Opening Keynote: Learning is an Epic Win
Sunday, June 23, 5:30 p.m.Jane McGonigal
From the iste2013 program:Jane McGonigal is today’s leading speaker on games and the application of game-design to education. Referencing lessons learned through her work creating games for organizations such as the World Bank, the Olympic Games, the American Heart Association, and the New York Public Library, McGonigal will discuss the powers of gameplay to solve real-world challenges, and to teach 21st century skills like resilience, urgent optimism, and extreme-scale collaboration.
In the best designed games, our engagement is perfectly optimized: we have important work to do, we’re surrounded by potential collaborators, and we learn quickly and in a low-risk environment. When we’re playing a good online game, we get constant useful feedback, we turbo-charge the neurochemistry that makes challenge fun, and we feel an insatiable curiosity about the world around us. None of this is by accident.
McGonigal will explore the concepts of resilience, how character evolves through gaming, and how gamers, constantly presented with the prospect of failure in-game, develop an ability within their real lives to attempt multiple avenues for solving problems. Like 21st-century learners, their solutions are built on an appreciation for change and collaboration.
McGonigal is an advisor and affiliate researcher with the Institute for the Future (IFTF) in Palo Alto, California, where she has served for four years as the director of game research and development. Her book, Reality Is Broken: How Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World is the definitive modern work on gamification. Learn more about Jane McGonigal and follow her on Twitter.
McGonigal will be available immediately following the keynote to sign books at ISTE Central, East Registration.
ISTE President Kecia Ray and ISTE CEO Brian Lewis will provide welcoming remarks.
