by Deryck Ball

So we have a new PE Prof. Today, I can say without a doubt I learned more than I did the entire last semester of  PE;  I felt engaged.  Not too sure if this is just the effects of a “new prof” or not, or the fact that we now have a female PE teacher, none the less I feel much better about the money I have spent on this course already.  It looks like we may get some value for our PE money this semester.

Anyways, enough about that.  We played this game.  I was intrigued by this game as to me it seemed like it was impossible to win.  Thus was true I found out later, if you’re thinking about the game from inside the box.  What I mean by “inside the box” is that by giving us only three rules to the game, our “box” or environment was not complete (as we have been conditioned to expect when playing games), which was done so on purpose.  We were given room to explore but instead we shut ourselves into our box and we did it with very little thought.  We applied our experiences and knowledge from similar games we had played in the past and in doing so created confusion and built a barrier to success/completion of the task.  I think this is something that our Educational system has set us up for in the past and am quickly realizing must change and will only change if we are conscience of it.   We were only given three rules.  Three Rules that’s it, and somehow we just assumed only one team could win, that we couldn’t move our home bases, that we couldn’t work together as one big team.  That was one of the biggest keys.  Our past experiences can really shape and be reflected in the present sometimes to for the negative, so I can appreciate this activity as I surely don’t want to close my students into a box.

So.  The game.  I was about to write out a description of the game, but I remember a comment made by someone who’s name I will not mention here, who said “we were all there REMEMBER?” (some of you know what I’m talking about!), so with that being said I will leave it at that and will put the game into my teaching toolkit.

-That is all