…the goal shouldn’t be to overlay rewards and achievements, the goal should be to get people more involved in experiences in meaningful ways.
Koreen Olbrish – “Reflections on LEEF 2011″ – eLearn Mag
Couldn’t have said it better myself. It’s not about the game. It’s about the experience and the outcome. Games are just one type of immersive experience. This doesn’t just apply to learning, either.
…you end up killing the intrinsic motivation to do things you didn’t need to be rewarded to do before.
Aaron Silvers – “On Education, Badges and Scouting”
Both Koreen and Aaron make similar points. Don’t do something (like trying to gamify everything) just because you can. Do something because it will give your users great experiences that lead to meaningful outcomes.
It’s simple, really:
- What do you want your users/learners to DO?
- How can you make a great experience that gets them to a point where they CAN?
Judy Unrein and I started a podcast a few months ago. We drink great beer and talk about learning, software, technology, and whatever else we can think of. It’s informal. Crack open a cold one (nothing cheap now, make it something worthwhile) and join us!
In episode three, we discuss elearning development on a Mac, ZebraZapps and Articulate Storyline.
Last week I went to San jose for mLearnCon, the mobile learning conference put on by the eLearning Guild. I was invited to participate on several panels in both the MOSH Pit and Future Zone.
I really like the open format of the stages/zones. They are a perfect environment for collaborative sessions with audience participation, which are my favorite types. I prefer the forum style where presenters can learn from audience members and we can let the inmates run the asylum to some extent. I much prefer to facilitate discussions between many smart people than to just talk at an audience.
As usual, the hallway and dinner conversations were far more valuable than any of the sessions were. The ability sit down with the leaders and innovators of this industry is just plain awesome, not to mention the wonderful food we consumed.
One of the highlights for me was playing in and winning the Game of Phones tournament. What a blast! I’m absolutely sold on the value of games for business and learning. Some really wonderful ideas were presented by some incredibly smart people. I would actually pay to watch one of these tournaments — very entertaining.
The keynotes were okay, but definitely not on the same level as some of the keynotes at other Guild events. They might have been audience-appropriate, but I thought they lacked the impact of a Marcia Conner or Nancy Duarte.
I didn’t attend many sessions because I was either a panelist in or attending most of the zone sessions. I did enjoy the Tablet Wars presentation from Robert Gadd. He had great statistics and a nice breakdown of which tablets support which technologies.
I didn’t take a laptop to this conference, relying on just my iPad and my iPhone. They didn’t let me down. It’s so nice to have tools like these that are lightweight and have ridiculous battery life, yet are so powerful.
Quick notes:
- David Kelly once again provided wonderful backchannel support and curation. He’ll continue to update the post for a while. It’s a valuable resource. That dude rocks. Check it out.
- Tracy added a great list of tweets from the conference.
- Talking games with Alicia, Kris, Drew and Aaron was a lot of fun. I downloaded Ticket to Ride on the iPad and I’m completely addicted. (I’m motherduce, if you want to play.) We also talked board games, and I’m trying to get a list together of great ones you may not have heard of but should be playing.
- Special thanks to Jeff Tillett for jumping in with me on the HTML 5 vs. Flash panel. His insight was great to have and he helped drive audience participation, which was awesome.
- Thanks to Aaron Silvers and Neil Lasher for inviting me to talk on their panels. I had a lot of fun, and was honored and humbled to sit next to the likes of Allison Rossett, Clark Quinn, Judy Brown, Reuben Tozman, Brandon Carson, BJ Schone, and other brilliant folks.
- Thanks to the guild for putting on another great conference. My wife attended the giant SHRM conference this week, and it just sounded awful compared to my Guild conference experiences. Way to go Brent, David, Heidi, Juli and Co.!
- Karaoke night is fun, but dangerous.
- Last, but not least, smart people who like good food and good music and like to play and create games are freaking awesome.
Here are a few more pics from the week.
One of the coolest experiences I had at mLearnCon last week was playing A Game of Phones, a wonderful creation from Kris Rockwell (@hybridkris) and Alicia Sanchez (@gamesczar). Every attendee received a deck of cards when he or she registered, and a brief tutorial of how to play.
The basic premise is training and performance challenges presented to two or more players, who can then play technology, hardware and expert cards to offer up a potential solution. Both players state their case, and then they can either debate or they can have a third party judge their proposals.
At the end of the day on Wednesday, they held a tournament, judged by none other than The Beard and Jason Haag. Surprisingly, there were only eight of us who entered, but the ideas generated in this tournament were simply amazing. The energy level was high and the debates and follow-up discussions with the judges and participants were enlightening. Aaron or Kris should be posting some video and pictures of the event soon.
The three top scorers were myself, Stephanie Daul and Aisha Taylor. The final battle was between Stephanie and myself, and I ended up winning. It was so much fun, and such a useful game. I can’t wait to take it back to some folks I work with to generate some ideas for solving our mobile learning problems, or just to start talking about mobile solutions.
You can order the game as is, or you can request some tweaks to make it more specific to your organization. I highly recommend at least grabbing a deck or two and playing a few games with your team and then sharing some of the best solutions with management, and then playing the game with them! It’s a great way to show the benefits of a game in a real world environment that produces innovative, but practical solutions.
Most importantly, it was a lot of fun to play!
Additional Information:
*Update 07-08-2011*
The website for this game is agameofphones.com.
And odds are pretty good that 10 years from now when you are looking to strike out on your own, your passion and your portfolio will take you as far if not farther than a degree that came at a great expense and in all likelihood with only a slice of relevance.
- Will Richardson – “A Different Path“
Earlier in the article he mentions that neither he, nor any of his friends, have a job in the field they studied in school. Funny thing is, I’m one of the people who IS doing what they went to school for (to some extent), AND I’m passionate about it. So, do I consider myself one of the very lucky ones, or am I just a simple exception?
Either way, don’t force college on your kids. Guide them, but let them choose a path that they are passionate about.
