3D Game Lab, First Update

  As part of the teacher camp for 3D Game Lab they want us to note down things in a journal or blog of some sort. Rather than use their internal tool I'll share things here.

  First off upon getting in you have the ability to easily pick the starter quest. Completing it leads you to 4 new options. I'm not entirely sure that the titles picked by the creators were as good as possible for these quests as I didn't want to click on one because it seemed to exist only for the purpose of making a report of an issue. Actually it was a required quest that showed me how to make a report. Important lesson, name your quests well.

  I also very quickly found that I wanted to earn more XP. I simply couldn't help it. One more quest, this one is worth 25 xp. That bar could get more filled -- I got a rank up -- I have more quests available, I should look at them before I log off -- maybe I'll just do this one -- or two. Now I'm a big fan of learning so maybe this is personal and won't be as present in my students. But the simple fact that I can see my work increasing a score makes me want to get a few more points.

  From a teaching and learning perspective this is fairly revolutionary. Students are generally given a task that may or may not be graded. If they do well, they are rewarded with a good grade. If they do poorly, they are punished with a bad grade. That's the end of the story. Perhaps a teacher will give students the chance to return to their work to try to improve their grade. But these are generally only awarded to students with significantly inferior scores. The student with a B that will keep working until they get an A is generally left in the dust. 

  Here suddenly we can go beyond this model and actually hold all students to a higher standard. It's not done until it's A work. But you can keep on working on it until it gets there. It becomes a great way to always be moving forward without the millstone of previous failures. If learning is about making mistakes, why doesn't everyone get the chance to try again.