Artventure
This website is designed as an informational resource about Artventure, a supplementary, game-like classroom application that uses multiple facets to teach students in an engaging and motivational manner, practical personal and business skills currently underrepresented in many 21st century art classrooms. It uses a combination of immediate data-driven formative assessments through the monitoring of student growth in multiple areas via levels; continual summative assessment through an online portfolio which would track a student's growth over time; a student led, choice-based, project system intended to mimic the challenges of freelance and artistic professions in the "real world" through a job request board; a classroom economy, to teach financial responsibility and literacy, and social media integration to connect students their friends, parents, community, and the world.
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About the Teacher
My name is Christopher Clark, and I am a first year teacher in a very rural school in Pitt County, North Carolina. I teach 5th-8th Grade Visual Arts to about 270 students per year. I am passionate about STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) Education and about getting more technology into the hands of art students to engage and motivate them. I strongly believe that gamification, or the use of game-like elements such as levels and badges, and game-based-learning, the use of games in an educational context, are an excellent way to engage and empower students who would otherwise be disinterested and unmotivated in traditional education settings. My goal teaching pedagogy is a mix of gamification, choice-based Art & Teaching For Artistic Behaviors (TAB), and my classroom economy, geared towards creating successful, professional artist prepared for the challenges of the 21st century working world, instead of just making beautiful pieces of art.
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The Power of Play
Games have been showed in many studies to have strongly beneficial effects in Education and Business settings, such as an increases in motivation, skill retention, risk taking, creativity, and many more. For more information about gamification check out the infographic below, and for even more about gamification check out the infographics here and here. Edutopia's Game-based learning resources and blog, in addition to The Institute of Play are also amazing resources about the power of games and education.