‘They don’t even think that they’re learning’: New game in GA schools helps test kids
Alannah Cochran smiled, pleased with herself, as she moved her finger across the computer screen, dragging and dropping the brand-new furniture with careful precision.
A bed, table and chair were among furnishings she bought for the empty room where her big-eyed, bright blue avatar lives on “Planet Peachy Keen” in the town of “Keenville.”
The first-grader paid for the house fittings using the “beans” she earned from completing game-based math and reading tests on a new statewide web-based assessment called Keenville.
The gamified test takes the place of pencil and paper tests that students tend to have less stamina for. What’s more, it nearly eliminates “test anxiety,” Anthony Jones, Bibb County School District’s director of testing, said Friday.
“They don’t even think that they’re learning,” Jones said as a few Porter Elementary School students tapped away at laptop screens in the school library. “They think they’re playing a game, but they’re really learning. That’s a powerful tool for any level of learner and any teacher.”
Students in Keenville are cheered on and encouraged by the Keens, bright and fun-loving avatars, and their friends, the Peachlings.
The new test was made available to first and second grade students at all public schools in Georgia at the beginning of the school year, but it is up to each teacher whether to use it in the classroom.
Porter Elementary was one of three Bibb schools that piloted Keenville for the state department of education for a couple weeks last year. Teachers there have continued to use it.
“The feedback from students and the feedback from teachers has been phenomenal,” Jones said. “It’s like, ‘Wow, where has this been?’”
For now, the program is still in the experimental and development phase because games are still being added and glitches are being resolved, Jones said.
Once Keenville is finalized, the district plans to monitor data, a task that teachers are currently tasked with.
As students use Keenville, the system automatically adjusts to their level of mastery by providing remediation and advancement as necessary.
“My understanding is it will go back to kindergarten standards and up to third grade standards,” Dara Foy, testing coordinator for Bibb County schools, said.
Standards for first and second grades are very specific, and the game is tailored to teach them exact lessons such as how to make change with only dimes and pennies.
For example, in the “Carnival Time” test, students are to move hands of an analogue clock to match the time displayed on a digital clock. The standard requires that first grade students be able to tell and write time in hours and half-hours using analog and digital clocks. Second grade students must be able to tell and write time from both clocks to the nearest five.
Keenville also helps teachers like Melinda Goggans identify in real-time those state standards that her first grade students struggle with most.
“You’re hitting their needs and their gaps right where they are,” she said. “Having a platform that allows us to do that quickly, having something that’s fun for the kids and it gives the teacher … really good data, that’s good for instruction all the way around.”
