Peakaville Individual Evaluation

Peekapack is a website that has ready-made lesson plans full of activities, games, books and more for teachers that are interested in teaching Social and Emotional Learning. This app has won 5 stars on the Commonsense Media website with a 5-star rating from teachers as well (Rogowski, 2020). It has also been awarded the Smart Media Awards from Acdedemic Choice, 2019 Top Pick for Learning from Commonsense Media, and the 2017 Family Choice Award. These carefully curated lesson plans align with literacy standards, have “ demonstrated effectiveness in schools ” is accessible and easily modified, and promote diversity and inclusion (Peakapack.com). An additional resource tied to these lesson plans is an online world/ game called myPeakaville. Students create an avatar, assess their daily feelings, and play and learn within the Peakaville world.

The website has ten units (self-regulation, respect, gratitude, perseverance, empathy, teamwork, kindness, honesty, optimism, and courage) that all begin with a letter from Leo the Hedgehog and a read-aloud story that acts as the provocation for the unit. Each lesson plan is fully complete with the resources attached, the time needed, the material, the connections to curricular standards (the United states standards), the learning outcomes, the breakdown of the lesson, and the guide for educators to follow. One of the best parts is for each lesson you, as the educator, can choose between the lesson plan for in class or at home. Lessons can be sent home and done between guardians and children. These lessons can be lengthy so asking the Guardian to do it can be a big ask. As the lessons are clearly laid out it is easy to pick and choose which lessons or units one would want to implement in the classroom at all. It is quite a lengthy curriculum, and getting through the whole thing in one school year could potentially be hard.

Some interesting and potentially helpful aspects of the app are the curated parent and student email list on the main page, the reports page that shows a breakdown of the curriculum, mood boards that track students’ emotion reports that are given through the myPeakaville game and a district report.

myPeakaville is one of the more interesting parts of the site when looking at it from a multimedia lense. It is the online world where learners create an avatar and work through scenarios that align with the lessons that are being taught. They can track their easily identifiable feelings. There is an animation of a face displaying emotion and a word above it that says what it is. Additionally, one can hover the mouse over the picture, and it will say the emotion that is displayed. One can then click on a question mark near the face to learn more about the emotion as well. This is a great example of the multimedia principle as words and pictures are better than just words alone (Mayer, p. 8, 2016). It also supports the spatial contiguity principle as the word that is associated is right next to the picture (Mayer, p. 8, 2016). Before assessing emotions it prompts one to close their eyes and breath in and out five times. This is a great tool for helping students center themselves and tap into what they are feeling. myPeakaville engages learners in technology with the specific purpose of teaching students important lessons in SEL. Sensory modalities are used throughout the myPeakaville site as there is narration throughout, along with text and pictures (Mayer, p.8, 2016). It supports the segmenting principle as is a learner paced experience. Students can work through the led experiences at their own pace and learn through the process (Mayer, p. 8, 2016). The myPeakaville site is an example of the guided discovery principle. Students are led through activities that teach, test, and guide students through the self-discovery of emotions and the emotions of others- guided discovery principle (Mayer, p. 9, 2016).

The lesson plans are more teacher-led. Through developed lesson plans a timeline is set and activities are arranged purposefully. This leads to less autonomy for the students. The lesson plans that are provided begin with a story that immediately sets the tone for multimedia learning. Aj Juliani says in his article “The Importance of Teaching With Stories”, stories fully engage the learner and sync them to the storyteller. By beginning the lesson plans with a letter from Leo the Hedgehog and a story the learners are invested in Leo’s narrative and form a connection with the teacher. Through the text and pictures, the narration that is provided in the audio recording, or narration by the teacher, students are given worked examples of how-to and how not to handle certain situations (Mayer, p. 9, 2016). Each of the lessons builds upon the last, giving a well-rounded experience and understanding, specific for that grade level, in an SEL topic, thus supporting the prior knowledge principle (Mayer, p. 9, 2016).

Using the Rubric from the University of Western Ontario I was able to evaluate Peakapack. I found that overall it has many great aspects, some okay aspects, and only two alarming aspects. That being said, the main issues were the privacy settings and not being available offline. The lessons themselves can be taught, for the majority offline but the educator must first be able to access the lesson plan on the web-based site. Additionally, the site is “Free for a basic account. An individual Teacher Pro plan includes the entire curriculum for $149 per year for up to 20 students ($299 per year if adding the game). For schools, the curriculum price is $7.50 per student ($15 per student if adding the game and analytics)” (Rogowski, 2020). This can be a large expense for most teachers as the allotted budget is low. One can apply for grants, bid for PAC funding, or ask for money from the district. All of these things are circumstantial.

Overall this website is a great use of multimedia. It connects students virtually where they are visually seeing actions taken, hearing, and reading about what they are seeing, the multimedia principle (Mayer, p. 8, 2016). The picture books are also a great example of this. The actions and facial expressions related to certain emotions are depicted in the illustrations and the words in the book further identify what they are seeing. This web-based site provides opportunities for fun, meaningful and important learning to occur that provide teachers with a jumping-off point for teaching SEL topics that can be hard to approach (Sorden, p. 6, 2012). Beyond teaching students how to be good people it integrates multimedia learning seamlessly and purposefully.

Juliani, A. J. (2016, March 21). The Hidden Importance of Teaching With Stories. Retrieved June 5, 2020, from http://ajjuliani.com/hidden-importance-teaching-stories/

Mayer, R. (2014). Introduction to Multimedia Learning. In R. Mayer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology, pp. 1-24). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139547369.002

Rogowski, M. (2020, April 22). Peekapak Review for Teachers. Retrieved June 16, 2020, from https://www.commonsense.org/education/website/peekapak

SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING CURRICULUM FOR PRE-K TO 5. (n.d.). Retrieved June 16, 2020, from https://www.peekapak.com/

Sorden, S. D. (2012). The cognitive theory of multimedia learning. Handbook of educational theories, 1, 3.