From the O’Reilly Web2Summit: Make Life More Like Games Games come with better instructions; you have a clear goal, and other people share information on how to succeed. Games give you better feedback on your performance in the form of scores and ratings, plus they provide an audience that’s tuned into your success. Games offer better community: everybody’s agreed to same rules and narrative, and you share a heroic sense of purpose. I’m not sure how quickly that’ll happen in life but what about school? How can we make school more like this? How can you make individual projects more like this? Every little bit will help. Directions Just about every kid wants to please. Some of the major problems I’ve had in my classroom, and seen in other classrooms, occur when kids don’t understand what you want them to do. They get frustrated and/or start wandering off task. You get mad because they’re not doing what you “explicitly” told them to do. It’s often interesting to see what a third person thinks of my “crystal clear” directions. I usually run my directions and plans by at least one person. The hard part for me is figuring out how to get a community of support built around your class. Our current school system is certainly not set up to enable […]