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social pressures and the fear of embarrassment most likely have something to do with it.

When I teach I aim to allow students, above all, a safe place to play. The nature of play is to come together with others and experience joy as we discover more about life and the world. What could be more spiritual?

Hello ~ As school children in the 1950s, we were sent out to play "on the noon hour" everyday no matter what the weather - and it snowed, rained and scorched. It was the best part of the day even though it was tough. I remember standing in Mary Catlin's coat to stay warm. I was very little and my fingers froze. Our teachers, Sisters of St. Joseph in full habit, put on shawls and skidded down long ice chutes with black robes flowing. We played every game - pom-pom-pullaway; red-rover-red rover; dodge ball; witch-steals-the-child. We monitored ourselves on the playground - some kids were 'mothers' to others. We played our hearts out, never looked back, loved each other and let everyone play.

Here is a poem I wrote about those days

role playing.

The ritual theorists perked up and remarked that play was considered the highest form of ritual.

Play has become my hermeneutic for both preaching, study, and in many ways life.

I would wager to say that while one can understand faith without being playful, one can not have it unless one understands the give and take, the unpredictable pitfall and grace that constitutes the fabric of play.

Play, i.e., making forts, running, twirling, skipping, and making up scenarious, even gathering at night to play "kick the can," dancing, being silly, all elicit joy, pleasure and inspire confidence and hope, both now and as a child.

I became a leader in InterPlay, where story, movement, sound and stillness are paths to spontaneity and play. New ideas and relationships, deep laughter ease and grace have been the gifts that have convinced me I MUST PLAY to stay healthy and happy.

interplay.org

play therapist

I think play is the ability to imagine things differently and not feel locked in. Play is the slack in life. The way that newness can most easlity come into life. That is why play is usually fun.

nvestigate how play has shaped the mammalian brain and more specifically how a lack of play in humans can lead to a loss of neuroplasticity which is associated with all kinds of psychopathologies.

"play" can not be understood as an activity but must be recognized as a mental or neurophysiological state. When approached from this direction it becomes apparent that play can exist in virtually any circumstance or any experience as long as there is an absence of fear or threat.

no doubt that play has been THE fundamental characteristic or quality that has given homo sapiens their ability to think creatively, imaginatively, etc.

Dutch thinker Johan Huizinga was correct in his labeling humans as Homo Ludens as opposed to Homo Sapien.

The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. —Exodus 32.6

Augustine said: “Better learn learn to dance, or the angels in heaven won’t know what to do with you!”

Play is useful because it simulates real life experience — physical, emotional, and/or intellectual — in a safe, iterative and social environment, not because it has winners and losers.

The achievement lies in the act of learning and understanding itself.

interactive digital tools can offer an efficient means to provide effective contextualized learning experiences.

games as most beneficial for “low-performing students,” “students with emotional/behavioral issues,” “student with cognitive or developmental issues.” In other words, students who have been labeled and/or diagnosed because they struggle within the traditional school environment, benefit from game-based approaches

Gaming inherently involves systems-thinking which is best taught through collaborative learning.

There are connected, networked ways of knowing that will dominate the digital future. Sharing and collaboration go hand-in-hand with integrating non-competitive and non-commodified ways of playing. The way students play and learn today is the way they will work tomorrow.

Best practice/worst practice. The problem with this variant of the post hoc fallacy is that we don’t really know if the strategies all arose as a ‘one off’ case, a sample of one, or as a truly generalizeable theory of action. Heraclitus (and his kissing cousin, Chaos Theory) argues that we really can’t step twice in the same river. In other words, initial conditions are always different from case to case in the dreaded ‘real world’. Those initial conditions almost always lead one astray from the desired results. Post hoc thinking is almost always wrong.

Perhaps I will discover the best case scenario for each of my classes. Perhaps not. Perhaps the success will come in the constant trumpeting of both “baby step” successes as well as “falling and hitting our heads on the coffee table, let’s go to the emergency room” failures. I just need to move my primary default mode from hub to node. They are more responsible for their own learning than I am. I share a duty to them, but the process is messy. We are all moon calves when it comes to learning. Moon calves.

instrinsic game elements like narrative, creativity and collaboration, rather than just badges.

“The journey is to build mastery,” Farber says. “The better way to gamify is to put students in an inquiry-based or project-based learning experience. Or give them a task in a narrative frame.”

What’s missing, Farber says, is a narrative structure that places the student on a “journey,” similar to what the best games do.

create the right balance of challenge and skill, deeper knowledge and high-quality feedback.

Try to find what is inherently interesting in a subject and exploit that. It doesn’t matter if students roll their eyes. A good teacher can capture their attention and engage them before they even have a chance to think they aren’t interested

answering these questions: What are the rules of the game? What are the actions (or verbs) you are allowed to take in the game? Is there a “win” state? If so, how do you achieve it?

You can start with a drawing, create a flip book, and move to video. You can also take household items and turn them into playing pieces, transforming your kitchen table (or house!) into a game board!

love to see how you level up or progress through your game. What actions can you take to move forward?

Don’t forget

invite you to think about how you can also use your new game design skills to translate, analyze and change a complex issue.

hope that you will be inspired to explore a new medium, and create new understanding about what it means to analyze (and change!) a system.

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