It Isn't the Game, It's the Gamification, Part 1

This is the first in a two-part response to "How Video Games Are Changing Education," an infographic from Online Colleges. 

Have you seen Online Colleges' infographic about how video games are changing education before? Easy to understand, visual and accessible, it nevertheless paints only a part of the picture that should matter to someone interested in gamifying classrooms, curricula and education.

The infographic argues that video games enhance student skill development in six areas: problem solving & negotiation, judgment analysis & strategic thinking, communication skills & networking, narrative skills & transmedia navigation, non-linear thinking patterns and improved attention, vision & cognition. Some video games will certainly help learners (be they K-12 age or older...video games aren't just for kids!) in these ways, though I would argue that all sorts of games might do this, not just video games. Moreover, in some cases, non-video games would do a better job of teaching these skills than video games would. For instance, there's really no better game than "Diplomacy" to help students understand and develop their problem solving, strategic thinking and negotiation skills. But this masks a essential problem in the argument and in the development of the gamified classroom; this problem is manifested in the second section of the infographic.

Part 2 of the infographic presents dozens of video games interconnected through a complex "tube map" that suggest relationships and benefits that aren't really there. I'm not sure, for instance, how far you can reasonably push the argument that Minesweeper is a "logic" game. I love Sid Meier's Civilization series of games but the one thing they are not is a "history" game. I can offer no argument whatsoever that Sim City, another game I enjoy, is a game that develops "communication" skills. Games are never required to serve an educational purpose. When they do, however, so much the better! Minesweeper, at least nominally, can help with problem solving and judgment analysis. Civilization is a great game for developing improved attention and strategic thinking. My experience of Sim City always seemed better if I was able to break out of conventional thinking into non-linearity. But at the end of the day, this "tube map," and the facts and statistics that follow it, present more problems than solutions for educators interested in game-based learning when we discuss GBL with our colleagues and the general public.

So, what should we do?

• Focus on the Learning, Not The Games: We all agree that games are cool! We love playing them! But that doesn't mean that I as a teacher, am ever going to offer Civilization as a substitute for learning history. Ever. Rather, my responsibility as a teacher trying to gamify my classroom is to investigate how Civilization works and incorporate THAT into my classroom. How does it motivate? How does it create the flow-state that's at the heart of game-based success stories?
• Experiment Thoughtfully: I argued above that Diplomacy is a great game to help students develop their problem solving, strategic thinking and negotiation skills. A lesson about how diplomacy and diplomatic systems in Europe prior to World War I contributed to the war's beginning would definitely be enhanced by playing a few turns of Diplomacy. But it wouldn't make much sense if the game took place before students had some kind of sense of what the game was simulating.
• Believe: Ample and growing evidence strongly endorses the game-based learning approach to curriculum development, graduation requirements, classroom structure and management, student-centered learning and the creation of learning experiences. It is to these ideas that I will turn in the second part of this series.

Gamification Sounds Cool But I Don't Game...Where Do I Start?!

I have been getting some very helpful and constructive feedback from colleagues, students, friends and the wisdom of Internet communities as I work to build a gamified classroom. On more than one occasion, I've gotten a note that reads like this: "I understand how play might motivate students and I know my students play games, but I don't play games. Where do I start!" 

The best place to start is by doing a little mental inventory. Surely nearly everyone has played tic-tac-toe, checkers, chess or backgammon. I bet you've played Candy Land or Chutes and Ladders or Uncle Wiggly. You've probably also played other great games of the American golden age of games like Monopoly, Sorry, Clue, Careers. If you've played them, you've got a good start on the basics of game mechanics and game-based motivation.

From there, let me make some suggestions (and if you haven't played these games, find a 5-year old and break out Chutes and Ladders...a far better game than Candy Land, if you ask me…).

Got a smartphone? Try Words With Friends (which I play and would be happy to play with any of you - my WWF id is joncassie) and Angry Birds (which I don't play, because I know I'll get sucked in and never get back out). They are pretty good examples of mobile play. WWF is asynchronous, which is a feature of a lot of games these days.

If you've graduated beyond Monopoly and Risk, I would start with one or two games, generally considered "gateway" games to the more complex German-designed boardgames. The first is called "Settlers of Catan," in which you harvest and combine resources to build a settlement on the island. Simple rules; complex strategy. The other is called "Ticket to Ride," in which you are building a railroad network across the country trying to link up certain cities (which you have in a hand of cards) while your opponents are trying to build their own network. I like "Ticket" a lot more, but "Catan" is a classic. Or visit your friendly, local game store (just about every city and town has one) and get their suggestions. They may have better ones. If you're interested in 2-player games like checkers and chess (abstract strategy), see if you can find a copy of Dvonn or Zertz. Both are 2-player abstract strategy games, highly accessible and very, very fun.

If you've got a gaming console (a PS3, Wii or Xbox), I would heartily recommend games like Super Mario Galaxy (for the Wii) as a definitive example of what Wii is about or the Wii sports games that make such great use of Wii's special motion controllers. I have heard outstanding things about games like Assassin's Creed and L.A. Noire has received enthusiastic and well-deserved praise.

If you've got a desktop or laptop computer, you can't go wrong with Portal 2, an insanely fun puzzle game with a deep story element. I have long been a fan of The Sims franchise as well and Sims 3 doesn't disappoint. Directing the lives of your avatars (sims) as they grow up and live their lives is totally addictive.

The final frontier in gaming commitment might be the MMO. I play World of Warcraft and, now that the first twenty levels are free, you could get a sense of how the game works without taking the big plunge. Other MMOs are much smaller and I don't have any experience with them, but I'd love to hear from players of these other games.

 So - go play and report back!!

In a Gamified Classroom, Work Should Be Public

WIth the exception of solitare-style games, all games are played in groups and in some form of public sphere. While there's a quantitative difference between playing Zertz against a single opponent, Dominion against three or playing World of Warcraft while being a member of its largest guild, there is no qualitative difference. In every case, your play is observed, assessed and analyzed by someone else. The flow of the game is dependent on the decisions you make and your opponents responses. In every case, other players can learn from your decisions and change their play accordingly. 

In two-player games like Zertz, chess and Go, this is one of the keys to success. To what extend can you read your opponent's play, adjust your own accordingly, and learn not the rules but the strategic principles that undergird the game? In multi-player games, the same ideas pertain, but added to them are social dynamics and complex interactions between the social, the game's rules and the player's decisions. In massively multi-player games the social dynamic, and the ability to learn from dozens, hundreds or thousands of other players, becomes the framework in which everything you do in character takes place.

In the gamified classroom, these ideas take on additional importance. Work should, to the extent possible, be public. Why?

All Can Benefit: If student work is public, every other student can benefit from it (and not just the students in your gamified classroom...if your students' work is truly public and available to students across the world, it's an even greater benefit). Hardly any learning is done in isolation from learning, knowledge or wisdom that came before it. Furthermore, 21^st century society, with its pace of rapid evolution and sometimes bewildering change, depends on everyone's learning being aggregated and assessed to solve problems. Students need this experience to become the adult leaders in our society.

More Eyes? Fewer Errors: In the gamified classroom where work is public, the error rate should be much less. As students investigate their colleagues' work, flaws in fact or thinking will emerge and be corrected. Students become a bit like detectives and as they gain expertise, they gain critical appraisal and critiquing skills.

It's More Exciting: Students know that if their work is public that anyone could look at it and critique it. There's a sense of personal pride in work that is put out in the public sphere. Students want that work to be well regarded...they don't want to make big mistakes in public. As they prepare work for sharing, this leads to greater attention to detail.

It Can Generate Spontaneity: Below is a diagram a student made in class to draw connections between Technology KT level 1 (10 technologies that made the modern world) and Technology KT level 2 (show 4 relationships between them). The student could have done anything. He chose to do this work in public. I worked with him, his classmates made suggestions, he corrected himself. And when he was done, I asked him a series of questions to ensure that he understood what he thought he understood. He was authorized to level 3.

 

Top 5! - Outsider Artists

Ten years ago I was in Lausanne, Switzerland with some former students who, along with me, shared an interest in art. While touring the city, we came upon one of the most interesting museums I have ever visited - the Collection de l'art Brut - a museum dedicated to art produced by the self-taught, the obsessive and/or the insane. In English, this art is subsumed under the descriptor "Outsider Art," but "Art Brut" in French more aptly translates to "raw art." Whatever it's called, it remains an artistic movement that I can't help but obsess over…

5. George Widener

The still productive Widener takes a fascinating interest in disasters, real, past, present, future and imagined. See more examples of his work at the Carl Hammer Gallery.

 

4. Howard Finster

Finster's work is classic Art Brut. The flat perspective, horror vacui, the high level of attention to very particular details, the writing. Check out his home page for many more examples!

 

3. Royal Robertson

Working primarily with markers and poster board, Robertson took an interest in spacecraft, aliens, the Book of Revelations and the judgments of God. A classic outsider artist.

 

2. A.G. Rizzoli

Rizzoli is and should be considered a paragon of the Outsider Art movement for a number of reasons. First, the work that cements his reputation was, by and large, unknown to the broader public (or even to those close to him). Second, the sheer volume of what he produced boggles the imagination. And third, just look at it! A visionary architecture symbolically representing people from the 30s through the 70s every bit as compelling as the speculative fiction of its time.

 

1. Henry Darger

I dare you to contemplate In The Realms of the Unreal or The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, as it was called by the artist/author and not sit gape-jawed. Millions of words. More than 15,000 pages. Watercolor panels up to 12 feet wide. The story of the Vivian Girls as they fight against wicked, child-enslaving adults is to my mind the definitive example of Art Brut or Outsider Art. The reclusive Darger worked on Unreal throughout his adult life, but no one knew it. It was the kind of dumb luck that no one in fiction would take seriously that Darger's landlord happened to be a New York Times photographer with the capacity to recognize the artistic value of Darger's work. I saw Darger's work for the first time in Lausanne, the huge panels, vivid story and fine details of the collage and the writing have never left my mind.

Learning Teams - A key to the gamified classroom

Towards the end of Sir Ken Robinson's thought-provoking discussion at the RSA (shared here through an awesome "animate" - a technique that is both awe-inspiring and just plain cool), he makes a critical point for anyone thinking about building a game-based curriculum and teaching in a gamified classroom. He says "...there's one answer, and it's in the back. And don't look. And don't copy! Because that's cheating. Outside schools, that's called collaboration. This isn't because teachers want it this way; it's because it happens that way. It's in the gene pool of education." And he couldn't be more right. Collaboration is a critical skill in the 21^st century workplace and if our public discourse over the last few years teaches us anything, it is an essential skill that needs serious development in the American and global citizenry of the future. But how is that skill built in the gamified classroom?

One of the challenges facing a teacher who wants to build a collaborative culture in their classrooms is the simple fact of creating teams. Any teacher knows that grouping students is fraught with difficulties. Good teachers ask (but struggle to answer) questions like: Should I group students of like ability together or group students so that students with differing abilities work together? Should I group hard working students with students who are not? How do I measure the work the students do? Grade it? Can I group students and issue the group a grade? And if not, how do I grade individuals? What does it look like to grade an individual working in a group? And so on. Many great teachers resist having students work together not because it's educationally unsound (it's not), but because these questions resist easy answers.

In America 3.0, my solution to it is to create a systemic approach to student-created groups that they can work in (if they wish) to solve complex problems like Boss questions together (and submit work together for group leveling and group doing.) I call these groups ALTs, or accountable learning teams. Students who enroll in an ALT must complete an ALT charter in which the students create group norms that they agree to adhere to and which they police (with my assistance if necessary).

 The beauty of this system (I hope, no students have yet formed an ALT) is that students are self-accountable and that the will of the group should maintain a certain quality of work and effort so that the group continues to level and do good work. I believe this system is possible because this classroom doesn't have grades, per se, and therefore, all of the morass of grading cited above doesn't enter into the discussion.

I include below the "team charter" instructions that students have to address themselves to before I will allow them to submit work as a team. I owe a big debt to Dr. Linda Rose and the Educational Leadership Program at UCLA for this team charter. It is essentially the team charter that Dr. Rose uses in her Action Research class with graduate students. As a graduate student, I was in an action research team and used this team charter with my fellow students with great success.

ALT CHARTER

An accountable learning team (ALT) is one of the ways you can productively collaborate in America 3.0. By design, an accountable learning team gives you as students a cohort of like-minded students who have agreed to work together according to a set of rules to which you all agree. Before you can do any work together as an ALT, you must submit an ALT charter to me, discuss it with me and get it approved by me. If you do, you can then submit work to me as an ALT.

To charter an ALT, you must come to a common understanding of your goals and ground rules. Groups can consciously create common understandings and norms. The purpose of the charter is to give your group the most potential for success by developing these common understandings and norms. Write this charter as a group and submit it to me for consultation.

Answer the following questions:

1. What is your ALT's name?

2. Who is in your ALT?

3. When and where will you meet outside of class? Who will organize these meetings?

4. Will you have an agenda for these meetings or for how you use in-class time? If so, who is responsible for developing it? Who will keep the minutes? Who will keep track of action items?

5. What will you do if a team member is responsible for distractions during a meeting?

6. What is the procedure your ALT will use to deal with members who miss meetings, don't read email or Schoology or are late?]

7. How will you make decisions? By consensus? Majority voting?

8. What will you do if a member does not fulfill his or her ALT responsibilities? What will you do if the work of one of the team's members does not meet the standards of other members?

9. How will you resolve conflict within the group? What resources do you have and how will you use them?

10. What steps will you take if a member of your group commits academic misconduct or behaves unethically? Consider the full range of ethical issues.

Evidence: How gaming changes the world for the better

Lest you doubted a key argument of this blog (namely, that gamification can and will change the world for the better), some news from Paris. Online gamers, the pioneers of game-thinking, using Foldit, have worked out the structure of a retroviral enzyme. Applications for this discovery will give scientists working on antiretroviral medications the capacity to design better anti-AIDS drugs.

It took the gamers 3 weeks to figure out the structure of this enzyme.

The applications of this software and this approach to learning are clear. Imagine giving your students a complex and real problem like the one solved by these gamers. 

Would it take them any longer to solve the problem? What would they learn as they tried? I would argue that through their self-interest and self-direction they would learn about the nature and structure of enzymes and proteins, how to work effectively in groups, how to break complex problems into smaller ones, how to think critically and how to overcome the inevitable set-backs that come when you are at work on a complex task.

A fascinating development!

Why Achievements Are Essential to Gamification

By design, students in my America 3.0 class this year have to earn achievements (special awards for reaching certain milestones, taking unusual approaches to their learning, doing an important or interesting thing a number of times or for building a portfolio of learning/doing in a compelling way). Unlike the acquisition of knowledge or the development of an assortment of  "do's," I haven't published what the achievements are. Students have to think outside the box, experiment, try new modes of thinking and new ways of demonstrating mastery. All of this points to one of the key qualities of the gamified classroom: student self-direction.

In the gamified classroom, students have to take responsibility for their own learning, just like a player has to take responsibility for their strategy or their approach to a game. In World of Warcraft, for example, players can reach level 85 (the maximum possible level in the current iteration of the game) in an almost bewildering number of ways. Most players level through a few core mechanics (questing, 5-man instances), but there is nothing preventing a player from leveling exclusively through crafting (using in-game materials to make in-game items that confer some benefit) and never playing whole parts of the game. In the game, though, there are achievements, special rewards, that form their own metagame within the game. Achievements give structure, sometimes, to the game work that players do and lend direction to the efforts that players want to undertake. Some achievements are really quite easy to earn, others are vexingly difficult (because they represent doing something that's just plain hard to do or because they require "grinding" - doing one thing hundreds of times over and over).

I set up the achievements requirement in the hopes that it would stimulate creative thinking in the context of student self-direction. Today, in our fifth class, I had the evidence that the achievement system was going to have the desired effect (at least with some students).

I arrived to class and a student was tuning her violin. Her classmates were attentive to what she was doing, but weren't obsessive about it. I cocked an eyebrow and the student said "I want to earn an achievement!" I nodded and asked her to explain what the violin had to do with anything! After all, a player doesn't earn an achievement for something random - it has to mean something. It has to connect. The student said "Janis Joplin." I asked her what level she was talking about, just to be clear. She said, Culture, level 1. I said "I'm not sure where you're going with this, but let's hear it."

She played for about 90 seconds with skill after which I asked her to make her Janis Joplin point explicit. She cited the story about Joplin's free spirited approach to life at the University of Texas and remarked that Joplin carried an instrument around campus in the event that she wanted to play. We discussed free-spiritedness as a quality of the culture of the 60s, as compared to the more "square" (her word) culture of the 50s. Her classmates nodded with understanding.

And I gave her a class first achievement for using a prop to illustrate a point and told her to keep leveling.

How To Play in the Gamified Classroom

After three classes, it is already clear that there are going to be some big successes in my gamified America 3.0 classroom. Of course, the successes are built on the foundation of what we are learning together in class and the degree to which we can remedy mistakes, poor design or poor clarity. This post speaks directly to that last point - clarity. I wrote a short, unconventional syllabus and shared it with students. I also shared a document called "How To Win," explaining how to get an "A" in a classroom without grades. What I didn't write or share, and which would have ensured day 1 success (rather than day 1 confusion) was the most obvious thing of all - a guide to playing. Rules. "How To Play." It's impossible to work a game without knowing the rules! When I provided them in day 2, the class really got off the ground.

So, the rules of the game:

1) Take Stock

• Remember "How To Win:" Get to Level 100 in the Knowledge Tree; Earn 100,000 points in the Doing Tree and Earn 50 Achievements.
• Know Your Score

2)Prepare

• 65 minutes of class time...before coming to class each day, have a plan in mind.
• Will I gather knowledge in the KT? How am I going to level today?
• Will I demonstrate what I know in the DT? How many points am I going to earn today?

3) Level

1. Choose a branch of the KT (like Social Change or Politics).
2. Read the requirements of the level you're on (ask me for clarification).
3. Execute.
4. Bring your work to me, paying close attention to your citations. Where did you get your content?
5. I will either give it an "A" = "authorized to level" or an "N" = not authorized.
6. If you get an "A" and the level has a required "Do," proceed to the "Do." If not, proceed to the next level.
7. If you get an "N," I will tell you what you need to do to remedy the "N." Remedy and bring the results of your work back to me. I will then give you an "A" or an "N." Proceed to step 6 if you get an "A."

4) Earn Points

1. Choose a branch of the DT (like writing or modeling).
2. Plan. How do you want to get the work done?
3. Points. Meet with me and I'll tell you how many points your plan will earn.
4. Execute and bring your work to me.
5. I will either give it an "A" = "authorized to earn the points we agreed to" or an "N" = "not authorized."
6. If you get an "A," record your points and go level.
7. If you get an "N," I will tell you what you need to do to remedy the "N." Remedy and bring the results of your work back to me. If I then give you an "A," proceed to step 5. Otherwise, I'll tell you what you need to do to remedy the "N."

5) Achievements

• You earn achievements over the course of doing your other work. When you unlock an achievement, I will tell you.
• There are lots of different kinds of achievements. If you work creatively, with diligence and with speed, you will be rewarded.

A New System of Film Review!

I know that no one's been asking for a new system for reviewing movies...or at least, no one's been asking me. But back in the old days, that is to say, the early 1990s, my friend James tried to sell me on this system whereby movies would be assigned positive or negative stars based on certain qualities. We discussed this over and over and did some rating, but never really systematized it. In the last month or so, I've seen three movies - Green Lantern, Thor and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. And since I haven't seen three movies in a month since before I started graduate school, this old system came back into mind and I've been tinkering with it. The core of the system centers on 10 categories that influence the quality of the movie goer's experience. I have made them equally weighted, though that is perhaps not fair. Furthermore, it isn't like this is some stunning new insight into the filmic craft. Each category earns one of three ratings: -1 (this detracts from the film), 0 (this neither detracts nor enhances the film) or 1 (this enhances the film). A perfect film would score a 10, average 0 and dreadful -10. The 10 categories are:

Lead Acting: the performances by the actors who carry the main narrative.

Supporting Acting: all other actors' performances.

Direction: the degree to which the decisions of the director clearly add to the interpretation of the script.

Cinematography: the aesthetics of the principal photography.

Production Design: all of the artistic decisions that create the aesthetics of the filmed environment, including costumes, sets, lighting, make-up, matte paintings, etc.

Plotting: how successful the script is at moving the action in an appropriate way at an appropriate pace.

Dialogue: how successful the words in the script are at conveying what can't be shown; how the words enhance our understanding of the characters.

Character Development: do the characters change in ways that make sense?

Sound Design/Music/Score/Soundtrack: all of the artistic decisions that create the sound environment of the film.

Ephemera: all of those things that are not part of the above categories.

Given this system, how did Green Lantern, Thor and Rise of the Planet of the Apes fare? Fairly, I think.

Green Lantern's score is -1 based on a line of -1/1/0/0/0/0/-1/0/0/0. It's supporting acting  (by Peter Sarsgaard and Angela Bassett) was quite good. Blake Lively in a lead role…? Not so good...along with the dialogue. Otherwise, just OK, or a little below OK.

Thor's score is 1, based on a line of 0/0/1/1/1/-1/0/0/0/-1. Thor demanded a majesty and Branagh's direction delivered it. The cinematography of Asgard was beautiful, as was the production design of the plane, the costumes and Heimdal and the Rainbow Bridge. The plotting was too slow (editing, please!) and the product placements were jarringly obvious.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes scores a 3, based on a line of 1/0/0/0/0/0/0/1/0/1. Andy Serkis' acting clearly translated through the motion capture technology. Caesar's character development was very carefully and successfully handled, as was that of the other apes. The film also gets a +1 for making us root for the apes, cleverly subverting key elements of the PotA mythology.

What's a 10 a 0 and a -10 for you? How would you score GL, Thor and RPA?

Mashup! Star Trek and Hollywood Squares...

One of these Star Trek actors is sitting in the secret square and the contestant who picks it first could win a trip to Raisa and 5 thousand bars of gold pressed latinum. Which Star Trek actor is it?

If only this were my idea, but like all good ideas, it's the product of many twisted minds working together, in this case, it was John, Sudro and me, a bit loopy after Strategicon, but nevertheless we had our wits about us. The discussion that brought us to this mashup passed through Match Game '75 on its way to its destination (the main question - given the personalities of the 6 different seats on Match Game, which Star Trek actor goes to which square? We'd only really agreed that Marina Sirtis goes into Bret Somers' seat. Otherwise, we were of mixed minds).

I can't wait to read your own twisted Star Trek / game show mashups, to honor Trek's 45th anniversary and the enduring brilliance of Paul Lynde, Charo and George Gobel.

So - the actors I put into the Hollywood Squares are...

 Next up - Match Game?

Level 100 in the Gamified Classroom

In the last installment, I shared some ideas about how games work and the mechanics that need to be in place for the game to work. These required mechanics are mandatory for games and they are no less mandatory for a gamified curriculum. Each level has to produce a certain level of engagement, a minimum level of flow, in order for the player/student to experience the work in the manner of a game. At the other end of the spectrum, beyond the bosses, is the final boss - the last obstacle to victory.

In my gamified classroom, "level 100" is the final boss. Students have to answer 1 level 100 question successfully in order to complete the Knowledge Tree. Like any other final boss, I intend the level 100 question to have some mandatory qualities:

1) It is the hardest single question they have faced so far in the class.

2) It is the hardest single question they will face in class.

3) Answering it requires that the players/students have used the opportunity afforded by leveling to acquire knowledge and integrate knowledge at their highest capacity.

4) The question builds explicitly from other questions in that branch of the Knowledge Tree.

5) It is answerable by a solo player, but is more easily/successfully answered by an ALT (accountable learning team).

The Level 100 Questions For America 3.0 (2011) are:

Social Change: Choose one of the following socially constructed concepts (parenting, family, gender, sexual orientation, adolescence, work) and trace all of the ways in what that concept has changed since America 2.0 began to give way to America 3.0. Trace the development of the change in your chosen concept through each of its major crisis points, how the American people have stimulated and resisted the change and speculate based on reason and sound evidence how you believe your chosen concept might continue to develop over the next ten years.

Culture: In the transition from America 1.0 to America 2.0, major disruptions in social relations and "social truth" led to the widespread adoption and embrace of fringe cultural practices. In many cases, these fringe practices died out (Fourierism), but in other cases, they survived into our own age (Christian Science). Trace the phenomenon of cultural resistance to the mainstream and/or the emergence of cultural anxiety in the transition from America 2.0 to America 3.0, and speculate based on reason and sound evidence about the likely survivability of at least three cultural expressions in 2100. 

Politics: You are the campaign manager either for the Obama re-election campaign or for the campaign of his Republican opponent (if you select this option, you must also select the candidate). Construct a winning campaign for your candidate. This must include issues, approaches to media, approaches to social media, opposition research, spending plans, fundraising plans, travel plans, electoral college projections, debate preparation, constituency management and outreach, contingency plans in the result of foreign crises (if you are the president) or selecting a vice presidential running mate (if you are the Republican). For purposes of this BOSS WIN, you must explain the historical reason for each of the decisions you make.

Economics, Finance, Labor, Industry: Bring the federal budget into balance, explaining how you do so, who pays and why, the social consequences of your decisions and short, medium and long term EFLI consequences of your decisions. For purposes of this BOSS WIN, do not consider politics, but you must explain how and why the nation made the decisions you are now correcting.

Foreign Policy: Advise the president (in the mode of NSC-68) regarding the most serious foreign policy challenges facing the United States, in your judgement, between now and 2025 and what he/she should do to ready the nation for them.

Technology: Technology is, arguably, the single biggest change agent in the last half-century, perhaps initiating the transformation of America 2.0 to America 3.0

Europe Travel

create your personalized map of europe

"Bosses" and the Nature of Questions

Games only work as games when they have certain mandatory qualities. They have to have an understandable objective (even if it's as simple as "eat pixels and avoid ghosts"). This objective must be achievable, but not too easily achieved. Attempting to achieve the objective must be pleasurable in some way. It must induce in the player a sense of striving or reaching - that quality one gets when one passes through his or her current ability to execute game content and finds oneself on the other side...in a level that is well beyond one's ability. The gamer understands the objective, but also understands that, at least now, it's not clear that they can achieve it anymore. Games must have a fail state from which the gamer can emerge with more knowledge, wisdom and, ideally, a greater capacity to overcome the challenge that created the fail state in the first place. Would a board game still be a board game if, upon losing, it vanished through a dimensional portal and you could never try it again? A game isn't a game if you can't fail or lose and then have another go. This is true in the most basic children's games; complex board games, athletics, basic video games and complex massively multiplayer online games. It should be true in education. Some of my favorite games have really bone-basic rules, are fiendishly difficult to win (I name you - Acquire!) but also reward the player who loses who afterwards learns from the experience. This should also be true about education. Even games where there is no ending (I name you - World of Warcraft!) and therefore, have no objective way to win, have to create within their structure these fail states or they wouldn't function as games. These fail states are called bosses.

In many games with clearly stated objectives but no defined win state, player satisfaction derives primarily from overcoming boss encounters. Boss encounters are also used in many games to establish the final obstacle to total victory. Defeating these encounters is euphoric for most gamers...the opposite of the epic fail...the epic win. They go back decades in the history of game design. The justly famous Ultima IV was known for its character development complexity and morality-based gameplay but also for its final boss encounter (to gain the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom). In contemporary games, boss encounters are used to create particularly difficult or memorable challenges generally requiring either the use of teamwork to succeed or the possession of specialized knowledge or skill to succeed.

In my class, the boss encounter is a major design element in the knowledge tree. Every level ending in zero will be a boss encounter. I want to encourage students to build learning teams and to use them to "defeat" these boss encounters and, in so doing, synthesize learning, apply it meaningfully to other problems, work authentically to engage real world concerns, learn to work together effectively and have some fun while doing it. Because the gamified classroom is founded on the notion of intrinsic reward, I hope to create boss encounters for students that will do everything I stated above while being seen as rich and meaningful and worth solving.

The level 10 boss for the culture branch reads: Contrast the different concerns / foci / approaches / obsessions/ anxieties expressed by transformative and mainstream culture. What is common between them? What's different? What is the transformative trying to transform? What is the mainstream trying to preserve? The level 10 boss for the technology branch reads: How much influence does technology that predates 1970 have in your daily life? Cite specific examples and demonstrate how your life would be diminished without these technologies. What technologies that predate 1970 no longer have a role in your daily life? These questions are radically more complex than levels 1-9, are based on the work students do in levels 1-9, will have a direct impact on how successful they are with levels 11-100 and ask students to integrate and synthesize.

Next time, I will share the 6 level 100 final boss encounters.

Top 5! - Short Stories That'll Stick With You

I kind of go back and forth on short stories. There have been years where that was primarily what I read and other years (like this one) where i read primarily novels and non-fiction. But I've been thinking about short stories a lot these days (who knows why) and thought I'd share these five with you. If you've read them, I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you haven't, share one or two that you've liked and I'll read them if I haven't.

5. The Secret Shih Tan - Graham Masterson

As I'm so often reminded by friends, family and my partner, I can be sort of oblivious about some things. The inevitable endings of certain short stories is a classic example of this. I am incapable of seeing what others see coming pages before...and this story, about a cook looking for a cookbook that gives deeply, deeply forbidden recipes, has a "oh, surely not...oh, no...oh no way!" quality that makes all short fiction memorable.

4. Mr. Gaunt - John Langan

Langan is America's master of the slow building mood creep (that feeling you might get from watching really great Japanese horror films...nothing shouty, but an inevitable, unbearable building) and this story (and his equally great "On Skua Island") is a fantastic example. You'll be as frightened as the main character when you finally realize what's what.

3. More Tomorrow - Michael Marshall Smith

The truth is, I could have picked any one of a half-dozen MMS short stories and felt like I could defend the choice. This story builds slowly but with confidence and clarity to an ending that will leave you gobsmacked. Read him!

2. The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas - Ursula K. LeGuin

A classic. Very short, spare in LeGuin's inimitable way and overwhelming. I have read it dozens of times. It's power does not diminish.

1. The Rain - J.G. Hayes

Joe Hayes' voice is unique. A gay perspective from South Boston. Authentic, real, brutal. This particular story was overwhelming and hard to read as the narrator suffers a kind of breakdown after a trauma. Find this out of print book if you can. If not, I'll lend you my copy.

Getting an "A" in the Gamified Classroom

In my earlier posts, I have discussed the work I've been doing to bring game-based design principles to the structure of my America 3.0 course. I am continuing to develop the levels that form the core of the knowing tree and, while I feel confident that the doing tree makes sense structurally, I am continuing to tinker with the relationship between what students do and the points they'll earn in class (because even though I'm gamifying the course, at the end of the day, I teach at a college preparatory school with transcripts and grades on the 0-100 scale).

These core principles inform my thinking:

1. Doing, not Knowing: Students earn no gradable points for progressing in the knowing tree. I believe it is valuable to know things (anyone who's played me in Trivial Pursuit knows that knowing is important to me...I read Wikipedia for fun…), but I believe even more strongly that knowing for its own sake is less valuable than knowing and then being able to do something with that knowledge.

2. "Gotta Level:" In order to pass the class, students will be obligated to achieve certain levels across the knowing tree. There are 6 branches of the knowing tree. Students must reach level 10 in all 6 branches, level 20 in 4 branches, level 40 in 3 branches, level 50 in 2 branches and level 100 in 1 branch.

3. Student Selection: There are 6 doing trees, as there are 6 knowing trees. The formula for earning gradable points is 100 achievement points = 1 point.

4. Collaborative Work is Good: Students can earn points by doing work themselves or earn them by working productively in their ALT (accountable learning team).

Two examples of how students earn points. 

1. Critical Writing: one essential branch of the doing tree is critical writing. Writing is clear, measurable and requires that students read carefully and progress on the knowing trunk to actually have something to write about. There are four kinds of writing that I'm defining:

Short, short form - tweeting

     "one very simple idea"

Short form - blog postings (200-500 words) (a 2 minute movie script)

     "one simple idea, explicated"

Medium form - the short paper, the "long blog" (1000-2000 words) (a 7 minute movie script)

     one complex idea, explicated with depth

Long form - the long paper (2000+ words) (the webpage) (a 20 minute movie script)

     one highly complex idea, explicated along multiple arcs

Achievement points in writing are earned in clusters of 500 points. 500 points are earned according to the follow formula:

1 long form mode = 3 medium form modes = 15 short form modes = 100 short, short form modes

There isn't an A/B/C/D/F grade assigned to the writing itself in this case. Rather, the writer earns an A and hence gets the achievement points, or the writer gets an R, which is to say "redo."

2. "Modeling:" I define modeling as non-written forms of expression (so conveying the same message as a written text, but in a different mode). This covers modes like infographics, visual/performing arts, mind maps, photography, film and so forth. 

Because modeling is idiosyncratic, modeling points are earned on a case-by-case basis after discussions with me where I approve the scope of the project and assign it points. Some examples of 500 point achievements in modeling are:

1. An infographic (see examples in the Schoology forum) on a complex idea, like use of technology by senior citizens.

2. A photo essay illuminating Jewish-African American relations in Los Angeles.

3. A curated (photos found, but not taken by you) photo essay on Native American resistance to cultural assimilation.

4. 5 minutes of a short, creative film about high school students responding to 9/11 on 9/11/01.

5. A 3-4 minute pop song, written and performed, which speaks to a social problem in the USA.

Modeling projects can be done by ALTs as well - the complexity of the work proposed generates the achievement points.

Top 5! - Iceland/Icelandic Blogs

For the longest time, I have been fascinated by Iceland and by all things Icelandic. I spent July of 1998 in the country studying the language (fascinating), its history (offering powerful lessons about family, honor and democracy) and its literature (the sagas remain a high-water mark in Western medieval literature and its crime fiction is second to none). If you have some interest in things Icelandic, I offer here 5 blogs to stoke your curiosity.

5. Sonic Iceland

Music (Sigur Ros, Bjork), photography, videos and other ephemera brought to you by Kai and Marcel are bringing the contemporary Icelandic music scene to an English speaking audience.

4. Iceland Review

The online portal of Iceland Review - the most comprehensive site I have found in English. Regularly updated with news, features and photography.

3. Iceland Eyes

A beautifully curated blog featuring photography from across the country. I loved public sculpture and modern architecture when I visited. Check this photo out!

2. Birgitta Jonsdottir

Jonsdottir is a fascinating example of the kind of politician who just would not translate to the American public sphere. Representing a party that really isn't and being outspoken in behalf of a radically open understanding of free speech through the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (about which I have written earlier). Agree or disagree with her stances, she is interesting in a way that many 21st century politicians just aren't.

1. Stjornlagarath

OK, I'll cop that this isn't really a blog, but it represents one of the qualities of the Icelandic people that keeps me interested. This is the site of the Constitutional Council of Iceland. Sounds sort of dull? It isn't. This is the public forum of the citizen's committee charged with rewriting Iceland's constitution (undertaken after Iceland's disastrous experience of the 2008 Global Recession). Notable, but typical of the Icelanders are some qualities of their work. It was conducted in public (the council's work was broadcast on YouTube, Facebook and on the website) and the council actively crowdsourced core constitutional principals from regular Icelanders. How is that not cool?

Gamifying and "Doing"

In my previous posts, I shared some of the ideas I have been thinking about as I redesign a course I am teaching to be explicitly gamified. One of the crucial decisions I made at an early stage was to divide the work process (the quest lines) into two distinct trees. In my last post, I shared an example of the knowledge tree. In any course, there is content that students should learn and master. There are also skills that a student should learn and master. In both cases, the pathways through the content and skills must be student-directed.

A critical difference between the knowing tree and the doing tree is that students do not earn "points" for completing quests in the knowing tree. Knowing serves itself; it is for its own sake. Doing, however, can be measured.

The doing tree is divided into six branches: critical reading, critical writing, critical speaking, modeling, collaborating and integrating. The doing tree for writing looks like this:

Critical Writing - one foundation of expression (where one cites)

Short, short form - tweeting

     one very simple idea

Short form - blog postings (200-500 words) or the 2 minute movie

     one simple idea, explicated

Medium form - the short paper, the "long blog" (1000-2000 words), the 7 minute movie

     one complex idea, explicated with depth

Long form - the long paper (2000+ words), the webpage, the 20 minute movie

     one highly complex idea, explicated along multiple arcs

And this is just one mode students might use to share what they are thinking. Like in the knowing tree, students will be obligated to complete a certain number of tasks in each branch of the doing tree as well, but will be rewarded significantly more by completing more complex tasks or repeating tasks. Rather than using an explicit level system as I am doing in the knowing tree, I am thinking of using something closer to an achievement system in the doing tree, with students earning achievement points (similar to the achievement point system in World of Warcraft, a system I know pretty well) and then tying those achievement points to the students' ultimate grade in the class.

In my next post, I will share how I am thinking of making the connection between levels, points and grades clear.

Gamifying Education - "the first 10 levels"

Last Friday, I posted an article outlining some of the challenges I had been working through as I comprehensively redraft America 3.0, my course on the contemporary history of the United States. Today, I will share some thoughts on the "knowledge tree," one of the organizational spines of the course and what the first 10 levels will look like for a student in the course.

The course asks students to acquire knowledge about recent American history in six areas: Social Change and Reaction, Culture, Politics, Economics/Finance/Labor/Industry, Foreign Policy and Technology. The first ten levels of the Social Change and Reaction tree look like this:

Level 1: Gather 8 pieces of data that inform you about the state of Black America in America 2.0 and DO.

Level 2: Gather 8 pieces of data that inform you about the state of women in America in America 2.0 and DO.

Level 3: Gather 8 pieces of data that inform you about the conditions facing Native Americans in America 2.0 and DO.

Level 4: Gather 8 pieces of data that inform you about the state of Mexican Americans (or another immigrant group) in America 2.0 and DO.

Level 5: Gather 8 pieces of data that inform you about the conditions facing gay Americans in America 2.0 and DO.

Level 6: Derive 3 common threads between the experiences of these groups.

Level 7: Choose 3 from previous levels (Black America, Women, Native Americans, Mexican Americans, gay Americans). What were the triggering event or events that stimulated a new consciousness for these groups in America 2.0? Why these events and DO.

Level 8: What, if anything, is common between these triggering events?

Level 9: Gather 15 pieces of data that inform you about the state of "mainstream" America in America 2.0. What does "mainstream" mean in this case? Derive what is common between your data points and DO.

Level 10 BOSS: What qualities of the mainstream were the disenfranchised entranced by or interested in attaining for themselves? How were the disenfranchised resisting the power of the mainstream? What about the mainstream were they reacting against? DO

Some notes and definitions:

Gather - go to a source or source you trust and learn enough about the topic to DO something meaningful with it.

Derive - using the knowledge you gathered previously, determine an understanding that is defensible and makes sense to you of how that knowledge fits together.

DO - once you have gathered, derived or what have you, choose some method of sharing/communicating what you've learned from the Doing tree.

BOSS - a question/task of notably greater difficulty than the one's before, which is lead into by the tasks before and which is particularly suitable for group exploration (and group-based DOs). 

In my next post, I will respond to questions/thoughts posted by readers and/or share an example of how I am structuring the "Doing" tree.

Gamifying Education - Theory and Practice

In recent months, stimulated by provocative books like Jane McGonigal's "Reality is Broken," numerous blog posts and my own experience as a board gamer (think "Fresco," not "Monopoly") and massively multiplayer online roleplayer (MMO) in World of Warcraft, I have become more firmly convinced that course design (and indeed curriculum design) could be and should be informed by the same thinking that makes games so powerfully motivating for their players. This thinking is already in evidence at schools like Quest to Learn, where the curriculum is intensively gamified.

In the coming year, I will be testing this hypothesis in a class I teach called "America 3.0,"  a course in which high school seniors study the history of the United States, more or less, from 1970 to the present. In the past, I have structured the learning experience of the course conventionally, with me setting the learning expectations, directing students along a single, narrow path and telling only one story. For the coming year, I will be gamifying the students' experience, bringing lessons from the board game and MMO world to bear on students' learning. My intention is to open the study of American history to student choice, allowing them to develop a core understanding of the period while requiring them to make a deep commitment to learning a particular facet of the American experience. I make the following assumptions going into the course design experience:

Choice: As the course designer, my responsibility is to provide a meaningful, understandable and compelling structure that will stimulate and engage. Once I as designer have constructed the system, all subsequent choices are made by the students themselves.

Facilitation: If the design is effective, I have fundamentally and unalterably changed my own role in the classroom. If each student could be (and is likely to be) exploring a different "quest line," it is not possible to use my comfort zone mode (lecture/discussion) for classroom instruction. Rather, I will need to be a "benevolent guide," helping students understand and interpret what they are learning, so that they can make better use of it as the progress along the quest line they have selected.

Leveling and "Quest Lines": A critical component of the MMO experience is leveling. Players level by completing clearly defined tasks in clearly defined quest lines that become progressively more difficult as players gain skills, knowledge and capacity to play their character. In order to be successful, the students' experience in class has to be based on leveling as well.

"Level Bosses": A key component of video gaming is the "boss kill" or "boss win," - a big challenge that comes at the end of a series of smaller challenges. The leveling experience of the course had to have "boss wins" that would stimulate integrated and critical thinking.

Knowing and Doing: The core misunderstanding in our national obsession with high-stakes testing is that it places most of its values in the realm of knowing, rather than balancing knowing with doing. I entered the design process for this class seeking balance, but frankly valuing the doing more than the knowing. I argue that knowledge in a vacuum doesn't do anyone much good really. Rather, once students understand something, what can they do with it? I will present students with the following formula: Knowing levels ask students to demonstrate that they know X about Y. Doing levels ask students to demonstrate that they can acquire knowledge X in a particular way or transmit or pass on their knowledge X  of Y in a particular way Z.

Level 100: The students' end-goal in the course is no longer to "get an A." Rather, the object is to achieve level 100. Students reach level 100 by completing  objectives in two quest lines: knowing and doing. My hope here is to explicitly decouple the experience of being in class and learning with the high-stakes reality of grading. By stating the object of the course in this way, I hope to provide incentive to students to work hard and skillfully, while providing a space for students with lower self-efficacy to achieve at the highest possible level, with the highest possible claims on their own motivation.

In developing the students' leveling experience, I have made a number of decisions that about the structure of the course:

Knowing: The six branches of the knowing trunk are: Social Change and Reaction, Culture, Politics in the Age of Reagan, Foreign Policy (Facing Down the Soviets and the Discontents of Hegemony), Economics/Finance/Labor/Industry and Technology. Students will have the opportunity to level each of these knowing trunks from 1-100. The course requires that they level all areas to at least 10, 3 of the 6 to 20, 2 of the 6 to 50 and 1 to 100. Students do not earn any "gradable points" for the work they do here. Rather, they use what they acquire on these quests to "do."

Doing: The doing trunk also branches six ways: reading, critical writing, critical speaking, modeling, collaborating and integrating. Students will earn achievement points by completing doing tasks/quests that are progressively more difficult. I define reading as the principle process by which one attains knowledge (and that lots of things can be treated as "reading," like studying architecture, conducting interviews, etc. - that which is read is that which is cited). Critical writing, speaking and modeling are examples of where one cites (modeling is defined as non-written modes of non-speaking expression, like infographics or photography). Collaborating asks students to form ALTs (accountable learning teams) by which students will work together to solve complex problems (like level 90 and 100 boss wins), construct shared group learning identities and hold each other to appropriate standards. Integrating asks students to mashup or meld learning from multiple branches of knowing (like studying how the foreign policy and culture strands of knowing might be mutually reinforcing) or multiple branches of doing.

 In my next post, I will share the first ten levels of each of the knowledge branches and an example of a level 100 boss win.

Iceland - the 21st century's free speech savior

It doesn't surprise me that the famously independent Icelanders are out on the forefront of the issue of free speech in the Information Age. This fantasticbrief  in the Los Angeles times discusses the work of the Iceland Modern Media Institute, whose mission is to "create a global safe haven for investigative journalism." Despite the potentially unsavory connections to Wikileaks honcho Julian Assange, the instinct of the Icelandic Althing is fundamentally sound. In a world where the boundaries between public and private continue to erode, and where new media undermines the capacity of the press to conduct the kind of investigative reporting that will no doubt be the hallmark of the print age of journalism, we need intellectual visionaries to show us the way. Who knew that the vision would come from a parliament, of all places.

Quoting from the IMMI website: "Birgitta Jonsdottir, the chief sponsor in parliament of the IMMI proposal said: "Iceland will become the inverse of a tax haven; by offering journalists and publishers some of the most powerful protections for free speech and investigative journalism in the world. Tax havens aim is to make everything opaque. Our aim is to make everything transparent."

Radical transparency. What was promised us by the Obama campaign. What Mr. Jefferson (ever the dangerous radical) would have been fighting for. What might be impossible to achieve in a country the size of the United States.

Thank you, Iceland, for providing leadership here.