One of my favorite things about the course is the addition of Black Ops. I wanted to have a few “Easter Eggs” in the course that would surprise people and maybe keep them coming back. While there are four Black Ops in the course, I also scattered little “eggs” in the Missions themselves.
For example, in one of the Google Missions, I replaced a difficult Challenge with a fun, Google game. I wanted to intersperse a little fun when they thought they would really have to work hard to earn the 100 XP. (The Google Challenge was to go to Google Images and type the words Atari Breakout. Try it.)
The Black Ops are hidden, though, in the course. They are linked to random objects in the course so they are happened upon on accident. One of the Black Ops is (and I hate to give it away…) linked to the Free space on the Bingo Board. Here is an example of one of the Black Ops:
If you add these kinds of things to your course, you don’t want to add them as assignments because students in a course can see an entire list of assignments in their gradebook. I learned that the hard way. So, when they find a Black Op Easter Egg, they show evidence by sending the required assignment through the messaging system in Canvas.