In today’s TED Talk Tuesday, Jane McGonigal offers the premise that games (video games) can change the world in meaningful and positive ways.
She builds her case convincingly. I am currently reading Daniel Pink’s book Drive. There are some similar ties between the two ideas. Blissful productivity, we are more productive when we do things that we have to work at, and think about. When we have some direction and there is meaning behind it.
The principles learned through gaming can be used to solve real world problems. I can’t help but wonder what implications this line of thought has for education. How can we change the daily school “game” so that students don’t just sit on the sidelines, but experience “epic wins”. We all want to know that what we do matters and matters deeply. Games give us this feeling that what we are doing is having an important effect.
Learning should be an act of play. It seems to me that if we can tell a difference between learning and play we aren’t doing one of the right. Consider babies in any species, how do they learn to do life? Through play.
I’m not sure that I can envision what this looks like in the practical sense in the school setting. But I think that McGonigal has something here. What do you think, what could games and fun do for education? How can we use from what we know about games to change education and, in doing so, change the world?
The group that consistently fails at the marshmallow task: recent graduates of business school.
Business students are trained to find the single right plan and then execute it. The problem with this strategy is that they wait for the last minute to add their marshmallow to the top of the structure and when their plan fails, it is a crisis.
The group that consistently succeeds at the marshmallow task: recent graduates of kindergarten.
Kindergarten students start with a model and they build successive prototypes of their structure. They always keep their marshmallow on top. They have multiple opportunities to refine their structure until it is working. With each version of the prototype, students are getting instant feedback about what works and what doesn’t and they can adjust accordingly.
Kids don’t spend time trying to be CEO of Spaghetti Inc. They aren’t jockeying for power, they are working together creatively and having fun.
What stands out to me about the data that Tom Wujec shares, is not that architects and engineers build the best towers (as he says, we would expect that), but that kindergartners are not very far behind. This makes me wonder about what important things we are deprogramming kids to do as we send them through the education system. If the education system was really working, I would expect that adults would be able to construct the best, highest towers. I would expect that those with the most education would build the best towers. But as we see, this isn’t the case. In school we teach students that everything has a correct answer. Sometimes that answer means filling in the “c” on a bubble test, and sometimes it means getting your teacher to nod and say “that’s right”. School has become a game of “guess what the teacher is thinking”. As a result, we have students who can come up with one correct solution to any problem. In the real world, we often need more than one right solution. Many times we need several solutions and creative thinking applied to the problem. Our most recent example of this is the BP oil spill. I can’t help but wonder what great solutions kindergartners would come up with that adults aren’t even considering because we have been deprogrammed to think that way.
What does this mean for schools? It means that we need more opportunities for students to explore multiple solutions to a problem, it means that we offer kids the chance to discuss and stop asking the one answer questions all the time. Sometimes there is one correct answer, but in life that isn’t always the case. Students need to be given the chance to explore both options.
(As a side note, it is interesting to me that when the incentive of a prize was offered, not one team had a standing structure. I am working my way through Daniel Pink’s book Drive right now and it mirrors what he says in the book.)
Since I won’t be with the CHC staff hosting Webspiration Wednesday lunches, I thought I would institute TED Talk Tuesday and share an inspiring TED Talk each Tuesday with all of you. TED has a great tag line “ideas worth spreading”. This non-profit brings together people from Technology, Entertainment, and Design. (The scope of the talks is actually much, much wider.) TED.com is a free collection of the very best talks with new talks are being added all the time. TED believes “passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world.”
Todays TED Talk Tuesday is dedicated to Sir Ken Robinson. You may remember this Webspiration Wednesday sharing of Sir Ken’s Schools Kill Creativity. This is Sir Ken Robinson’s newest TED Talk, Bring on the Learning Revolution.
Sir Ken Robinson has such a way with words, the message he shares is profound. I agree with the summation that reform is of no use, the evolution of a broken model isn’t going to get us where we need to go. We need a revolution where education is transformed into something else entirely. I have watched this video several times since its release, about a month ago, and each time I am struck by something new. This time what stood out most for me was the talk about innovation. Innovation is hard because it means doing something that is challenging, it isn’t the easy or obvious solution. It challenges what we take for granted, things that seem obvious. Just before beginning this post, I read an excellent article by Blogging Alliance member Chris at EdTechSwami. He writes: What Educators Can Learn From Steve Jobs. I think Chris makes some excellent points in his post, it all comes back to innovation. Apple doesn’t usually do the expected, in fact sometimes they purposefully step away from what is expected and what seems logical. The reason is that they are finding new solutions and even creating new problems. They are looking to the future and anticipating what is coming next. Sir Ken helps us to see that innovation is difficult because there are so many things in this life that we take for granted. We don’t even think about them any more because they are the way that we expect them to be. It is only when someone comes along and points out a new way of doing something that we realize we have been taking it for granted. In schools we take for granted that there is a linearity to education. We start in kindergarten and move through until we reach the 12th grade, at which point we are encouraged to attend college. What else do we take for granted in education? Classrooms, grades, tests, desks, handwriting, curriculum, blackboards (IWB’s), policy makers, NCLB…
Today I was able to join in on the midday Twitter #edchat discussion. The topic was reform in education and how teachers could be a louder voice. The discussion was a great one with a number of good ideas. I wonder if we are approaching the topic in an innovative enough way? We tend to frame our answers with what we think might be possible. We frame our answers so as to play nice in the policy makers game. What if we didn’t do things their way? What if we came up with a new way? What if we taught kids how to be advocates for their education and learning and gave them a voice? I threw this out there during the #edchat and @bliarteach reminded me of the big push there was for learning about recycling in school. Kids became passionate about recycling and saving the earth, they took it home with them. Soon families were recycling and changing their garbage habits. This worked. I was one of those kids who made my mom wash every piece of aluminum foil so that I could bring it to school and add it to our big ball of recycled foil. I was the kid who was adamant about separating plastic, glass, and paper. I became the adult who still does this. Involving kids in advocating for their own education and learning has the added benefit of helping them to realize the importance of their education. Suddenly they aren’t learning because we tell them to, they are learning because they believe in learning. They have a pride and ownership in their own education. The great thing about involving kids in the discussion is that they don’t take so much for granted. They ask questions and challenge the way that we think.
So, lets figure out all the things we take for granted in education. When we have a clear picture of those things, lets work together to find new solutions. Lets revolutionize education together, lets make the revolution viral. If you can think of something that we take for granted, leave it in the comments below.
(Raise of hands, how many of you are wearing a wrist watch?) 🙂 Yeah, me too.