I Just Came to Break Stuff

This is a little dry, but suck it up a little and just read on,

While I am sure I will go through much more self-discovery as the year progresses, I am starting to get a glimpse at what ‘It’s all about the process’ may be all about.  Through reading, playing, and self-reflection about past experiences, I am realizing that ‘the process’ just might be more- learning through a series of events (sometimes teaching or training,) can and should be fun… it should be about the learner’s progression of getting better at whatever they are confronting.  Not necessarily about a grade or parent-teacher conferences (the product,) but about how learning is enjoyable.  Skills and their development are not often enough explicitly thrown in front of the student/learner/trainee.  The light bulb of discovery and enjoyment at achievement often comes when they put together earlier learned principles and connect those to harder concepts and continue building from there.  Synapses fire!  Learning has occurred!

I don’t think I have ever written the word ‘enjoy-‘ in a paragraph twice.  It’s a little soft for me, considering my normal, hardened personality.  I am almost disappointed with myself.

From an interactive standpoint, games are continually drawing on this goal of building skills; from a fundamental introduction, through progressive tests, and finally in the reward of succeeding at tasks a learner may have felt were unattainable.  I am getting better at this!!!  Read the last sentence again, out loud.  It is a great feeling to finally realize that one is gaining in skill, and thus eagerly awaiting future challenges.  Games (of nearly any kind) constantly display this to the player.  Player should be synonymous with on-going active learner.  For that is what they are doing while learning game principles and attaching those skills to confront obstacles.   

There is nothing more fun or enjoyable then attaining skill through challenge and confronting a task at hand.  And then the reward?  Well, sometimes the reward is just plain expanded knowledge… and hopefully the reward also comes with a sense of accomplishment and an awareness of building on earlier learned or discovered principles to achieve amazement at one’s ability.

Game players are unwitting victims in this whole process.  The realization that they are learning is cloaked in armor and shielded under the guise of money, points, and fun at overcoming obstacles.  The process of learning is not explicitly thrown in front of them as a red-inked, circled B+ at the top of a sheet of paper.  Instead it is displayed in real-time as a “level-up” or “bring on the next challenger” to my progressive learning of this game!

Joy has now appeared five times in this post… perhaps joy is what learning, and ‘the process’ are all about.