning platforms such as Freckle are utilizing gamification to motivate and reward students for their efforts.  Freckle, for example, allows students to choose a character and collect coins with which they can purchase outfits or accessories for their character.  The characters are not based in any storyline as with game-based learning, but younger elementary students seem to absolutely love it.  All the way through fourth grade, I have witnessed students enjoy completing tasks to earn coins and purchase accessories through Freckle's Piggy Store.  During class, I overhear conversations among students where they are comparing their level within Freckle, "Which level are you on in Numbers and Operations?"  Through the teacher dashboard, I can tell that students are spending time on their own completing learning tasks to "level up."  They are setting goals and working toward those goals to attain extra coins.  While this is a game to them, they are also learning in the process.  My hesitation is their motivation at this point.  Is it more about the points and what they are earning or is it about the learning?  I'm not convinced it's about the learning just yet.  Students still have to be reminded to use the instructional videos and hints to help them.  They need to be reminded that it is not just about attempting questions to earn coins, but the experience is about learning.   So, right now, I see the gamification of education motivating students, but will that continue into the future?

Digital Badging - a Part of Gamification
According to Kristin Fontichiaro in her article Chart Students' Growth with Digital Badges, in education "digital badges acknowledge that an earner has demonstrated declarative knowledge or skill in a content area as well as intellectual, social, or behavior growth."    Much like Scouting merit badges, a digital badge recognizes students' achievements that a traditional report card grade may not capture.  What is it that you wish your report card could measure but it doesn't?  You could create a badge for that.    

So, how exactly does this work?  Digital badging really does align with best practices in learning and teaching.  We begin with the end in mind - selecting learning goals.  Once goals are determined, the teacher can create scaffolded levels of activities that guide students in achieving the learning goal.  As students show mastery for a particular skill by completing the scaffolded learning opportunities, he/she can "level up" or achieve a badge for that skill.  This system of gamification supports mastery learning whether you are using a Flipped Learning model, The Grid Method, personalized learning, or your own combination of these practices.

This is a sample Grade 3 Measurement learning standard with scaffolded activities that lead to the "Master of Metric Measurement" badge.

The same idea can apply to English Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, Digital Citizenship Skills, or any curricular area.  The learning goal is clear for students.  The activities at level one are meant to be more accessible for students and increase in complexity moving toward level 5.

Vocabulary example for 4th Grade.

Digital Badge Boards Unlike Scouting badges proudly displayed on a uniform, digital badges exist in cyberspace.  There are digital badging platforms available on the web such as Mozilla's Open Badge Infrastructure, Badg.us, or Badgr.  But, students can collect their badges on a Digital Badge Board like the one pictured below that was created using Google Docs.  This badge board awards 3rd graders badges for all of the 3rd-grade Common Core measurement standards.  There are badges for metric measurement, customary measurement, time, area, and perimeter.  I can definitely see my third graders excited to work their way through these badge pathways and collect their digital math badges.  These are skills students are expected to master by the end of third grade.  Digital badging allows students to work at their own pace toward mastery learning.  It adds that gamification to learning that is already happening in the classroom.

Create YOur Own Badge Board and Badges
As you can see on this sample badge board the badges are grayed out until a student shows mastery of the concepts for that standard.   To learn how to create a simple Badge Board using Google Docs, check out this quick video.  Click here to make a copy of this badge board that you can modify to suit your needs.

Creating badges to meet the needs of your instruction can be done easily using a  website like Canva, Apple's Pages app, or right in Google Draw.  Check out this tutorial.

Who doesn't want to earn a badge to show off a special achievement?  I even have a couple

attached to my email signature.   Are you ready to engage every learner and work toward mastery learning?  If you want to increase flexibility, recognize students for their talents and achievements, motivate students, and make students more cognizant of what they need to learn, digital badging might be for you.

This educational technology journey that I have been on has led me to ponder the gamification of learning.  As I reflect on this trend in education today, I wonder if it is just another swing on the educational pendulum or if it is an instructional strategy that will stand the test of time.

From the Stone Age to the Digital Age - I've Witnessed the Evolution of Portfolios

Back in the Day
Back in the stone age, when I first began teaching, we kept paper portfolios - manilla expanding folders with an elastic closure, to be exact.  Starting in kindergarten teachers would collect writing samples for each student.   The portfolio would get passed on from year to year from teacher to teacher.  I taught fifth grade, and after 6 years, the students had a wonderful collection to showcase how their writing evolved over the years.  At the end of fifth grade, we had a celebration of learning during which the students would receive this portfolio wrapped up with a bow that students took home.

Does anyone else remember using 
this as a portfolio?
https://images.app.goo.gl/GfpVq64kKKUDy8P87

I remember receiving this big basket of portfolios each fall.   I enjoyed looking through the files and seeing the work that students had done over the years.  After looking through those writing samples, I felt like I had a little idea of who that child was as a writer.  The writing pieces did not come with any student reflection, but students did get to help determine which pieces went into the file.  After a few years, the practice of keeping that portfolio disappeared.  Some teachers never looked at the portfolio that was passed on to them.  Others complained they took up too much space.  So, the portfolio idea went to the wayside.

But, I liked the idea of a portfolio, so in fifth grade, we began to keep a binder portfolio.  The binder had dividers for each subject area, and students stored all "graded" work in that portfolio for the grading period.  Each week, students would look through any assignments that had been returned to them and choose at least one to write a reflection about.  Students stapled a little reflection slip to the work to explain why they chose that assignment.   In this binder, students also had a goal setting sheet per grading period.  Students would identify an academic and social goal and the steps that they were going to take to accomplish that goal.   Periodically, we'd ask students to think about what they were doing to work toward that goal, but there was no formal reflection recorded.  The binders would go home every week for students to share with parents.  At the conferences, the binder would be shared with parents as evidence of students' grades, it was taken home, emptied out, and returned to fill up for the next grading period.  We continued that practice until I left teaching that grade level for the position I have now. 


Joining the Modern Era

In the last few years, since I work with students from kindergarten through fifth grade, I've tried to find different ways to capture and share student work that integrates with what teacher are already doing.  Also mentioned in 10 Good Options for Building Digital Portfolios, my favorite student digital portfolio so far has been Seesaw for Schools.  We piloted that tool for about half of a school year and everyone - students and teachers

and parents - loved it!  We had so much positive feedback about it being easy to use,

intuitive, and allowing parents to clearly see their child(ren)'s progress.  By conferences, there was so much evidence of each child's learning that parents had access to on a daily basis, conferences were very easy.  Unfortunately, our district did not decide to purchase Seesaw for Schools moving forward.  While the free version is still a great tool, it does lose some of its capabilities for collaboration among teachers and over the years.  Teachers are still using it, and parents are still loving the window it provides into each child's learning journey.

In 7 Important Questions Before Implementing Digital Portfolios, George Couros wrote about learning versus showcase portfolios and challenged us to think about what happens from year to year.  With the capability to create folders, a portfolio on Seesaw can be,  both, a learning portfolio and a showcase portfolio depending on how a teacher sets it up.  Seesaw for Schools allows those learning journals to be cumulative from year to year as well.  Now that reminds me of what I used to do back in the day with the writing portfolio that I mentioned earlier, but the digital portfolio has even greater potential because it can be shared with an authentic audience, it provides the opportunity to receive feedback, and it can be revised.   As mentioned in the interview with Matt Renwick about his book A Whole School Approach to Connected Learnings and Continuous Assessment, a digital portfolio tool can motivate and empower students.  I saw this first hand when students began using Seesaw to document their learning.  It provided clear evidence of learning that supported report card grades and conference conversations.  It warehoused formative assessments and created a powerful communication tool from school to home and beyond.  In some cases, it reached across the country to grandparents or distant family members or even to other connected classrooms with Seesaw's blog feature  - all of which provided an authentic audience to even our littlest learners.   

As young as first grade, our students are learning to provide each other feedback using the TAG acronym. 
Tell something you like about someone's work
Ask a question about their work
Give a polite suggestion to make their work even better. 

Students are reading the feedback they receive from others, thinking about how they can improve their work, and making revisions.  Isn't that what continuous learning is all about? I agree with the teacher in the video Self-Assessment: Reflections for Students and Teachers when she tells her students that if their work does not meet the criteria then they are not done.  Digital portfolios can be a powerful and empowering tool for motivating students to invest in their own growth as a learner.

Engaging Learners - A Reflection

Reflection Leads to Improvement
As I reflect on the past school year and contemplate the upcoming school year, I’ve been thinking about how to make learning more meaningful for students.  If we can make learning purposeful, the children in our classrooms will dive in wholeheartedly.  

Like most typical students, my middle schooler often grumbles as she’s completing homework, “Why do I need to learn this?  When will I ever use this?”  If our students don’t find value in what they are learning, some will learn in spite of us; they have an intrinsic motivation to learn and will put forth their best effort to somehow make meaning themselves.  Some might put forth minimal effort to complete the assignments, so they can procure a decent grade on their report card.  Seeing no value in the assignments, some might not engage at all.  But, if we can bring lessons to life, we can lure all students into investing in their education.  Using the best instructional practices, we can make this a reality. 

Problem-based learning

Problem-based learning reels students in by presenting them with a real-life they must investigate and work collaboratively to solve.  This might mean going into the community or beyond to find answers to questions.  It might also mean presenting solutions within or beyond the community.  Engaged in critical and creative thinking, students are working hard, applying skills and strategies that show their mastery of the content standards, and taking pride and ownership in their learning.

Genius Hour

Opportunities to explore a passion creates relevance and promotes student ownership for learning.  As students set goals around their passion investigations, research, and create ways to share their knowledge, they are also demonstrating their mastery of content standards.  

Personalized Learning

Using Playlists or the Grid Method or even Flipped Learning, students make choices about how they learn best.  Students are still meeting the learning targets, they just have some say in how they engage in that work.

There are so many ways to go about making learning more meaningful for students.  As I dug into resources for these instructional strategies, I discovered a few common threads.

For students:

Skills are steeped in real life situations

Multi-disciplinary skills are needed to engage in the work

Students invest in themselves through goal setting and reflection

Work quality improves when there is an authentic audience

Communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity develop

For teachers:

Time is needed

Planning ahead is critical

Determining learning targets is essential

Collaborating with others results in better experiences for students 

With the goals of increasing student ownership, advancing mastery, and making learning more relevant, I’m making the commitment to myself and my students to make learning more meaningful.

Flipped Learning - Is It For You?

What Is Flipped Learning?

Flipped Learning is a model for mastery learning.  Videos provide direct instruction targeted at student learning goals and students practice.  Videos can be watched at home or at school.  While in class, with the support of the teacher available, students dive deeper into content and apply their knowledge before being assessed.  If students do not show mastery of the content, the teacher can remediate, provide additional practice, or assign corrective work before students retake an assessment to prove their grasp of the content.

Graphic designed based on Jon Bergmann’s description of Flipped Learning in the  blog titled, “Mastery Simplified: 5 Tips to Make Mastery  Reality.”

The idea of Flipped Learning has been around for a while now.  To me, it always seemed more appropriate for middle or high school students, but I recently began to wonder how it could be used as a mastery learning model to support elementary school students and how it can tie into gamifying the classroom through digital badging.  (I’ll save the topic of digital badging for a later post.)

Benefits of Flipped Learning

• Increases student engagement
• Increases student investment in learning 
• Increases parent interaction 
• Increases test scores
• Increases professional collaboration 
• Develops relationships among the teacher and students and among students 

Challenges of Flipped Learning

• Decreases pacing if self-paced (possibly)
• Heightens anxiety about grading
• Flexible environment 
• Learning culture
• Intentional content
• Professional educator 

The benefits appear to greatly outweigh the challenges.  The challenges can be easily managed with careful planning.  Being completely self-paced may result in some students never learning the required curriculum.  Instead of self-paced, Flipped Learning can be “minimum paced.”  With flexibility involved for students that need it, the teacher can suggest a pace, but also have a suggested minimum pace to keep students on the right path to learn all the content for the course.

According to the Algebros video on Flipped Mastery, grading can sometimes be a sticky point.  If students take longer to complete an assignment, their grade may appear to be a failing grade.  I do not even see this as a challenge at the elementary school level since parents do not have access to student grades online.

Some Assumptions

In order for a Flipped Learning model of mastery learning to be effective the following need to be in place:

• Flexible environment
• Learning culture
• Intentional content
• Professional educator access

Be aware that students will not automatically know how to learn from watching a video.  Teaching students how to watch the video, take notes, stop the video, try something out, maybe re-watch the video - these are all skills that will need to be introduced to students especially if they will be watching videos at home.

Tinkering

This week, I decided to tinker with the idea of flipped learning.  Just to get my feet wet, I created a screencast to introduce students to measuring angles using a protractor.  Watch the video if you promise not to judge.  It is my first attempt, and I’m just testing the waters here.  Constructive suggestions are welcome below in the comments.

I created my screencast using the latest update of Seesaw.  It has new amazing shape tools and easy to use record features.  The goal of my video is to introduce students to the parts of a protractor and how it is used to measure angles.  I also wanted students to be interactive and have a chance to try it on their own.  

Reflection

Realistically, I think the video would have to include a few more examples, but I wanted to keep my video short within 3 minutes) for my intended audience of third graders.  I was thinking, “If students can go back and rewatch the video they might be able to understand from the example given.”  In retrospect, maybe I realize it would be better to create a series of short videos.  One focusing on just the parts of the protractor.  Another video could be measuring to the nearest 5 or 10 degrees.  Then another could be measuring to the nearest degree.

After considering that, I thought the series of videos could be tried to a digital badging system.  Each skill accomplishment could be a step toward earning a measuring angles badge.

Mastery Learning and the Grid Method

Can Our Education Process Be Fixed?

Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, said the process of education is broken in his TED Talk titled “Let’s Teach for Mastery Not Test Scores” - Mastery learning is the time it takes different students to master or learn the same content.  According to the article, Mastery, time and effective instructional strategies will assure that all children can learn.

Essential elements of mastery learning:

• Identify learning standards
• Allow students to work at their own pace
• Utilize ongoing assessments to provide feedback and inform the need for reteaching
• Assess as evidence of mastery

Why is Mastery Learning Important?

For some students, we are trying to build a house on shifting sand.  Sal Khan’s comparisons of mastery learning to martial arts or learning to play an instrument really left an impression on me.  Students learning karate master the skills required of a white belt before they move on to learn the skills of a yellow belt.   Basic skills are necessary prior to learn more advanced skills.  When learning music, musicians learn simple songs first.  Once simple skills are mastered, musicians begin to practice more complex music and accomplish more challenging skills.  I can still hear Hot Cross Buns ringing in my ears from weeks of my daughter practicing her oboe as a beginner.  Practicing that same easy song until she mastered it, led to more difficult pieces of music.  After several years of practice, now she can play complex scores.  What a difference the mastery of skills and a few years of practice make!  The same holds true of students of any discipline.

Knowing students are missing foundational skills, time constraints force many teachers to march on through our curriculum.  The lack of essentials skills causes frustration and leads to disengagement.  Sal Khan’s TED Talk reinforces my concerns about why we continue to force children to build on top of gaps in their learning.  His message hit home when he compared learning to build a home.  If an inspector declared the foundation of a home 80% satisfactory, would you want to live in that house?  Let’s say you did move on to build the first level of the house and that level only met 75% of building codes.  I’m sure none of us would think it’s safe to continue building that structure.  If so, why is it acceptable for our students to continue to build knowledge on top of gaps?

What can we do about it?

In today’s day and age, we can do better for the students in our classrooms. While we are required to teach a set curriculum, as Sal Khan suggested, we can vary when and how long it takes for individuals to master that content.  The idea of personalized learning sounds overwhelming, but now more than any other time in the history of education, we have the means to make this a reality.

Taking advantage of resources like Khan Academy or Freckle to provide students access to instructional videos, adaptive practice, and immediate feedback makes personalized learning possible.  These practice opportunities prepare students for more in-depth application of content in the class where students can be supported by a professional educator as they persevere through challenges, work in small groups for reteaching, or engage in enrichment opportunities. 

Chad Ostrowski developed a method of managing personalized learning called the Grid Method.  According to this video from Teach Better, the Grid Method is designed to help students succeed at their own pace while the teacher guides and facilitates learning.  This seems like a very manageable way to deliver personalized and mastery learning.

Why bother?                            

Benefits include:

• Increased student motivation

• Increased positive relationships between teacher and students

• Increased ownership of learning 

• Allows for greater differentiation and remediation 

Based on the video titled Grid Method, teachers can work collaboratively to create a “Grid” on a Google Doc or via a website.  Wherever you warehouse your Grid, keep it simple and easy for students to access.  I envision using a Google Doc, starting out simple, and soliciting student feedback along the way to see how I could improve the process.

The Grid starts with learning standards and outlines learning pathways that students can follow to take control of their own learning.  The teacher provides access to a variety of learning opportunities at various levels of Depth of Knowledge which guide students through mastery of content targets.  Learning opportunities, as Chad Ostrowski calls them in his free online Grid Method course, might include teacher made videos, professional or YouTube videos, Quizlet activities, old-fashioned worksheets, online adaptive practice resources, links to online textbook resources, hands-on activities, or projects.  The options are limitless.  Once students feel they have mastered the content, they can access an assessment.  The feedback from ongoing assessments provides the teacher with the data she needs to determine how to best support each student.  Students might need reteaching or extra practice or to engage in an application project or enrichment opportunity.

Many people might object to allowing students to redo work and take an assessment again, but Mr. Ostrowski said that we need to teach our students that FAIL means First Attempt in Learning.  Kids work hard because they quickly figure out that failure means more work - they keep working on a skill until they master it.  Grades should be based on whether or not the learners have mastered content standards, not on task completion.

Will It Work?

Using the Grid Method does seem labor intensive at the onset, but if you work collaboratively with teachers in your grade level, you can lighten the load.  Not only does the Grid Method incorporate best instructional practices, but research has shown it is effective.  Gusky stated that “80 percent or more of the students in a class [to] reach the same high level that only about 20 percent do under more traditional approaches to instruction.”  Using the Grid Method has shifted the bell curve and has the potential to reach those students some might consider “unreachable.”  Students that are difficult to engage, unmotivated and challenging to manage have thrived in classrooms using this method of mastery learning. 

Using the Grid Method also seems to fit really well with gamifying the classroom with a digital badging system.  I would want to incorporate digital badges related to content mastery as students complete a learning pathway.  From my experience with elementary students, they would be motivated to collect as many digital badges as they could throughout a unit of study.

In his TED Talk, Sal Khan mentioned that the education system is broken, but we can change education and fix what’s broken.  Through mastery and personalized learning, educators can meet the needs of all learners and empower students to succeed.