Transforming Education through Edutainment

[Music]

i want to begin today

by taking a walk down memory lane i want

you all to think back

to your years in school think those

mornings walking down the hall to your

classroom

the announcements blaring off of the

intercom the smell of your science

textbook at nine in the morning

now think about what kind of student you

were

perhaps you were that straight a student

you aced all your tests

did all your homework or maybe you

weren’t so great of a student

maybe you struggled in class or you

didn’t care

or you had other priorities i was

somewhere in the middle

my grades were decent enough in school

enough to make my parents happy and my

teachers content

i did okay in most of my subjects but i

was very average

as far as a student goes in fact i was

so unremarkable

i remember one time in the fourth grade

when her teacher was handing out holiday

cards to all the students in the class

before the holiday break realizing she

hadn’t given me mine

i walked up to her desk and asked her

where’s my card

i then saw the look of shock on her face

when she realized she didn’t write me

one

as if that wasn’t bad enough she then

opens her drawer

pulls out a blank card and writes one

there in front of me

really that’s just an example but i was

a very

very average student however

one fateful day everything changed

there was an event that completely

changed my life

altered my career and transformed my way

of thinking

and that day was hat day

hat day was an annual tradition at our

school one day a year

all the students would wear some silly

hat and whoever wore the silliest hat

won a prize now i never participated in

it

in fact it wasn’t even a big deal at all

but this year was different

a group of my friends were talking in

the cafeteria about which hat they were

going to wear the next day

they asked me what hat are you wearing i

didn’t know

i hadn’t thought about it i wasn’t

planning on participating

but the question did stay on my mind the

rest of the day

i went home and i ate dinner and i

started working on my homework

assignment

due the next day the homework assignment

was a science project

we were to create a display on dinosaurs

and what we knew about them

and then i had an idea and i thought to

myself

what if i made my science project my hat

so i went to my mom and i told her my

idea and my mom the most supportive

person in the world was ecstatic

she told me yes let’s do this let’s

figure this out

so we worked all evening stayed up till

two or three in the morning

brainstorming and finding crafting

materials around the house

play-doh toys aluminum foil blocks

whatever we could find

and we created a dinosaur paradise in a

hat

we took an aluminum tray turned it

upside down

put a bowl under it that would fit on my

head then on top of this tray

we created this dinosaur field we put

some boulders and some trees and some

bushes and

we created some leaf-eating dinosaurs

eating the trees and meat-eating

dinosaurs eating the leaf-eating

dinosaurs

over on this corner of the tray we had

two dinosaurs fighting over on this

corner of the tray

we had a dinosaur falling off of the hat

hanging by a string

so when i put on the head and walked it

would sway back and forth

i was so excited the next day at school

i can tell you i was no longer

unremarkable

everyone was so excited about looking at

my hat

and asking me questions students and

teachers alike

were so so excited to see the dinosaurs

living the dinosaur life on top of my

head

at the end of that very awesome day i

heard on the announcement that i had one

hat day

and better yet i got an a on my

assignment

that was such a memorable experience to

me and particularly because it got me

excited

it got me excited about school about

doing something that i previously wasn’t

very excited about

now i didn’t know it then but i was

applying early foundational concepts of

edutainment

today i want to talk to you all about

edutainment

what is it well grammatically it’s just

the blending of two words

entertainment and education you may have

heard it in various other formats

you may have heard infotainment you may

have heard gamification that’s the new

buzzword nowadays

where you take gaming elements and

applying them to non-gaming curriculum

to make things more exciting they all

mean the same thing

in fact gamification is just a specific

form

of the wider umbrella of edutainment and

it’s where you create

some kind of educational or entertaining

program or activity or some object

that has an educational purpose

compare that with the lecture the

lecture is the oldest form

of teaching spanning thousands of years

and the concept is simple one person

talks

one person listens and thus learning

happens

now edutainment takes that concept a

step further

instead of focusing on just the content

of what is being learned

it focuses on the method of delivery how

we’re delivering that content

is just as important in order for

learning to take place

we have evidence of edutainment as early

as the 1900s

when classrooms had paper-based games

to get kids educated and engaged in that

education

but as technology has continued to

evolve

so has the opportunities for edutainment

programs

in 1969 sesame street

came to television screens all across

the country and it revolutionized

education

it took phonics and numbers and letters

to children at home something they

traditionally only did at school

and they loved it

that inspired so many more programming

after that

in 1971 the electric company

also was introduced following the

success of sesame street

now teaching stem subjects to children

at home

and also with a really awesome theme

song for those of you who remember

it was amazing but 1971 was also an

important year

because that was the release of another

edutainment favorite

oregon trail a game that is nostalgic

for many here

it is a game a survival game where

students would learn about that period

of time

but it was important simply because now

there was two-way communication

rather than just sitting there and

listening and watching they can provide

input

now the learning was even more engaging

this continued in 1983 with the release

of the video game math blaster

this game allowed students to solve math

problems to shoot enemy spaceships

now making math enjoyable and accessible

to children now it didn’t stop there

edutainment continued to evolve as

technology allowed it to

then came the simulators simulated video

games for everything

teaching kids how to cook how to build

cities how to build roller coasters

how to perform surgery most recently

last year we had the release of

microsoft flight simulator 2020

which allows you to fly a realistic

aircraft in a

photorealistic depiction of real-world

environments

now edutainment doesn’t have to be

high-tech there’s plenty of

non-technology related entertainment

programs

one professor created a graphic novel to

teach cell biology to students

a card game was developed to teach

nursing students

about various health concepts various

theater games and improv games have been

developed

to teach pre-service teachers how to

work in a multicultural classroom

the possibilities are endless so when i

was a teenager i was inspired

as i took from that example on hat day i

decided i want to do more with

edutainment

so while other kids were outside playing

i was inside at home

experimenting tinkering now i wasn’t a

computer was

i can’t say i was very good at computer

programming but i did what i could with

what i had

using powerpoint microsoft powerpoint

and nothing but hyperlinks and hundreds

of slides

i created a choose your own adventure

point-and-click game

called virtual life in this game

the player took the form of an infant

and would make

small little decisions that would create

branching paths

and based on those branching paths they

would grow up and live different lives

and depending on what decisions they

made through every stage of their life

they’d have a bad ending a good ending

or a great ending

and the goal of the game was to get the

best ending possible

now this game wasn’t in any way polished

it used stock sound effects and clipart

images

but of the few people that played it

they loved it

they loved it so much the concept about

it that i created an expansion pack

using hundreds of more slides

where now you can play virtual life and

live the life of an animal

you can live the life of a turtle or a

fish and in addition to making survival

decisions you learn about their life

cycles

i loved it i was inspired i decided to

then a few years later take the concept

even further

i volunteered at a summer program for

first graders and i took the idea of

virtual life and instead created a

different kind of game

called a pirate adventure the first

graders would play the role of a cartoon

pirate sailing the seven seas and

they would learn vocabulary words and

concepts relating to boats and ships

and geography and oceans this time it

was more polished

it was fully narrated

it was so much more complex with better

animations

better sound better visuals and the kids

loved it

they had such a great time that inspired

me further to go into education as a

career

i went to college and then grad school

to be a higher education

administrator as i really wanted to work

in a college environment

and one thing i learned while i was in

school was that

while edutainment was very very popular

among children

i didn’t really see as much of it for

adults why is that

when we grow up should learning no

longer be fun

does it have to get serious i didn’t

think so

so i decided that i needed to fix that

problem and create

edutainment programs for adults the

first thing i did in grad school was

i took once again my virtual life

concepts my

powerpoint template type of game and i

created a college

management simulator you would play the

role of a college president

and make day-to-day decisions that would

help the college run smoothly

it was very well received by my peers

and one instructor i showed it to

a little later i was very involved in

theater and i enjoyed acting in plays

so i decided to write a play i wrote a

play a situational comedy

that took place inside a college and it

followed four

young college students getting into a

bunch of hijinks but also teaching you

about the day-to-day lives of college

life

the show was produced three times in

three different locations

viewed by both college goers and

non-college goers alike

they loved it there were glowing reviews

and they had a great time

but i had a problem while i can see that

people enjoyed all these works

i had no idea if they were learning and

learning is a crucial part of

edutainment

so i decided that my next program had to

have some kind of measure of learning

for the longest time i wanted to write a

book

it’s one of those things where you

procrastinate for years but i decided

this will be it

this will be the edutainment program

that i do next

so i wrote a mystery novel it had all of

your traditional mystery novel tropes

it had murders and deception and a twist

but interspersed through all of that

it also had little images of college

life

it followed various first-year college

students as they got

comfortable and they transitioned into

the college atmosphere

so taking this novel that i wrote and

published i then grabbed a group of high

school students

and i wanted to do a study all of

them were high school so they hadn’t

gone to college yet

and over the span of two weeks i had

them read this book

i tested them on their college knowledge

before reading the book

and then after reading the book and what

i found was

there was a lot of learning that

happened in those two weeks just in

those two weeks

these students learned more about making

friends about living in a dorm

talking to professors paying for college

dealing with stress

all things from just two weeks

but that’s not even the most interesting

part the most interesting part of the

study

was that the students that learned the

most or had the most drastically

changed views were the ones most

invested in the story

one particular girl a hispanic girl

afterwards had told me that she related

very strongly

to a hispanic girl in the novel named

gabriella

now gabriella was a very quiet girl and

for many parts of the book just

struggled to make friends because of her

quiet nature

so this student told me that she really

related to gabriella because she was

just like her and she was invested to

see what happened to her throughout the

rest of the story

now as someone who has taught workshops

on how to break out of your shell and

how to make friends

that is very hard to teach when they’re

not invested in learning

and she was invested one of the hardest

obstacles was passed

that is the power of edutainment

so why don’t we see so much

entertainment particularly for adults

two reasons or two thoughts that i may

have

one is money i talk to many educators

about edutainment and they tell me oh i

love the concept but it’s too expensive

to buy those programs

can’t argue with that ready-made

edutainment programs are expensive

but we’re all creative to some degree we

all have some kind of passion

can’t we just make our own programs

and then comes the second point time

we’re all busy we are we’re doing so

much with so little time

and it’s easier to go with the status

quo we have ready-made programs

ready-made curriculum

why why fix what isn’t broken

but imagine if we were to just implement

some edutainment

programs here and there and i’m not just

talking teachers

i’m talking community leaders i’m

talking parents it doesn’t have to be in

the classroom

there are so many opportunities for

implementation and as technology evolves

it allows us to create so many more

programs

to conclude edutainment is going nowhere

it’s going to be here more and more and

more and as more phone apps are

developed

and as more opportunities come about we

will be seeing it

so could you imagine if we supplemented

traditional education

and i say supplemented not replaced

because traditional education is still

important it has its value and has its

place

but if we supplement it with some

edutainment programs

could you imagine what could happen

maybe

just maybe you could inspire someone to

have a love of learning

that wasn’t there maybe

you could be someone’s next hat day

thank you

[Music]

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