Welcome, Knowledge Explorers
This is “Learning Is a Ball Theater’s” Playbook based on the video, “The Mission.” This learning is based on play. Why? At the Kuriosity Lab, we have discovered that people learn just as much—if not more—through play. Ask yourself how we train our country’s most skilled defenders? Air Force pilots learn to fly these most powerful machines through simulation–an adult word for play. Lots of adults go on vacation to play whether it’s skiing, boating, hiking, etc. Why as famed educator, Joseph Chilton Pearce, lucidly stated: “There is no part of play where you’re not learning.”
As far as I can tell, adults would love to play more
The Playbook is filled with games, questions, and experiments. You choose what to explore. Below are a few questions that might have some of your 100 billion brain cells firing together.
- If you could create a mission any place on Earth in any time period, where would you go, and what would you like to do?
- Do you know how to deliberately create a new game?
- Ever change a rule to a game? What happened?
- What if you took the viewpoint that everything in life could be considered a game? Could that change the way you act?
Every game has five common elements:
Mission Rules Players Environment Tools
- What kind of game could you create using these carts as Tools. The Environment is a warehouse. Anyone can be a Player? What are the rules? What’s the objective or Mission?
Can you see how you could learn Rate = Distance/Time by wanting to decrease your time around the course?
https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/172520532
Or, how about creating a game using light? Can you guess how we got this affect?
- Or, how about creating a game using glow sticks and prisms?
Here’s another one: It’s called “The Sparking Your Curiosity Game.” Do any of these questions spur your curiosity?
- What enjoyable surprise would you like to experience again?
- If you could write a hit song, or direct an award winning movie, what would it be about?
- Do you know if you’re more of a whole-to-parts learner or a parts-to-whole? Why would this knowledge be important in the way you learn in school and life?
- If you could create any new course in school, what would it be?
Does This Way of Learning Work?
If you like an activity, game, or experiment, there’s a much greater chance that you will repeat it. And if you repeat something you enjoy, an emotional connection is created. Emotions and repetition are the two most effective ways to place skills and concepts into long-term memory—where they are never forgotten. And when you repeat something you enjoy, it becomes play. And you want to do it again and again!
Is Play Real Learning?
“Play is for kids and not serious learning!” I’ve heard that many times. Then why do we train the pilots who defend us with simulations which is an adult way to say play?
The Playbook focuses one how to enjoyably learn math and English through being physically active. Ready to take this playbook out for a road test?
Create a game with one ball or more, and choose two other items as tools in the game.
Create a Mission, so players know when they win
Create Rules. In baseball, a rule is going to first base first; not third.
Identify the Players. In the game of school the players include teachers, admin and students. And parents would qualify as players as well.
Choose an Environment. Different environments can make the play very differently. Indoor track meets are very different than ones outdoors. There’s no indoor marathons–too many turns.
Was the game fun to play. Do you need to change of the five variables to see what happens?
Let us know if you want more.