An Interview with Kris Bordessa, author of Team Challenges

Today's FunCast is an all too brief telephone (hence the poor sound quality) interview with Kris Bordessa, author of Team Challenges.

Kris impressed me a great deal during our short telephone encounter, and even more as I read her book. People who acknowledge the importance of helping kids develop social skills are all too rare. Even more rare, are people who, like Kris, are able to acknowledge the value of making team building fun.

Team Challenges is a rare gift - for children, youth groups, homeschoolers, families, and even for the few people in public schools who are able to rationalize the relevance of social skills to the development of academic skills. On behalf of the whole, Ms. Bordessa, I thank you.

Learning and Fun

In today's post, friend and colleague Kevin Eikenberry writes: "We are learning beings. I believe that learning is one of the things that truly makes us most fulfilled in life. And fulfillment brings some amazing fun...We should do all we can to make the learning process more enjoyable and fun. And we need to remember that learning - both the process and the result - is fun itself." It's a key insight, one that I've spent many an hour sharing with everyone I can find - that learning is fun in itself. And that though we should be doing everything we can to make learning more fun, we must affirm and be guided by the knowledge that learning is inherently fun, and perhaps the best thing we can do is make sure we are not standing in the way of that fun.

This is in addition to a wonderful little article he wrote called "Why Fun Aids Learning and What You Can Do About It." Where he takes a more traditional perspective, focusing on what: "you can do to incorporate more fun into the learning you lead and your personal learning." Here are his five suggestions:

Learn with others. Students know that studying together in a group can be a good strategy. This can be true of us as adults too. Read a book and talk about it with others (it works for Oprah!). Get three or four people together to work on your next presentation. Do a project as a team. The results, enjoyment and learning will likely all go up.

Plan for fun. If you are doing a presentation or training, use an exercise to lighten up the session. Warning – don’t do this just for the fun – make sure you connect it to the lessons or message of the session.

Laugh and learn. The next time you make a mistake, laugh about your foible! While you are reflecting on and laughing about, your mistake, think about what you can learn from the mistake. Use the learning and the laughter to ensure the mistake isn’t repeated.

Ask about it. When you’ve experienced something fun take a few minutes to see what you can learn from the fun. What made it fun? How can you repeat those elements in another situation or with other people?

Allow fun in. Things at work may be serious. The lesson you are trying to learn may be serious. But things can be serious and still enjoyable. When we allow fun in we can help the learning process and cement the learning. The efforts you make to lighten the spirit during a serious and important situation can be richly rewarded.

In addition to all this, Kevin is also announcing his "Special Limited Time Offer" in celebration of the publication of his wonderful book Vantagepoints on Learning and Life. A while ago, Kevin had sent me a copy of the book and asked for an endorsement. Here's what I wrote: "Reading Vantagepoints on Learning and Life is lioke sitting down next to somebody who is genuinely, thoroughly kind. Someone patient enough to listen deeply to you and to himself. Someone honest. Someone fun. Someone you can be quiet with. Someone very much like a friend." It amazes and somewhat saddens me that a book of such gentle wisdom needs to be promoted at all. But Kevin is wiser than I in the ways of marketing, and has gone to great lengths, not only to promote the book, but also to offer an almost overwhelming collection of "free gifts." All in the name of the fun that is learning.

Samorost2

Samorost2 is, as those of you who are sufficiently alert might be sorely tempted to conclude, the sequel to what has subsequently become known as "Samorost1." It is currently my preferred paradigm for a kinder, gentler, and far more whimsical synthesis of computers, games, learning, and art.

It's a puzzle-game, similar in principal to Myst - a series of "point-and-click" adventure puzzles. Only, unlike Myst, you can't really die, or even make a mistake. You just go on and on, pointing, clicking, observing, and clicking some more, until you figure out that clicking on this makes that do something which makes the other thing go where you want it to, and you find yourself somewhere you haven't been before.

Graphically, the game is often surprisingly beautiful. The music and sound effects complement the art - rich and enriching. Technically, it is filled with achievements (note especially the use of light) that are bar-raising. But, for me, it's the whimsy, the pervasive humor that keeps you from taking the game or your achievements in it too seriously. Even when you can't figure out what to do next (yes, each level has a code you can use so you can get back to it in case you have to go away for awhile, far, far away), you are constantly reminded that there's nothing really important here - just the fun.

It's the most successful of games from Amanita Design, founded by Jakub Dvorsky of the Czech Republic. It crosses many borders to come to us. And brings us a newer, and far more promising world to play in.

You can play it online, until you've run out of levels. You can buy it, get many more levels, and give yourself and your children yet one more license to play.