Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Respond to one of these videos

Option #1 - Is Jane McGonigal crazy? You tell me. How can schools use some of her ideas to engage you millennials more?



Option #2 - Stuart Brown argues that play is vital. Why don't we allow students to 'play seriously' in schools?

12 comments:

  1. I wish that we could have epic wins in our school life. I wish when we turned in an assignment we could get the feeling like, "wow I never thought I could achieve that but I did."

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  2. Great point. An epic win is a classic example of engagement. Why don't school assignments allow you to achieve 'epic' wins? Are we setting the bar too low? Are we not expecting enough out of students? How close did you blog assignment come to feeling like an 'epic' win?

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  3. I think a lot of the people that were listening to her thought she was crazy cuz they all laughed and she was actually being serious. She points out that games are engaging and give us wonderful productivity. I think that is a good point and could be very useful. I also agree with ben and emily because i think that school would be more engaging if we had the choice of accomplishing an epic win.

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  4. I love the part when she talked about the video games that she experimented with. It gives people a chance to play a video game, but try to solve real world problems. If I got the chance I would be a part of an experiment like that, it sounds fun.

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  5. Without some form of play life is just birth-->work-->death. What's the point of that? You need to have some fun. I do agree that play is not the opposite of work. Those two things really go hand in hand with eachother. Hands-on activities are a good way of combining the two, especially at school. If you get to tinker with something you are going to learn but you are also going to have fun discovering new things about that object.

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  6. I wonder how hard it would be to make a "game" to solve other real problems. If we could have people in the United states play a game as if there was a food shortage. After playing for awhile send whatever surplus money/food to countries in need. To me the possibilities seem endless. I'd love to be a part of something like this.

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  7. Now I want to get more epic wins, I feel that she is on to something here. For me personally, I am extreamly competitive when it comes to anything that is game like. So when i'm playing a game, and I lose, it only pushes me to get better. If I could move my competitive edge to real life and real life problems, I think I could be much more productive.

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  8. I agree that play is vital. There are many forms of play that require you to be interactive with your peers and to use more hands-on skills that are important in our lives. Schools should have forms of "serious play" in order to engage students and to really maximize their brain activity and learning. I also like how he talked about how play is important for our survival. The study with the rats is very interesting, and it would be easy to accept that "players" would be better able to adapt.

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  9. This lady is crazy however in a good way. I like the ideas and experiments that they did with games. I think that if they make the right games as they did it can really help us solve our problems, what better way is there to learn besides real life. The answer is games. She is going in the right direction with all this because when we accomplish an epic win on a real life situation through games we think we can put that in effect. There is one problem we have and that is the older generations joining the younger generation in this. We need cooperation from both sides and from this video we can tell there is a good size gap there because they were all laughing at the beginning of the video.

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  10. I completly agree with Stuart Brown and his arguing that play is vital. I think that a great example from his video that shows this very well is the example of the Polar bear and the Huskies. When you're watching, you would think that they are just going to start fighting but really, all they want to do is play. The Polar bear even stands up on two feet, looking like it's ready to attack, but it's fangs and claws are both in. The importance of play in our everyday life is extremely important. Without it, there would be no humor, no flirtation, no movies, no games, and no fantasy. He tells us to try to imagine our lives without play and that the cool thing about our species is that we are designed to play at all times. Another interesting thing he says is that the basis of human trust is established through play signals and he gives the example of the lady and her chimp! I think that "serious play" should be allowed in our schools everyday. It would make learning so much more fun and also help us be engaged at all times.

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  11. I think that Jane McGonigal is crazy. I just don't see how gaming will help us problem solve in the real world. I think she is taking this idea a little to far. I also believe she should have more facts and research to back up her opinion. If they made a new game that would acually teach you real world problem solving skills I don't think that it would be popular. Yes, I do wanna feel that epic win feeling in school and real life more, but we can do that in a lot of other ways rather than gaming. Gaming sucks!!!

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  12. I thought that she was a little over the top, and by some of the posts above it looks like people would have to agree. Also she talked about "gaming" which i sure hope isn't going to help people out in the world, it would be great for them if it did, but for me it wouldn't help at all seeing i have never have and never will play any of those games! Possibly i just think this because i am a girl who doesn't enjoy that and don't play they so i wouldn't benefit from it. As for someone who plays games it could come off as very interesting and actually help them later on in life!

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