Any experience, however trivial in its first appearance, is capable of assuming an indefinite richness of significance by extending its range of perceived connections.

“I was brought up in an atmosphere of aspiration, aspiration for the expansion of the human spirit.  We in our home sought freedom of power in our language, freedom of imagination in our literature, freedom of soul in our religious creeds and that of mind in our social environment.  Such an opportunity has given me confidence in the power of education which is one with life and only which can give us real freedom, the highest that is claimed for man, his freedom of moral communion in the human world… I try to assert in my words and works that education has its only meaning and object in freedom–freedom from ignorance about the laws of the universe, and freedom from passion and prejudice in our communication with the human world.  In my institution I have attempted to create an atmosphere of naturalness in our relationship with strangers, and the spirit of hospitality which is the first virtue in men that made civilization possible.

“I invited thinkers and scholars from foreign lands to let our boys know how easy it is to realise our common fellowship, when we deal with those who are great, and that it is the puny who with their petty vanities set up barriers between man and man.”

–Rabindranath Tagore

How one person’s abilities compare in quantity with those of another is none of the teacher’s business. It is irrelevant to his work. What is required is that every individual shall have opportunities to employ his own powers in activities that have meaning.
A large part of the art of instruction lies in making the difficulty of new problems large enough to challenge thought, and small enough so that, in addition to the confusion naturally attending the novel elements, there shall be luminous familiar spots from which helpful suggestions may spring.

Just over a decade ago, at the very first Austin Game Conference, game designer Raph Koster gave a keynote on the significance of games and the meaning of fun, the essence of which was, paraphrasing fellow game designer Chris Crawford: 

             image

This inspiring talk led to a short cartoon-filled book called, A Theory of Fun, which laid out the interesting proposition that the fun of games depended essentially upon the player’s experience of learning: 

               image

Though the book fell out of print several times, it became a cult classic, and last October, Koster returned to the GDC to revisit the subject of fun and learning. The slides from his talk are now available as a PDF on his website, and the video of the talk can be viewed at the Game Developers Conference’s GDC Vault, a sort of TED.com for talks from past GDC events worldwide.

In his second talk, Koster was quick to point out that the connection between fun and learning had been made by great minds throughout the ages, among them Plato, Einstein, child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, and television personality Mr. Rogers:

image imageimage image

If you’ve read our ideals page, you know how profound and fundamental we view games to be in the context of education. And if it is so clear that playful fun is intimately connected to learning, and has been declared so by some of our most cherished intellectual minds for literally millenia, why is it that students report more than anything else that schools are boring?

To “learn from experience” is to make a backward and forward connection between what we do to things and what we enjoy or suffer from things in consequence. Under such conditions, doing becomes a trying; an experiment with the world to find out what it is like; the undergoing becomes instruction—discovery of the connection of things.
For the life of me I cannot fathom why we expect so much from teachers and provide them so little in return. In 1940, the average pay of a male teacher was actually 3.6 percent more than what other college-educated men earned. Today it is 60 percent lower. Women teachers now earn 16 percent less than other college-educated women. This bewilders me…There was no Plato without Socrates, and no John Coltrane without Miles Davis.

“It is very important to embrace failure and to do a lot of stuff ‒ as much stuff as possible ‒ with as little fear as possible. It’s much, much better to wind up with a lot of crap having tried it than to overthink in the beginning and not do it.” – Stefan Sagmeister

Sagmeister’s 20 lessons from Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far:

1. Helping other people helps me.

2. Having guts always works out for me.

3. Thinking that life will be better in the future is stupid. I have to live now.

4. Organising a charity group is surprisingly easy.

5. Being not truthful always works against me.

6. Everything I do always comes back to me.

7. Assuming is stifling.

8. Drugs feel great in the beginning and become a drag later on.

9. Over time I get used to everything and start taking for granted.

10. Money does not make me happy.

11. My dreams have no meaning.

12. Keeping a diary supports personal development.

13. Trying to look good limits my life.

14. Material luxuries are best enjoyed in small doses.

15. Worrying solves nothing.

16. Complaining is silly. Either act or forget.

17. Everybody thinks they are right.

18. If I want to explore a new direction professionally, it is helpful to try it out for myself first.

19. Low expectations are a good strategy.

20. Everybody who is honest is interesting.

We chose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.
This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance, and indifference.
Any experience, however trivial in its first appearance, is capable of assuming an indefinite richness of significance by extending its range of perceived connections.

“I was brought up in an atmosphere of aspiration, aspiration for the expansion of the human spirit.  We in our home sought freedom of power in our language, freedom of imagination in our literature, freedom of soul in our religious creeds and that of mind in our social environment.  Such an opportunity has given me confidence in the power of education which is one with life and only which can give us real freedom, the highest that is claimed for man, his freedom of moral communion in the human world… I try to assert in my words and works that education has its only meaning and object in freedom–freedom from ignorance about the laws of the universe, and freedom from passion and prejudice in our communication with the human world.  In my institution I have attempted to create an atmosphere of naturalness in our relationship with strangers, and the spirit of hospitality which is the first virtue in men that made civilization possible.

“I invited thinkers and scholars from foreign lands to let our boys know how easy it is to realise our common fellowship, when we deal with those who are great, and that it is the puny who with their petty vanities set up barriers between man and man.”

–Rabindranath Tagore

How one person’s abilities compare in quantity with those of another is none of the teacher’s business. It is irrelevant to his work. What is required is that every individual shall have opportunities to employ his own powers in activities that have meaning.
A large part of the art of instruction lies in making the difficulty of new problems large enough to challenge thought, and small enough so that, in addition to the confusion naturally attending the novel elements, there shall be luminous familiar spots from which helpful suggestions may spring.

Just over a decade ago, at the very first Austin Game Conference, game designer Raph Koster gave a keynote on the significance of games and the meaning of fun, the essence of which was, paraphrasing fellow game designer Chris Crawford: 

             image

This inspiring talk led to a short cartoon-filled book called, A Theory of Fun, which laid out the interesting proposition that the fun of games depended essentially upon the player’s experience of learning: 

               image

Though the book fell out of print several times, it became a cult classic, and last October, Koster returned to the GDC to revisit the subject of fun and learning. The slides from his talk are now available as a PDF on his website, and the video of the talk can be viewed at the Game Developers Conference’s GDC Vault, a sort of TED.com for talks from past GDC events worldwide.

In his second talk, Koster was quick to point out that the connection between fun and learning had been made by great minds throughout the ages, among them Plato, Einstein, child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, and television personality Mr. Rogers:

image imageimage image

If you’ve read our ideals page, you know how profound and fundamental we view games to be in the context of education. And if it is so clear that playful fun is intimately connected to learning, and has been declared so by some of our most cherished intellectual minds for literally millenia, why is it that students report more than anything else that schools are boring?

To “learn from experience” is to make a backward and forward connection between what we do to things and what we enjoy or suffer from things in consequence. Under such conditions, doing becomes a trying; an experiment with the world to find out what it is like; the undergoing becomes instruction—discovery of the connection of things.
For the life of me I cannot fathom why we expect so much from teachers and provide them so little in return. In 1940, the average pay of a male teacher was actually 3.6 percent more than what other college-educated men earned. Today it is 60 percent lower. Women teachers now earn 16 percent less than other college-educated women. This bewilders me…There was no Plato without Socrates, and no John Coltrane without Miles Davis.

“It is very important to embrace failure and to do a lot of stuff ‒ as much stuff as possible ‒ with as little fear as possible. It’s much, much better to wind up with a lot of crap having tried it than to overthink in the beginning and not do it.” – Stefan Sagmeister

Sagmeister’s 20 lessons from Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far:

1. Helping other people helps me.

2. Having guts always works out for me.

3. Thinking that life will be better in the future is stupid. I have to live now.

4. Organising a charity group is surprisingly easy.

5. Being not truthful always works against me.

6. Everything I do always comes back to me.

7. Assuming is stifling.

8. Drugs feel great in the beginning and become a drag later on.

9. Over time I get used to everything and start taking for granted.

10. Money does not make me happy.

11. My dreams have no meaning.

12. Keeping a diary supports personal development.

13. Trying to look good limits my life.

14. Material luxuries are best enjoyed in small doses.

15. Worrying solves nothing.

16. Complaining is silly. Either act or forget.

17. Everybody thinks they are right.

18. If I want to explore a new direction professionally, it is helpful to try it out for myself first.

19. Low expectations are a good strategy.

20. Everybody who is honest is interesting.

We chose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.
This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance, and indifference.
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