There is one thing that matters if you’re interesting in using game-media in teaching.
Cross-cultural traction (game culture and edu-culture) involves creating partnerships with parents and community as central to developing culturally relevant teaching strategies. Because both cultures have rules, which can’t be seen its a BIG mistake to think educational culture is the dominant or even a significant driver. But if that’s the reality-bubble office-chair minders in eLearning want to believe (we decide what happens), who am I to argue. Let’s have a morning tea and talk about Fabucon next week.
Game-media in the classroom has NOTHING to do with level-ups, epic wins or being fun being the opposite of depression – that’s entertainment. Entertainment is not going to save the world, but it will clearly get you attention and photo-ops with the glamorous at Cannes.
Teaching for change is a lot harder, because it means accepting high-context-cultures and ACCEPTING that at this point ed-tech is low-context-culture in realms beyond Fabucon. Media richness doesn’t mean “video” verse “text” it means culture. I watched my kids play Minecraft this weeked (raining) and at no point do I see them getting anywhere close to the same richness in the way the use computers at school – nor from what the hype-vendors and brand-aligners pass off as reality at Fabucon.
Playable 