For those of you who don’t know the story of Tom Sawyer white washing the fence you can read it here. In the story Mark Twain demonstrates some features of motivation that are not normally thought about when teachers engage in classroom design. The first principle of the sawyer effect is that any activity can be made […]
Are Incentives Enough to Gamify your Life?
I recently read a post on Lifehacker about how a guy had “gamified” his life by setting up a points system to incentivize behavior. In summary, things he enjoyed doing were given a cost value, and things that he didn’t were given a points value. He could then track the points he had accumulated and […]
Press Print to Play?
How do I gamify an activity? This post is a theoretical case study of how to gamify a simple workplace activity. We will be using a business model to outline the process for the sake of clarity. However, the same process can be applied to many situations and contexts. Overview The Acme Corporation has a large […]
A Dice Does Not a (Good) Game Make
In the field of ESL/EFL it is common to see “board games” where the students roll a dice and then answer the questions in English on the squares that they land on. These games are incredibly popular and it is rare to find a book without them. The students seem to enjoy them with teachers […]
Games and Activities
A presentation once asked the question, what is the difference between a game and an activity in an educational environment? The presenter went on to provide their own definition, one that obviously did not reflect a reading of The Grasshopper by Bernard Suits. An activity has pedagogical value, whereas a game is engaged in purely for […]
The Achiever in the Classroom
Richard Bartle defined 4 types of players and how they enjoyed playing MUDs (precursors to MMORPGs). For a discussion of how these types map to a classroom, see my previous post on the subject here. The Achiever in Education Of Bartle’s player types, Achievers are possibly the most easily recognized in the classroom. The traditional […]
Enjoyable Failure?
Sometimes ideas about how education should move forward can come from unlikely places. Even something as simple as a smart phone app can raise some interesting questions. There is a fun game called “Dumb Ways to Die“. In it you attempt to help some characters in strange situations, like jumping over a shark, tying shoelaces, or even […]
Cheating vs Smart Play
It is impossible to win a game and at the same time to break one of its rules. – The Grasshopper One of the major arguments expounded on in education—by the adherents of the cult of rigor—is that the increase in plagiarism, cheating and pay for production can only be combated by instituting more and more draconian […]
Brawling in the Classroom
When it comes to the classroom, the most common activities tend to either be puzzles or races. In both of these cases, the amount of interaction between students is kept low. However there is a game type that offers targeted interaction, coupled with rules based elimination. It can be used to produce a fast paced activity […]
The Explorer in the Classroom
Richard Bartle defined 4 types of players and how they enjoyed playing MUDs (precursors to the modern MMORGS). For a discussion of how these types map to a classroom see here. The Explorer in Education Explorers delight in having the game expose its internal machinations to them. – Richard Bartle In the terms of education, […]