Hero's Journey. Presenting Game Based Learning at Tri Am Conference, Costa Rica (2017)
Long ago, my husband and I found each other because we love stories that celebrate the individual, who has lost something of value. Striving against the odds, against the enemy the hero discovers powers along the way, creates alliances and return from an unordinary place, reflective and changed. What was lost is found with so much more. Why can't education be this sort of revelation?
For anyone who loves some or all of this story frame, we presented an open invitation to our game construct at the Tri-Association in Costa Rica. We whittled it down from a passion project into a presentation for any educator of any content in any subject area. A Hero's Journey, Promoting Global Game Collaboration involves a simple notion; students gain contextual knowledge within the construct of a story. The game becomes an incentive or reward for classroom learning. Unlocking levels of classroom content through a series of puzzles and locks. The backstory is the hero's journey, the content is the teacher's, the enthusiasm comes from the students. Why does this work?
Ideologically, social media gaming caused us to wonder how we could bring that communication into differentiated levels of classroom learning. What if we could embed opportunities for students in other countries to offer their own thoughts as they engage in asynchronous lessons divided by puzzles and locks? What if, collaboration unlocked solutions to puzzles? I've observed students reaching out to broad communities for AP test answers and biology outlines, Wikipedia and Goodreads. Why not do it for fun with another classroom?
We structure our lesson around BreakoutEdu, a company that promotes learning as a series of puzzles and locks by providing the educator with the lockboxes, the variety of locks both in physical and digital form and game ideas created by educators. The locks can be reset with a scrambled number or letter code, keys, directionals, color patterns etc. The educator decides what to unlock. We discovered that in game design, puzzles should be composed of two types of content.
We discovered with game creation how to involve other communities and keep rules simple. Rules must be flexible for global educators to build into their own class routines and content. Time zones, sudden disruptions, and school events make finding common meeting time between school communities difficult. Acknowledging asynchronous learning, accepting that each school might need to minimize game involvement and brainstorming when to connect, helps secure student global video chats that have many positive repercussions:
The hero's journey as a metaphor for learning, is not complete without an epic battle, elixirs and atonement. In any field of study, elixirs can be metaphors for truth while atonement, an ethical dilemma. Teachers who are allowed to control this aspect of the construct have more control in the design of the learning environment. Do you remember that the hero's journey is wrapped in a quest? A quest revolves around something lost being found again by the individual student. In our game, the thing that is lost is a memory. Our backstory: an evil duo, Radix and Circe, have worked to destroy core memories of who are the heroes of fiction. A world without heroes is a world with subjugation. We embed readings and debates on a variety of topics: Nobel Prize winners, DC vs. Marvel, the dilemma of rewriting stories, tearing down statues etc. We incentivized the discussions with rap battles, dance battles, things that students wanted. The elixir was truth and atonement involved shared writings from the students.
The final reveal, the discovery of the stolen memory. Our English department, invited parents, former teachers, mentors, or friends to supply at least one letter defining truth & a personal memory about each individual student. Text messages, letters, Facebook messages, emails were organized into a spreadsheet. These were gathered without student knowledge, printed on paper, and locked in a final lockbox hidden on campus. Every single student has a core memory in the box. When it was revealed the shock on student's faces is of pure joy. We were able to demonstrate this at the Tri-Association. Over the course of the week, my husband and I were able to gather a few text messages for those attendees who had committed to our presentation. We were able to designate one educator the secret keeper who distributed the surprise memories. Reading a letter in which someone compliments you about a shared past experience is a true reveal, the final vocabulary term in our game. One educator told us, "it is the first time I left a conference crying for joy and feeling like a true hero."
At the Tri-Association I conferred with educators who agreed that in an era when the instruction can come from multiple sources, when a single learner can move through 9,000 digital swipes, before pausing, you have to ask yourself, what is it that makes learning, an experience worth sharing? The global quest to bring other educators into our "call to adventure" is only just a beginning.
For anyone who loves some or all of this story frame, we presented an open invitation to our game construct at the Tri-Association in Costa Rica. We whittled it down from a passion project into a presentation for any educator of any content in any subject area. A Hero's Journey, Promoting Global Game Collaboration involves a simple notion; students gain contextual knowledge within the construct of a story. The game becomes an incentive or reward for classroom learning. Unlocking levels of classroom content through a series of puzzles and locks. The backstory is the hero's journey, the content is the teacher's, the enthusiasm comes from the students. Why does this work?
- people like rewards. They take them when they are earned.
- Puzzles engage students in content and problem solving,
- Locks allow students to leave the puzzle and move onto another level of learning.
- Portals or links to communities with answers or social gathering are useful to problem-solving.
Ideologically, social media gaming caused us to wonder how we could bring that communication into differentiated levels of classroom learning. What if we could embed opportunities for students in other countries to offer their own thoughts as they engage in asynchronous lessons divided by puzzles and locks? What if, collaboration unlocked solutions to puzzles? I've observed students reaching out to broad communities for AP test answers and biology outlines, Wikipedia and Goodreads. Why not do it for fun with another classroom?
We structure our lesson around BreakoutEdu, a company that promotes learning as a series of puzzles and locks by providing the educator with the lockboxes, the variety of locks both in physical and digital form and game ideas created by educators. The locks can be reset with a scrambled number or letter code, keys, directionals, color patterns etc. The educator decides what to unlock. We discovered that in game design, puzzles should be composed of two types of content.
- Text, specific to a field of study and
- technical text redundant to any field of knowledge.
We discovered with game creation how to involve other communities and keep rules simple. Rules must be flexible for global educators to build into their own class routines and content. Time zones, sudden disruptions, and school events make finding common meeting time between school communities difficult. Acknowledging asynchronous learning, accepting that each school might need to minimize game involvement and brainstorming when to connect, helps secure student global video chats that have many positive repercussions:
- Mentor guidance- we created the first puzzles to establish the teacher as a guardian, allowing the teacher to determine how to move through stages of learning until they reach the need for an alliance, a question to solve.
- The alliance is a digital portal in the form of video chat. Time zones are aligned, chat links are posted and students exchange questions and answers relevant to the game, but have time allowed for random chatter as well. Students, well versed in social media could carry this relationship, or not into other social forms such as Instagram Snapchat etc.
- synchronous portals are classroom incentives. Someone teaching chemistry could decide to post a content question to their class but give the answer to the cooperating community without being completely invested in the game. The exchange of information can be useful even if it isn't literature students on the hero's journey can If getting the answer means performing a random task, say- a TikTok dance or cleaning the classroom etc. in order to receive the chat link, and that answer, you've just added a fun factor to learning
- Reckoning- the last few puzzles are meant for one classroom only. It establishes the end of the journey.
The hero's journey as a metaphor for learning, is not complete without an epic battle, elixirs and atonement. In any field of study, elixirs can be metaphors for truth while atonement, an ethical dilemma. Teachers who are allowed to control this aspect of the construct have more control in the design of the learning environment. Do you remember that the hero's journey is wrapped in a quest? A quest revolves around something lost being found again by the individual student. In our game, the thing that is lost is a memory. Our backstory: an evil duo, Radix and Circe, have worked to destroy core memories of who are the heroes of fiction. A world without heroes is a world with subjugation. We embed readings and debates on a variety of topics: Nobel Prize winners, DC vs. Marvel, the dilemma of rewriting stories, tearing down statues etc. We incentivized the discussions with rap battles, dance battles, things that students wanted. The elixir was truth and atonement involved shared writings from the students.
The final reveal, the discovery of the stolen memory. Our English department, invited parents, former teachers, mentors, or friends to supply at least one letter defining truth & a personal memory about each individual student. Text messages, letters, Facebook messages, emails were organized into a spreadsheet. These were gathered without student knowledge, printed on paper, and locked in a final lockbox hidden on campus. Every single student has a core memory in the box. When it was revealed the shock on student's faces is of pure joy. We were able to demonstrate this at the Tri-Association. Over the course of the week, my husband and I were able to gather a few text messages for those attendees who had committed to our presentation. We were able to designate one educator the secret keeper who distributed the surprise memories. Reading a letter in which someone compliments you about a shared past experience is a true reveal, the final vocabulary term in our game. One educator told us, "it is the first time I left a conference crying for joy and feeling like a true hero."
At the Tri-Association I conferred with educators who agreed that in an era when the instruction can come from multiple sources, when a single learner can move through 9,000 digital swipes, before pausing, you have to ask yourself, what is it that makes learning, an experience worth sharing? The global quest to bring other educators into our "call to adventure" is only just a beginning.
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