Education leaders experience the power of games as they collaborate to build a tower with marshmallows at the Epic Leadership event.
When most people hear the word gamer, they don’t think of school leaders. If anything, educators are known for their disdain of video gaming, which many see as a distraction. Education is a serious endeavor, the story goes, and games are a waste of time.
Tell that to the enthusiastic educators at ISTE’s new leadership event, Epic Leadership: Beyond the Hype, as they collaborated to build the tallest tower out of marshmallows and dried spaghetti, then collected and decoded clues to earn a mystery prize. They were definitely having fun. But they were also learning.
Kicking off the conference’s new Leadership Strand, Epic Leadership brought together more than 130 educators from eight countries Sunday morning to discover how educational gaming—when done right—can make a world of difference in student engagement and learning.
“We hope that folks who are curious about this gamification trend walked away from this event with a deep understanding of the power of well-designed and meaningful gamification and its connection to learning, as opposed to the superficial fluff that is being passed off by those who would simply cash in on what they perceive to be the latest educational trend,” said the event’s MC, Peggy Sheehy. “We’re talking about meaningful gamification, as well as games in education, but also revisiting the very basic yet sublime concept of play!”
Designed as an immersive learning experience, the interactive event engaged participants in play long before they walked into the Grand Hyatt’s Texas Ballroom. Their registration included an account with 3D GameLab, a quest-based platform where students and teachers play, design and share quests and digital badges in pursuit of learning. They were also entered into a Google+ community where they could discuss their experiences in, and questions about, games in education.
Once onsite, participants continued to learn and to play. Educational gamification experts Chris Haskell and Anne Collier set the stage with short talks about the science behind gaming as pedagogy. Haskell, a nationally recognized expert in online learning and education through social networks, virtual worlds and gaming, talked about the “serious” side of gaming—the scientific proof behind the pedagogy. Collier, executive director of Net Family News Inc. and co-director of ConnectSafely.org, explained how the intrinsic rewards that students experience when engaged trump extrinsic rewards, such as grades, in motivating people to learn.
Attendees split up into breakout sessions, where they collected more clues while participating in brief interactive demonstrations about a variety of gaming topics, including how collaborative games such as World of Warcraft and Minecraft, are use in schools.
Back at their team tables, frantic educators raced compile their clues and decode a cryptogram to be the first to come up with the correct answer—a phone number that, when dialed, would lead them to a mysterious oracle called the “Paladin.”
The players’ frustration finally gave way to “fiero”—the feeling of pride that people experience when they overcome a challenge to reach a goal—as speakers around the room blared to life with the ring of a successfully placed cell phone call. Moments later, cell phone in hand, the Paladin—gamification expert and keynote speaker Jane McGonigal—took the stage to give the attendees the opportunity to ask her anything they wanted about gaming in education.
“Both my parents just retired after more than 40 years teaching in public schools. I know they were deeply challenged to new ways to be creative, particularly over the last decade,” McGonigal said. “The games I am most interested in are … open ended in the sense that they give students a goal, like writing a book or inventing something, that will challenge the students and the teacher to invent something that will change the world. I’d like to think that as those kinds of games get integrated into the classroom, it will make teaching and learning fun and interesting.”
As ISTE’s new leadership event drew to a close, participants expressed a new appreciation for gaming as a powerful—and serious—way to learn.
“I’ve been taking notes on the different kinds of games that are out there so I can get involved,” said Fuller. “And the first thing I’m going to do after this is go play a game!”