Fix 13

I've been fascinated before by thinking about Gladwell's theory of the 10,000 hours of practice to mastery.  I hadn't really considered the gaming or gamer aspect of applying his theory to playing video games.  Although, if his theory is to be applied to academics, sports, music, etc., it makes sense that it should apply to the gaming world as well.  The statistics about how many hours students spent playing video games was astonishing to me.  It makes sense that educators should find a way to capture that interest and make it work for teaching concepts as well.  McGonigal states, "unlike their formal education, which diffuses their attention across myriad different subjects and skills, every single gaming hour is concentrated on improving at just one thing: becoming a better gamer" (Kindle Locations 4343-4345). If we can find ways to "harness" that concentrated effort on increasing skill level through playing video games, as educators, we should. 

With regard to the Settler's game, I don't know that I've seen that much of the collaboration effort. Admittedly, the amount of time I've played in the past couple of weeks has been reduced from what I'm guessing was 5 plus hours to 2.  I've continued to receive help from other players and in return, helped them, but I don't know if it is fair to say that it's been a use of "collaboration superpowers" that McGonigal mentions in the text. (Kindle Locations 4521-4522).  I can see that those who are very active in the guild definitely use the "collaboration radar" in that they always know who to go to to get the help they need or they are always there when I need help (Kindle Locations 4530-4531).

I've spent some time in the past week listening to my son while he's playing an online game with a few friends.  I hear some of the same language used in their game (different than ours) that I hear when I read the chats or my mail in Settler's.  They are offering each other help all the time.  The game he is playing is more "battle and win" type, but I heard him mention today that he had received "buffs" from another friend, so he was helping another friend with a "buff".  Hearing him use the same words we use in our game stopped me and really made me think about what was going on. 

Collaboration is a big word in the educational community now.  Many of the skills we want our students to use involve collaborating with others.  Not any different than a gamer, but a student seeking out help on a school project will use their "collaboration radar" to choose a partner.  Students who are known to be good, helpful workers are sought after in working on a class project.  I can clearly see and understand how these collaboration skills could be so useful as educators look for ways to integrate more video gaming into their classes.