Bill MacKenty

10 easy ways to miss the boat

I encounter many teachers who are interested in using games in their classroom.  Most of them ask me how they can use games, and the nitty-gritty details surrounding lesson structure, assessment, and the like.

I decided to approach this questions backwards - what would be the best way to make sure games don’t work?!

1) Don’t plan anything. Just buy a random game and make the kids play it.

2) Don’t ask any important questions before they start playing.

3) Make sure you don’t connect playing the game with other learning activities - the kids should be isolated and disconnected from learning.

4) Ensure you don’t have clear learning objectives - be as foggy as possible.

5) Make sure you won’t assess the instructional activity

6) Choose a game that isn’t fun, or is a thinly veiled drill-and-kill activity. don’t use a COTS game.

7) Make sure you choose a game that does not allow saving and restarting from save points

8) Make sure you don’t talk to your technician about using games. Make sure you don’t check that the game works on your computers.

9) Under no circumstances should you play the game. No way. Make sure you don’t know anything about the game.

10) Choose a game that only allows one way of playing - make sure you VIGOROUSLY squelch any exploration or curiosity about the game.