Safe for schools version of slides given during "Meaningful / Meaningless Play: The Brave New World of Play and Games in Educational Contexts" session at Meaningful Play October 2014

1. GAMES AND EDUCATION. WTF?
Mark Chen
Director, Pepperdine Gameful Design Lab
@mcdanger
markdangerchen@gmail.com

2. THE PROBLEM
• Gamification

3. THE PROBLEM
• Gamification and backlash
Michael John Ian Bogost

4. THE PROBLEM
• Gamification and backlash
• Games for assessment/measurement

5. THE PROBLEM
• Gamification and backlash
• Games for assessment/measurement and backlash
Paolo Pedercini
Molleindustria

6. THE PROBLEM
• Gamification and backlash
• Games for assessment/measurement and backlash
• Games as games in classrooms

7. THE PROBLEM
• Gamification and backlash
• Games for assessment/measurement and backlash
• Games as games in classrooms and backlash

8. WHY ALL THE BACKLASH?

9. WHY ALL THE BACKLASH?
• misunderstanding of what games/gaming are
• *using* them when they’re not to be used in a regimented way

10. WHAT ARE GAMES? WHAT IS GAMING?

11. WHAT ARE GAMES? WHAT IS GAMING?
• System of rules to be explored, understood, and pushed at.

12. WHAT ARE GAMES? WHAT IS GAMING?
• System of rules to be explored, understood, and pushed at.
• Sign of expertise to push at systems; make them do novel things…
• But also

13. WHAT ARE GAMES? WHAT IS GAMING?
• System of rules to be explored, understood, and pushed at.
• Sign of expertise to push at systems; make them do novel things…
• But also to rebel, be subversive, to not accept status quo.

14. WHAT ARE GAMES? WHAT IS GAMING?
• System of rules to be explored, understood, and pushed at.
• Sign of expertise to push at systems; make them do novel things…
• But also to rebel, be subversive, to not accept status quo.
• Personally meaningful interactions players enact to navigate with(in)
designed systems/ecologies.

15. WHAT ARE GAMES? WHAT IS GAMING?
• System of rules to be explored, understood, and pushed at.
• Sign of expertise to push at systems; make them do novel things…
• But also to rebel, be subversive, to not accept status quo.
• Personally meaningful interactions players enact to navigate with(in)
designed systems/ecologies.
• Games are vehicles for empathy.
(more in my poster later today)

16. BULL
• And education too often wants to pigeon hole, bureaucratize, to make
students conform, to subjugate, to pick the best, most promising and
brainwash them into some capitalist agenda of making our nation strong or
getting ahead in life (with no regard for others) or some other bull.
• But this isn’t what educators want, so why do we support a system that
values these things??

17. EDUCATION
• Education should be about giving people freedom and empower them to
make local change that bleeds into the greater society…

18. EDUCATION SHOULD BE ABOUT GAMING.

19. EDUCATION SHOULD BE ABOUT GAMING.
• Not the superficials of gaming: the feedback loop, the progress tracker, the
measurement of content knowledge, the mastery of pre-defined, top-down
tasks.

20. EDUCATION SHOULD BE ABOUT GAMING.
• Not the superficials of gaming: the feedback loop, the progress tracker, the
measurement of content knowledge, the mastery of pre-defined, top-down
tasks.
• Expertise is about having agency in defining which tasks to master. To
explore and push.
• But also

21. EDUCATION SHOULD BE ABOUT GAMING.
• Not the superficials of gaming: the feedback loop, the progress tracker, the
measurement of content knowledge, the mastery of pre-defined, top-down
tasks.
• Expertise is about having agency in defining which tasks to master. To
explore and push.
• But also to rebel, be subversive, to not accept the status quo.

22. EDUCATION SHOULD BE ABOUT GAMING.
• Not the superficials of gaming: the feedback loop, the progress tracker, the
measurement of content knowledge, the mastery of pre-defined, top-down
tasks.
• Expertise is about having agency in defining which tasks to master. To
explore and push.
• But also to rebel, be subversive, to not accept the status quo.
• Education should be vehicles for empathy and shared meaning.

23. EDUCATION SHOULD BE THE SAME AS GAMING.
• Not the superficials of gaming: the feedback loop, the progress tracker, the
measurement of content knowledge, the mastery of pre-defined, top-down
tasks.
• Expertise is about having agency in defining which tasks to master. To
explore and push.
• But also to rebel, be subversive, to not accept the status quo.
• Education should be vehicles for empathy and shared meaning.

24. GAMES AND EDUCATION. WTF?
Mark Chen
Director, Pepperdine Gameful Design Lab
@mcdanger
markdangerchen@gmail.com