Games Can Make the World Better

When I first pushed the play button for Jane McGonigal's TED talk, I could not believe she was going to try to tell us that we could solve real-world problems by playing games.  How asinine!  But, the more she talked, the more I understood the connections that she was making.  Her 10,000 hours comparison is pure genius.  If we spend that much time learning and shaping our minds, we will be experts in that field of study.  Pair that knowledge with the rewards (blissful productivity, social fabric, urgent optimism, and epic meaning) we receive from gaming and really anything is possible!  

• Can play and learning be combined?

Absolutely!  Not only can we learn from play, we absolutely do learn from play.  Ask any parent, pre-K teacher, or daycare worker how we expect small children to learn?  We immerse them in a play-rich environment and let them explore.  Why wouldn't we do the same for adults?  Adults love the leveling up, reaching goals, overcoming challenges, and the social networking of games.  Let's use that to our advantage instead of fighting it.

• What role does acknowledging progress play in successful gaming and is their transfer to education?

As we game, we love to track our progress.  We are constantly checking how much more we lack to reach the next goal.  Game designers know this, and they understand the psychology of the human brain enough to know when they can make the game more difficult, and when to pull back when we reach frustration.  Reaching goals and collecting rewards are innately satisfying.  Leveling up makes us feel good.  It makes us feel accomplished.  We can use this knowledge in our classroom to motivate students.  To push them when they need pushing and to know when to pull back when they reach frustration levels.  Students would love the competition of reaching goals, and the satisfaction of leveling up.

• What do you think about MacGonigal's thought about parallel tracks of education (school/games)?

10,000 hours of learning anything would make us "virtuosos," as McGonigal refers to it.  That is a lot of time invested in learning.  That also happens to be the magic number of hours that students attend school from the fifth to the twelfth grade.  If we can harness the power of gaming to fit our needs in education, we can change the world.  Is gaming changing education, or is education changing gaming?

• Reflect on Jane's 4 things that games do to make us "virtuosos": Urgent Optimism, Social Fabric, Blissful Productivity, Epic Meaning.

To be a "virtuoso," we must be experts of that particular field of study.  Investing the time and energy it takes to master a trade or skill or the knowledge of how something works allows us to truly understand and be able to possess the knowledge to problem-solve and predict and solve future problems.  

Gaming gives us urgent optimism.  They make us happy.  They allow us to decompress and chill.  This is essential to life.  Breathing, calming, meditating.  They are all vital for the brain, psyche, and body.

Gaming also allows us to socially interact with people, and not just any people, but people in which we have similar likes and interests.  This allows for collaboration, trust building, and team work.  These are all great skills being learned just through play!

Play allows us to work towards goals.  Through games, we are productive and blissfully so.  We enjoy working towards the goals, leveling up, winning at life.  

If we can utilize the gaming industry to focus on real-world epic meanings, we can teach and inspire people to come up with real-world solutions to problems.  Just by playing a game...

Just by playing a game.

Resources:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world