This blog is crossposted on the COETAIL site
The Game of School
The particular offense of playing the Game of School lies in the disengagement of our intellect and our feelings from tasks that deserve to be taken seriously; task like writing, reading, thinking, planning, listening, researching, analyzing, performing, applying evaluating. We do harm when we reduce these acts of intellect, creativity, and judgement to rote exercises, perfunctory deeds, or meaningless gestures. Faced with the stress of daily life in school, it can seem easier, at times, to pretend to believe rather than to truly believe in the value of what we are about. The Game of School: Why We All Play It, How it Hurts, and What it Will Take to Change it. By Rober L Fried
I have pronounced, loudly, that I am not a gamer.
Leveling Up
cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by artnoose
In case you haven’t guessed it, games are serious business.
So the next big question, is how are you going to use games in your classroom? Are you going to gamifiy your grading system? Are you going to redo a whole unit as a quest for your students to explore? Are you going to remix an existing game with your own curriculum? Are you going to play games that push your students a little further in their thinking? Are you going to use badges at your school, with students or teachers? Are you going to try to play a game, to see how games really work and how the best ones are designed? Are you going to have students create a game? Can you gamify COETAIL?
Our students are already learning rules for success and failure in school. And some parents (and our students) will be reluctant to change the game. And so, the final question is, are we having them play a game that is worth playing?
