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Hello, my name is Mr. Anderson

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and my classroom is a video game

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I can't think of a better way to start


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a story better than Alice falling down the rabbit hole

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and she comes upon a bottle

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and the bottle says simply "Drink me"

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and so I am a teacher, so I wanna try to recreate that

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so what I did is I left my computer in my class

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and I had angry birds on it and then I had a card next to it


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and it simply said the word "play"


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and then I walked away


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but I want to see what happened


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so I left the webcam on


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so I got a little video that kids come into class


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so... Would you like to see that?


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(Audience: Yeah!) Yeah... As if you have an option


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Ha... Yeah...

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I love how they take turns


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And I love Jackson's eyes


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if you watch him


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Yes! Success!


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So that look in his eyes, that look of learning


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try something new and failing and try it again


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is something we inspired to see in the eyes of our kids


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we don't do that, a lot of the time it's glazed over look


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and so I want to try to apply some of these dynamics into my classroom


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so I grew up in 1980s


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playing video games, and these video games taught me lessons


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that I think we could apply to schools today


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the first thing I learned, is the video games are fun


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and school should be fun as well


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unfortunately, most kids wouldn't say their school day is fun


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however there are elements of school that all students love


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they love seeing their friends, and they love learning


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unfortunately they spend most of the day, just passively sitting down in front


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Sitting, listening to a teacher lecture¶


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so I think school should be fun


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second thing I learned, is that failure is OK


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If it takes you 8 times to clear the third elevator stage in donkey kong, that's OK


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failure is simply part of a learning process


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however, in schools, we tend to stigmatized failure


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you don't take a quiz over and over and over agian


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until you finally pass it


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in fact, failure individuals


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right now, failure in schools is highly stigmatized.


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so I think we need to send a message that failure is OK!


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The third thing I learned is the importance of leveling


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This could be applied in schools in two ways


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When a teacher decides to move in a specific pace


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that's ok for some of the students in their class


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but some of the students are automatically to be bored


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some of the students are quickly gonna be confused


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so I think students should be able to move on their own pace through mastery system


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where they master a level and they can move on to the next one


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they also should be able to level up


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becoming more powerful as they learn new material in the class


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I also think that, we give the wrong lecture at the beginning of the year


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as I said the lecture at the beginning of the year, I would say,


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You all have an A, from this point forward, you will fall precipitously , until eventually you land your final grade

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no game will ever be designed this way


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so one of the great thing to be a great teacher


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is you have a summer break


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Summer break is great because you get a break from school, but you also can reinvent your class


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make it something that's never been before


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if you try to do that during the year, if you try to make a radical changes, kids will just simply be confused


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but if you change it during the summer, you make huge, swiping changes in your class


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the kids will never know what hit them

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So, this was my dream. I wanted to reinvent my class as a video game

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but i didn't want kids just sit in front


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and watch the video game like Oregon Trail 


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where the world in common Sandiego


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I want to take them in most compelling elements 


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of gaming, then applied in the classroom


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this took a lot of work, and so I had created a class, it's called "Biohazard 5"


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It's got narrator, got the narrative, all the kids come together there


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I've created about 150 podcast that take them through the lecture


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and so when they get that point, they get kind of learned


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I have all the special activities in class


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that kids can applied the material that we're learning in the real world


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I have a bunch of inquiry labs, this one right here, is a photo of synphetheis lab


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you can see my students very riveted

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they're studying photo synthesis using little chop we cut from a leaf


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I've developed hundreds of questions that I have a mastery where the system


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students can take quizzes over and over and over again


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until they finally get it


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I have a leveling system 


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so they start with zero experience point at the beginning of the year


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I borrowed this from Lee Sheldon in the University of Indiana


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so basically they coming on day 1


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I invented the button level as the primordial soup cause I teach Biology


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So they gain their experience point, and they can move their way up like dumble octpus,


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and mountain gorilla, and maybe grand master at the end


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I also have a leader board, so they play with the avatar


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and they can see how they're doing in the class


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how they're doing to against everybody else


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this is the most popular resource in the class


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kids are constantly logged in and see how they're stacked up


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I also got a piloting set that of a iPad


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so kids got an internet connected devices at all times


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Finally, the summer was over


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and I stood in front of the class


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Like this, apparently


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[laugh] and I said


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Hello, my name is Mr. Anderson


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and my class is a video game, so what I want you to do


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is grab an iPad


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I want you to logging into Biohazard 5


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I want you to watch a video, I want you to do some reading


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I want you to take a quiz, and head off the class


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now if I have done this with my students' parents


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that would be the most frustrating day of my life


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but the kids grew up with the technology


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and the technology today simply works


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so they were headed off on their own


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So my class, is a learning classroom


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if you come in, you'll find the kids are reading, watching videos, applying,


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doing special activities, trying to solve challenges, working together or working alone


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so it's really need at the teacher come


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we were just talking in the half way through the class


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he said " well you created is like a shop class" cause he was a shop teacher once


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he said


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the shop teacher, you teach them some skills and the kids can apply that


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so it's like that


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I would love to keep telling you how great it is


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how the test score seem to be going up


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and how the kids learning how to learn independently


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but I am a science teacher


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and that's not what get us excited


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in science, what gets us excited


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is discovering something new


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so I wanna talk about 3 ways that I failed


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Number 1


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a conventional classroom is like a school bus


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where all the students were all logged in they just get on


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and the teacher is like the bus driver


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and it drives from point A to point B


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you can make sure that all the students get there


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so what I have done is like I get each of them


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a brand new car, keys, and I said "Drive"


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so some of them stalled out


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and some of them raced ahead


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and some of them drove right into a wall


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so I need to get them more scaffolding next year


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next thing I learned is the importance of reading


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kids struggled with reading when you make your class independant


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and I should've seen this coming because this is the biggest indicator of success


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and I think the reason I didn't see it coming is that 


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I never stopped talking, because that's what good teachers do


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we read the book, and then we come out with really good examples


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then we present it in a really dynamic way


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and the kids can just sit there


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and then they can learn it


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why would they want to read the book? we read it for them


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so when I forced them to read the book


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a lot of them struggled and we have to work with that


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the last thing I learned, is that we're not Vulcans


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In the most recent star trek movie


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young Spock sits in a little module and he surrounded by computer screens


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and the computer keeps throwing questions at him, and philosophy, and relativity


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and that's his school day, just sits in a module like that


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so a lot of people think they can change education by somehow use videos 


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or automating the learning process


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that sucks, who would want to be at a school like that?


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kids are coming to school to be social


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so I add elements of social learning at the class to make it more compelling


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This is a TED talk, all the good TED talks always end with a call to action


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so what can you do?


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I think schools need to move from a passive teacher-centered learning environment


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to an active student centered environment


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that's what I did


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I was off to the side now, there's a mentor in the class


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so how do we do that?


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If you are a student, you get feedback to your teachers, everything I do in my class all I got


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is a result of feedback I got from my students


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what you do if you are a parent? Your write an email if you want your schools to change


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the only emails I get from parents are complaining about their students grades


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I never get "My students had an A in your class, 


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but I have a problem with the philosophy in your class"


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that doesn't happen, so message you are sending to teachers


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is that the grade is the only thing that's important


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but maybe you're not a parent, and maybe you're not a student


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but you are human


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so what's the lesson? what's in the bottle?


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what's in there it's your passion, it's the one thing you wanna do


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can you figure out what my passion is? I love my family and I love teaching


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and if you can drink that bottle, also remembering to fail, learn


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and repeat the process over again, then I think you'll have a life worth living


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Thank you