A debt to Chocolate Covered Broccoli

As I touched on in my first post I was inspired to start this blog having stumbled across the concept of 'Chocolate Covered Broccoli'. Generally the idea of using game mechanics to engage and encourage learners with subject matter which they may not naturally find interesting.

While I may have just come to it, this is far from being a new idea, and in fact the material that got me piqued my interest is from a conference 3 years ago and explored 'Intrinsic'(making the learning part of the game play)  versus 'Extrinsic' (making the learning secondary ) approaches when applied to gamification of learning.  It is a short, and for me though provoking presentation and it can be found here feel free to draw your own conclusions.

I like this presentation for a couple of reasons:

·         It applies some level of rigour to the topic, rather than just accepting that any form of 'learning game must be good' for learners

·         It gets to the point fairly quickly

·         While the generally conclusion, intrinsic is more effective that extrinsic, is not exactly a shock, it raise good questions about the challenges of developing good 'intrinsic' games based learning materials.

While this presentation is 3 years old it seems that the quality and value of game based learning is still an issue and while engagement and fun are important, without  good solid integration of well designed learning goals and challenges then many games are just that 'games'.  I plan to explore the quality of games based learning  further in the future posts, but for now I would say that if someone is trying to sell you a 'Learning Game' either a parent,  teacher, or school administrator that you look very closely at how the learning is woven into the fabric of the activity, before you part with either your, or your schools money.

So what is this about loving Broccoli?

Welcome to my new, and in fact first meaningful (hopefully) blog, Learning to Love Broccoli, so what is this about?
Well principally it is about learning, sometimes about about the things I love (which sometimes intersect with learning) and just occasionally about Broccoli.
Why Broccoli? Well I am engaged in the business of learning, mostly on the business related adult learning side (which has been my work for some years now) but also as a parent of a young currently pre-school child, and as a believer in life-long learning. So I read an amount about things to do with learning and recently came across 'Chocolate covered Broccoli'. The idea that a Green vegetable covered in chocolate might be more appealing to children (and maybe some adults) applied to learning. Many children don't like traditional learning, they often grow into young adults who find learning difficult and finally adults who find learning unappealing, rather like over cooked broccoli!
Reading about efforts to develop new ways of structuring and delivering learning, metaphorically covering it in chocolate, caught my imagination and inspired me to start this blog.
I hope to collate ideas and offer some commentary on new or different approached to learning in a range of settings, not just school (K-12) but the broader learning world, and I suspect it will not be all about technology and gamification either.
Anyway that is the plan, and if my daughter allows I will be back with some proper thoughts soon, and thanks for taking the time to read this; feedback and suggestions are very of course welcome.