Author: Kellian Pletcher
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What the FUTURE OF EDUMACATION can learn from Startup Culture
I just spent an incredible week at first the Association of Children’s Museums and then at the American Association of Museums conference. I love these things- lots of fabulous fellow nerds talking about ed tech plans and trends and how to make more people care about education, arts and culture and museums. All good stuff.…
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No budget? No excuses! 12 game prompts for limited budgets
I love museum games. But I often hear “We have zero budget and therefore, we can’t build anything.” I see why people would think you can’t have playful, interactive experiences for your visitors if you’re not a large organization but I hate hearing it because it is just completely and absolutely not true. Meaningful play can absolutely be…
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2 Red Flags When Building Fun Stuff…
People often bring the Green Door crew on to a project to make it fun. “We want people to be happy. Can we add badges to it? Can we add some graphics? How about points?”This is known- of course- as chocolate covered broccoli or: gamification. Can we have all the mechanics of a game without…
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Game Jams and Why You Should Be Running Them with Every Kid You Know Right Now
When I was a kid, I remember watching movies and TV and genuinely being upset that there was a media monopoly: I had to watch the stations’ programs because I couldn’t produce my own. They could reach millions of people. I never could. Well those days are long, long over, aren’t they? I remember that…
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On Magic Vests, Cloud Hats and the Oxymoron of Needing Rules to Play
I was really struck by Nina Simon’s post on “Magic Vests” and then Jay Cousin’s post on “Tag Cloud Hats”– all about getting strangers to interact with each other in a positive way. Nina talked about how as a gallery guide at a science museum, she would wear her magic docent vest and people would chat…
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PLEASE OH PLEASE Play my game!! The Art of Engaging People Part 2: Five action items
PLEASE PLAY! Part 2: “Who will play my game??!” I hope you’re asking this because it is exactly the right question. Sometimes people forget that if they build a game, people will not magically come out of the woodwork to play it: user acquisition is one of the hardest parts of game building. Part one…
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PLEASE OH PLEASE PLAY MY GAME… The art of engaging people Part 1: Three ideas
This last weekend I was a judge at the Mass Digi Games Challenge. It was a completely exhausting and really wonderful experience- practically a full 8 hours of games. There were a lot of games. http://www.massdigi.org/gamechallenge/ They ranged from half-done student projects to fully fleshed-out game design studio projects but for those of us who have…
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Learning play from the supreme ninja Jedi play masters with gobs of liquid cash. That’s right: Disney
Disney: building rides for a participatory generation… I spent a week geeking out at Disney World last year and I think the absolute coolest part of the whole thing is to see four generations of play/fun/pretend trends standing there right next to each other. It’s practically a museum of public play. Bear with me as I…
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What’s game-based learning? Sound super knowledgeable in 10 mins!
What is Gamification and how can I find out in ten minutes or less? Read on to find the answer. There’s growing evidence that games may have the ability to change the world. I’m not making this up: the power of games has been profiled by big-name tech periodicals like Mashable and Wired. Museums and…