{"id":195,"date":"2010-11-30T10:58:32","date_gmt":"2010-11-30T10:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/?p=195"},"modified":"2010-11-30T10:58:32","modified_gmt":"2010-11-30T10:58:32","slug":"fun-and-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/fun-and-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"Fun and learning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week I was invited to give a seminar to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oucs.ox.ac.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">OUCS<\/a> and rather than a more usual games talk, I decided to consider the role of fun in learning. This is a topic that seems to come up regularly at meetings and events I attend, and one that polarises opinion, so I thought it might get some interesting discussion going. I wasn&#8217;t disappointed.<\/p>\n<p>Regarding fun and learning, my argument (much truncated) is as follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The concept of &#8216;fun&#8217; is a red herring because it is too difficult to define, subjective, contextual, and there is little evidence (beyond the GBL rhetoric) that learners (and teachers) actually want learning to be fun.<\/li>\n<li>Instead, we should be focusing on: a) better understanding the nature of engagement and what we can learn from games that can be applied to education; and b) instilling a sense of playfulness in learning and supporting a culture of curiosity and experimentation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The presentation slides are available <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/nicwhitton\/what-is-the-role-of-fun-in-learning\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week I was invited to give a seminar to OUCS and rather than a more usual games talk, I decided to consider the role of fun in learning. This is a topic that seems to come up regularly at&#8230;<br \/><a class=\"read-more-button\" href=\"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/fun-and-learning\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,3],"tags":[114,165],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-thoughts","tag-fun","tag-serious-games"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p71sY0-39","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}