Sarah Wagner

Sarah WagnerSince 2018 Sarah Wagner is a Fellow at Teach for Austria and works as a teacher at a new secondary school in the 2nd district of Vienna, where she is currently teaching German, art and sport.

Before finding her passion as a teacher, she completed a Master in Work and Organizational Psychology at the University of Nottingham and a Bachelor degree in International Business and Economics at Vienna University of Economics and Business. She spent one and half years of her education abroad and did various internships in different fields including psychology, advertising and research.


The world of Classcraft – online gamification as a game changer in the classroom

Practional Presentation,  Sunday, 20th October, 16:00 – 16:15

Does an online gamification tool like Classcraft affect the motivation of students between the ages of twelve and fourteen? How does it affect their perception of being treated fairly by the teacher?

As a teacher at a new secondary school in Vienna I was looking for a tool to motivate my students to participate more actively during German classes. I wanted to find something that would reflect their everyday reality to gain their attention and awaken their interest. Hence, I introduced Classcraft, a classroom management tool from the U.S., which offers a ready to use online set up that can be adapted to the teacher’s needs.

Every student gets to choose one out of three different characters with different powers and different baselines of XP, HP and AP. To choose the most appropriate avatar, they have to figure out their strengths and weaknesses while also finding the right balance of characters within their groups. Moreover their participation or non participation as well as their general behavior are visualized and they can track it on their phones or PCs. On top of that a predefined level can be set as a goal for all groups, which if met will lead to a real life award.

All in all, thanks to Classcraft I could see an improvement especially in the participation of quiet students and a greater acceptance of consequences e.g. detention as their behavior was much more visible to them and the consequences chosen by a random generator of the game.

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