Game

Blog about how you incorporate gaming, gamification, game thinking, or design thinking into your class. How? What are your objectives?

As an administrator, I do not have a captive audience that enables me to test out gamification or game-based learning tools. That said, I do have a number of teachers who explore various uses of the two. From creating competitions based on statistical predictions to coding robots to achieve tasks, I benefit from the creativity and expertise of my staff. What I do incorporate into my work is design thinking. My most recent discovery and incorporation is the use of the IDEO method cards that are:

a design tool meant to explore new approaches and help you develop your own. Use the deck to gain a new perspective, inspire a team, turn a corner, or try a new approach....... IDEO Method Cards are intended as inspiration for practicing and aspiring designers, as well as those seeking a creative spark in their work.

As the cards are meant to help people see circumstances, solutions, and issues differently, the cards provide me with a perspective that I might have missed as a leader, thus exposing my own vulnerability, which goes far and wide.

In terms of objectives I can only rely on those of the teachers around me. I am never one to railroad an objective through a system, recognizing the balance necessary of any facet of instruction, as well as the many and varied skill-sets of the people instructing. I have a most amazing teacher who is a complete luddite, recognized as one of five California teachers of the year no less. This is not meant to downplay the potential to gamification when used appropriately, but only to point out that it is not the only source of learning. Reading others' blogs I am inspired at the notion of ensuring a means to and end, or using for immediate feedback, or sources of engagement and excitement. These are all things I loved about gaming in my youth. Unfortunately, and now for my cynical side, I have never experienced that same gaming in my college or adult life. Am I too far removed? Maybe. But I also talk to other professionals and do not hear echos of gamification in their daily routines either. Design thinking? Yes. People are constantly looking to improve situations through the lens of the unconventional or unconsidered. This is the heart of what I think gaming sets out to achieve.