#17 Book Study - The Learning Game

Please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are, where you are from, what you teach and anything else you want to include!

Imagine you just won Teacher of the Year for not just the 1st time but the 3rd time in a row, like John Taylor Gatto. What would you talk about with a national platform in regards  to education?

The US Education System was created to prepare the masses for their future job as a factory worker. Is public education still preparing the masses for the most common future job, which is a retail sale representatives?   What kind of jobs do you believe you are currently preparing your students for?   Do you believe schools need to evolve in this area?   What would that look like?

  Ana Lorena Fabrega talks about story-driven learning.   Do you currently use story-driven learning?   If so, explain and give specific examples.   If not, consider a topic you currently teach with which you could try out the idea of story- driven learning. Take a little time to research.   Share your plans here.  

Quote your favorite line from this   Justin Sung’s TED Talk.   What does this mean to you?   How will you apply this idea in your professional life?   

Think about the games you currently incorporate into your classes. Do these primarily fall into the category of   gamification or pointification? Describe a game you could incorporate into your classes that would be true gamification.

The Super Mario Effect **Talked about pages 127-130  What is one thing you can do to begin to root the fear of failure out of your school?

How do you approach character development in your school?   What do you do to help your students become more antifragile?   How do you teach courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom?

  Let’s create a collection of failure stories!   Share one from you own life or from that of someone famous.  

Can we give students more opportunities for elastic thinking? Can we go as far as to “flip the school on its head” (pg 233) and still do the job we are hired to do and evaluated on? 

Please post your thoughts about this course below.  What did you like about it?  What didn’t you like about it?  Would you recommend this book study to a colleague?