I popped down after lunch to the games labs. If you are at the PLANE festival of learning, and you haven’t ventured down to the dungeons yet, it’s totally worth it! I spent some time helping out a colleague get dressed in PLANE Virtual worlds … apparently I’m known in virtual worlds for my cool outfits, according to Vivian! I checked out Kodu …. I’m totally looking into that some more tomorrow. It looks really interesting!! And I had some conversations about Leornian…. argh, the maze!! My takeaway reflections from my dungeon visit?

The main one really for me, a bit of a gamer myself, is mostly about the nature of the gamers i saw participating in these games labs. Gamers are NOT isolated. They build connections. They collaborate and communicate at high levels. They engage in problem solving activities in order to successfully achieve their goals. The fail, then fail again, then fail again until they succeed. Karran did this today whilst attempting to get her avatar in virtual worlds to do a backflip. Who doesn’t want their class to be full of students with these attributes?

Gamers aren’t always experts, and neither are the people who are teaching gaming. Those who mentor in gaming are not always the ones who know everything about what to do – they are often the ones who are willing to take a risk to figure out how to achieve a task, or succeed in a quest.

I’m typing this reflection whilst listening to Dr Sarah Howard talking about risk taking, and I think there are some definite links here! We are often worried about trying something like gaming in classroom because of the risks inherent in such a task. What do you think? Is it really worth it?

Oh, the main thing about gaming for me? It’s fun! Everyone sitting in the game labs seemed to be enjoying themselves too – that’s just my feeling, though, I took no measurable data! Fun + learning + risk taking + problem solving + ….. sounds like a great mix!!