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The Angry Birds Community: Social Learning Utopia?

The Angry Birds Community: Social Learning Utopia?

by on October 3, 2011 in Collaboration Tools, feedback, Game Mechanics, Informal Learning, Motivation, social learning, Video, YouTube

I’m not sure what it is about Angry Birds that made it so popular, but it works for me.  The game was introduced to me by my 10-year-old daughter, and we both seem to have the same (huge) amount of fun with it.

Angry Birds – the game – can certainly be used as a model for eLearning; it has all the attributes that make for effective game-based learning:  immediate rewards and feedback, increasingly challenging tasks, focus on action and decision-making.  Of course, actually creating effective eLearning with the same level of fun and excitement as Angry Birds would be a tall order, but it’s a worthy goal.

I’m interested in something more than Angry Birds’ gaming dynamics, though; I’m interested in the Angry Birds community.  We play Angry Birds on an Android phone – when we get stuck and click Hint, we are are transported to YouTube, where …

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How to Motivate Learners Without Rewards: Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivation

How to Motivate Learners Without Rewards: Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivation

by on August 16, 2011 in Motivation

After college, I jumped on an airplane and flew to Switzerland to look for work in the international organizations and “keep the party going” with several other friends that had also moved overseas. Many of us were idealistic with big ideas of “changing the world.”

Starting out, most of us stumbled into temporary administrative positions. As we compared notes, we began to observe a maddening trend. Our highest paid colleagues were often the least productive. One friend concluded that his department had hired a bevy of temps to do all of the work that the fixed-term employees, who were at the top of their pay scale and received perks such as paid home leave and educational allowances, were not doing.

So it came as no surprise when I stumbled on Dan Pink’s TEDTalk on extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation. Turns out that, except for mechanical, routine tasks of narrow focus, extrinsic …

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