Matthew Worwood: Game-based learning isn’t just about engagement, it’s about creativity. In this episode, we dive into what it takes to design meaningful learning experiences through games, how they can work across grade levels and subject areas, and why tabletop role playing games might be one of the most powerful tools for imagination in the classroom.

Matthew Worwood: If you are thinking about new ways to bring creativity into your teaching, you will certainly want to tune in for this episode with educator Adam Watson. Hello everyone. My name is Dr. Matthew Worwood,

Cyndi Burnett: and my name is Dr. Cyndi Burnett.

Matthew Worwood: This is the Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast.

Cyndi Burnett: On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the fields of education.

Matthew Worwood: We’ll be talking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work challenges they face, and exploring new perspectives of creativity,

Cyndi Burnett: all with a goal to help fuel a more rich and informed discussion that provides. Teachers, administrators, and emerging scholars with the information they need to infuse creativity into teaching and learning.

Matthew Worwood: So let’s begin. Today we welcome to the show Adam Watson. Adam is an award-winning Kentucky public school educator who started his career in 2005. He began as a high school English teacher, became a district digital learning coordinator, and is currently a regional digital learning consultant for the Ohio Valley Educational Cooperative, which serves 14 districts with over 150,000 students.

Matthew Worwood: Adam is a frequent presenter of professional development at regional and national conferences, and in 2022, he launched Kentucky Educators for role playing games, sharing how tabletop role playing games sometimes, or perhaps often referred to as TT RPGs can positively impact student learning.

Matthew Worwood: Adam is also a writer contributing to organizations such as the Aurora Institute and Next Generation Learning Challenges. His peer review book, tabletop role playing games in the classroom, infusing gameplay into K through 12 instruction was published by McFarland in 2025. Adam, welcome to the show and congratulations on the new book.

Adam Watson: Thank you very much, both of you for having me. I’m excited to be here on the podcast with you all.

Matthew Worwood: Now listen, after five years of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast, we actually only had our first episode dedicated to gaming last season in season 11, and that was around world building. So I figure let’s take this opportunity to start from the very beginning because for some people, gaming has a bad rep.

Matthew Worwood: So gaming and education. What do we think and what do we know?

Adam Watson: That’s a great question. And one of the phrases that I usually roll out in a variation of this question when it comes up is, the last thing in the world you wanna do is a stop drop in game mentality. In a classroom or an education.

Adam Watson: Games can be a powerful vehicle. You might use the word tool or strategy or pedagogy that can really accelerate, augment, increase learning. Again, use your adjective there. But it has to be used with intentionality. So that I think is the premise behind the skeptic who might say games, come on, we’re rolling dice.

Adam Watson: How could that be educational? Certainly if it’s not intentional, if it’s not aligned with an academic objective and so on, then it just fill, like it’s filling time. It might be the equivalent of the. Put in the VHS cassette. It’s Friday before winter break. We’re just killing some time for 55 minutes. And that’s probably where I think some of that may come from also people maybe not understanding that there’s really a rich history in a lot of studies.

Adam Watson: Behind the power of play and the stigma of play in general, right? Mm-hmm. Like it’s a thing of elementary school kids and then recess stops after fifth grade. So no, none of that play. We have no time for play. Even as young children anymore, much less adults playing seems frivolous. So it’s counteracting, I think, a lot of cultural shifts there, but also not recognizing the science and the learning behind play.

Cyndi Burnett: So I wanna talk a little bit about gaming because in our last conversation I got a little confused in terms of gamification versus game-based learning. So can you tell us the difference between the two?

Adam Watson: Yes. Also, another great question that often comes up. First off, it’s important for me to say before I say a definitional kind of answer, and that’s Adam Watson’s answer.

Adam Watson: I think one of the things we have to be mindful of is not make it like a hierarchy or a good versus bad. It’s again, intentionality. That’s the first important thing. Gamification at least in my analysis and based on the research and opinions of others, gamification is the icing of the cake.

Adam Watson: It is a flavoring. It’s an aspect of game-based learning that you can bring into a learning experience. And just to give you a classic example, there’s often like a shopper’s reward card kind of system. If you go into a certain grocery and every dollar you spend is a point that maybe you can cash that in for a discount when you get some fuel.

Adam Watson: There is elements of that. That’s a classic example. Will often in positive behavior intervention systems in supports where you do good things, you get so many points, those points may be able to be cashed in, and that’s gamification. But the key thing is that no actual game was played.

Adam Watson: Game-based learning is the cake. If gamification is icing, then game-based learning is the cake. We actually learn something, whether that’s a content or practicing a skill through playing a game. And I think that’s the key thing. I think a good analogy of that is like project-based learning, where we learn about how projects in the old school, traditional way is the dessert.

Adam Watson: And if you lose time and you’re planning and you don’t do it at the last few days, ah, we can move on. It’s no big deal. Whereas PBL. Is the project, is the learning. It’s the vehicle upon which you are planning, doing, learning and practicing and applying.

Cyndi Burnett: Thank you for that. Really clear. Explanation. So can you give us an example of game-based learning? So if I was a teacher and I said I really, I don’t know where to start, what would you recommend?

Adam Watson: Obviously my forte based on the book I wrote in a lot of my passion, is the idea of tabletop role playing games.

Adam Watson: Specifically in education. So a classic example that might be a game-based learning experience is what I call from a framework for my book, an episodic. Infusion, and that’s just the idea of perhaps a one shot that might take the place over a day or two of lesson plans perhaps. And the idea of it is that we have a scenario, we have a situation, we role play through that scenario and situation.

Adam Watson: There is likely schema built going into it perhaps content-wise or otherwise, and then a reflection, debrief afterwards. That would be best practice. Wrapping it up. But the idea of it is that an adventure, if you will, is actually played, and that’s a game-based learning experience versus.

Adam Watson: A character sheet activity, which could be that from some game system. I complete a character sheet as if I’m a famous explorer or a literary character, and I defend that choices in terms of why these ability scores and why this character has this certain equipment and so on. However, as rich as that could be, I’d still call it gamification because I didn’t actually play a game with that character.

Adam Watson: Right? It was just an aspect of tabletop role playing games, or again, to use the framework language, an elemental infusion as opposed to. Actually playing a game.

Matthew Worwood: And I think there’s some important things to unpick a little bit because gaming encompasses lots of different genres and types of gaming or and even game-based learning.

Matthew Worwood: And so you are referencing not just role playing games, you are referencing. Tabletop games, and I think that was a big part that came up in our previous episode is number one you are alluding I think to that concept of world building and that you referenced a character sheet and you kinda create this character.

Matthew Worwood: That’s incredibly imaginative, but then you have to engage in a process of. Defending the decisions and why this person should win over that person. And I’m kinda like that’s what I was hearing. And so obviously, where do I go? ’cause I’m not someone that’s had huge experience playing tabletop games, and I think when I tried to get into it, it felt a little bit overly complicated and complex to tell you the truth.

Matthew Worwood: But you sound to me like you’re describing that scene in Stranger Things. Which I confess when, yes. We got connected and you’re talking about table tabletop role playing games and Dungeons and Dragons. It seemed like a really timely topic, but I know I’ve got students Yeah.

Matthew Worwood: In my class at the moment who are talking a lot about Dungeons and Dragons, so it seems like it’s coming back up. I don’t know if it is because of Stranger Things or if it’s just. A new trend that’s emerging as part of this kind of huge trend that we’re seeing repetitive from the 1980s, but tabletop games and role playing.

Matthew Worwood: And the world building piece, is there absolutely no constraints? Do you literally just. For a novice who knows nothing, are you literally just coming up with a world, character, there’s maybe some parameters, and then , a group of 11 year olds in the classroom are like deciding which character gets killed in a battle.

Matthew Worwood: I love it, but it also seems quite . Chaotic a little bit.

Adam Watson: Absolutely. You’ve really, again, you’re bringing those great things I call in my book, convincing the skeptic. I’ve really spent almost a whole chapter on that. Is this is Ttrp G’S educational convinced me ’cause I see problems.

Adam Watson: And that’s a great question. Like the one that you brought up certainly tabletop role playing games. Is a zeitgeist moment. I think it’s a little bit of the resurgence of the 1980s, and that of course ties perfectly into stranger things. It’s also, I have to say, dovetailing into another aspect, which is a little bit of a pushback on digital.

Adam Watson: I think there was a New York Times article recently, and then the title, it was Chromebook Remorse, right? That people are trying to find a respite from digital screen. So I think there’s a kind of a perfect storm combination of things to answer your question. One of the things that I think that I spend time when I facilitate professional development on TT RPGs and education I spend time in the book is dispelling the fears that it can be overwhelming.

Adam Watson: That what you just described, chaotic scene, it’s too open-ended. I don’t even know where to start. Organizing and facilitating classroom managing, it seems awful is pulling back to some basic elements. Lemme give you one small piece of that. In both T-T-R-P-G World for fun and gaming, but also I think an essential component that could be part of an educational experience is pre-generated characters.

Adam Watson: So let’s just start with, we could spend, and if there was value and a reason we could have students develop and build and create characters in a home brew system a system I’ve customized or whatever it might be. But that might be days and hours and time that we don’t necessarily need to spend.

Adam Watson: What’s my objective? So it might be that the students come to the experience and, the group of four are given a choice perhaps, but the bottom line is they’re given a selection of those pre-generated characters and let’s get to the playing as quick as possible. So these are different aspects but the last point, I’ll just say.

Adam Watson: Is that in Dungeons and Dragons? It is the classic, it’s the Kleenex of TT rpg. So you say, Hey, grab me a Kleenex. Right? It’s like, Hey, let’s play d and d. D and d is a roleplaying, tabletop, roleplaying game. Mm-hmm. But But not all tabletop roleplay games are DD you do not have to read a 300 page rule book.

Adam Watson: We can develop, scaffold, simplify, or pick other systems. It’s the idea of tabletop role playing games and don’t let the feeling of, oh, I have to read three books that are a thousand plus pages total, and memorize that before I even start. Don’t let that. Stop you before you even start a process like this.

Adam Watson: There’s ways to do it.

Cyndi Burnett: All right, Adam, I want you to pretend as if I’m coming to you as an educator, what grade do I teach?

Adam Watson: Oh, so we’re setting up a scenario?

Cyndi Burnett: Yeah. Okay. Or let’s do a little simulation here.

Adam Watson: I love it. Okay. Let’s do seventh grade.

Cyndi Burnett: Okay. I teach seventh grade.

Cyndi Burnett: I’m a seventh grade teacher in Buffalo, New York, where I live and I teach science. I love science. So I’m a seventh grade teacher from Buffalo. I teach science and I’m teaching a unit a lesson. A what?

Adam Watson: Let’s say that we’re doing a lesson and we’re looking at some aspects of biology and looking at like animal habitats.

Cyndi Burnett: I, I’m teaching a lesson on animal habitat, so how might I use tabletop role-playing games? In this lesson

Adam Watson: so one thing that you could be is you could make a really simplified system. So in this case, there might be power in creating a character, but a real simple one. So let’s say that we have a list of characteristics, and I’m gonna do a shout out.

Adam Watson: There’s a teacher named Kara rep. That I recently have talked to and came to one of our conferences, and she has a similar aspect of this that we’re about to talk about. Let’s create an animal and they have different features. They have fur, they have fangs, they have long ears. Different things might help ’em in their environment.

Adam Watson: I come up with one. You come up on, we all get together as our little animal friends, and then we have a facilitated situation. So it’s managed through maybe a random event table, so it’s not as overwhelming. It’s again, a, an aspect of managing the experience. And as we experience random events, we may have to rule some dice.

Adam Watson: And c, based on our characteristics, whether we succeed or fail. Living and surviving, right? Some of us, because we’re a fur or fangs, are gonna survive better or worse depending on the scenario. And at the end of this experience there’s maybe some kind of debrief, reflection or a group thought of how did it go?

Adam Watson: What do you think? How did our choices make a difference? How did the randomness of events be sometimes the randomness of the world that an animal might live in? And that’s just tying a bow on it. But that kind of goes and shows you a little level of from start to finish, what that could feel like and not be overwhelming.

Adam Watson: It’s just finding simple mechanics that’s app appropriate for the grade level and meeting the learners where they are.

Cyndi Burnett: Oh, that’s so much fun. And so would we each create our own animals with not a real animal, like an imaginative animal with all these different characteristics?

Adam Watson: Possibly. Possibly.

Adam Watson: Okay. And I think one of the things that’s a great opportunity to point out here is that while tabletop role playing games, especially Dungeons and Dragons, there is an aspect that traditionally in a fantasy theme, there’s swords and magic and fighting and combat. That’s just a type of tabletop role playing game or even a type of tabletop role playing game experience.

Adam Watson: We can have abilities with role checks for how we succeed or fail that don’t necessarily have anything to do with actual conflict in that sense, at least in terms of battle. It could be solving a problem or in this case, surviving in a, a habitat or a certain environment or a weather scenario or what have you.

Adam Watson: So anyway, yes. That would be maybe a quick and easy example of how that might fit and work.

Matthew Worwood: I am like really loving this. I’m sold and I’m sitting here thinking, why is it more of the education experience like this? And to bring it back to the creativity piece, to share some things that are in my mind. One is. Really fun and creative for the teacher to go and set up this experience. And obviously it sounds to me that there are some constraints that you want to identify and have.

Matthew Worwood: And of course, as a teacher, we’re always gonna be thinking about a learning objectives and that’s gonna probably guide those constraints a little bit. But I was really impressed. That I thought you was gonna go with a humanities topic, but you didn’t. You went with the sciences. So then I suddenly thought you could even have like molecules, right?

Matthew Worwood: Like you’re a science teacher and you could have the molecules and determining why this molecule’s better than this molecule, or, and you are right. , That exchange that’s taking place in that moment is furthering the learning. You can’t argue why this molecule progresses in some way without knowledge at that molecule.

Matthew Worwood: So that’s incredible. In itself. I also think probably you can see that from an assessment perspective as well. And then the other piece of it of course is that the imagination, problem solving and the mini c discoveries that are taking place from the student perspective, i’m loving it.

Adam Watson: Yeah.

Matthew Worwood: I got nothing else to say. I’m sold. I really am.

Adam Watson: I think the thing that you as lovely we need a capsule. Just put that in a box and we’re gonna sell it and go on the road. I think one of the things that you mentioned, but I wanna highlight too is the idea of true empathy, of stepping into the role or the shoes as it were.

Adam Watson: Especially in an abstract concept is something that deepens the learning or what we use in Kentucky. A phrase a lot is called vibrant learning. It’s memorable, it’s deep, it’s authentic. Real life example, there was a high school, there is a high school teacher, a named Ben Little who teaches chemistry, teaches the periodic table of elements, keep it in the science theme and if you do it traditional way, it’s a regurgitation. It’s just memorizing, but you really have, it’s all abstract. He did a thing with the personifying these elements as creatures that students created as characters, and they had a battle royale experience. They, their powers were based on their elements, and the students loved it so much that he realized he needed to develop it and , drew it out as more of a role playing game kind of experience.

Adam Watson: And the students loved it, the families of elements and how they could bond and be together as a team. And at the end of the day. They still remember that years later and they remember elements in a way that, besides an abstract number on a chart that’s over here on a wall became interior. That I think is the power of games. And I picked science specifically because social studies and English feel like an easy lift in the often are for tabletop role playing games. But there’re math and science and all sorts of content examples of other people doing it as well.

Matthew Worwood: I know my eldest, one of his most favorable learning experiences in eighth grade was when they were tasked with, it was something related to the constitution, A state. I think there was a situation in history, but they had to assume different roles and in essence, go to the state court and argue for why something should happen versus something not happening.

Matthew Worwood: And he loved the entire experience it might be that there are teachers that, you may not realize it, but some of the activities that you do already actually. Are game-based learning or with just a little bit more of a nudge could provide that game-based engagement that we’re talking about.

Adam Watson: Yes I’d love that. And that’s a major piece of advice that I think is important to emphasize, which is often it’s just a little shift. I’m not asking for people to baby in bath water and burn all their lesson plans. But find one that you felt like is really on the cusp of what could probably be with a nudge and some more game mechanics, possibly even tabletop role playing game mechanics become that much, you know, uh, level it up to use a gaming term.

Adam Watson: Here’s the other one that I often say about anything. When you’re trying to find joy and transformation in learning, pick that unit or that lesson That is awful. You know it. The students know it, right? Everyone’s bored. You’re bored teaching it. The kids are bored. No one cares. Classic example of that is I had a high school social studies teacher, friend named Lexi Ley, and she took or Reaganomics little lesson plan unit.

Adam Watson: I dunno about you, but if I’m a high school student, the economic status and power of Reaganomics and the laws made and how they affected me financially in 1980s probably feels a pretty distant and a little bit boring. And she recognized that. So she took that and she did tabletop role playing game experience for characters were randomly created in different socioeconomic statuses.

Adam Watson: And then things happen to them economically that were indicative of the times. And of course. An upper class versus a lower middle socioeconomic class, affected them differently. And at the end reflected on that. And again, the point here is that what became really dry? And it was just probably three paragraphs of a textbook back in the olden days, right?

Adam Watson: Really became a thing of I lived and experience, and I felt a little bit just to touch at least what it was like to do that. And of course, Reaganomics of all things. Came alive. So again, maybe it’s just pick that unit that it’s it’s due for revision anyway, but maybe I can take it. And by doing some game-based learning or TT RPGs or what I call polyhedral pedagogy you can, up it up and again, it’s about finding joy and about deepening and making a more vibrant experience.

Cyndi Burnett: Adam, what I love about what you’re saying is how closely related it is to creativity, because Matt and I, we’re just about to publish a book called The Future Creative, and we talk about, starting small, we talk about, being deliberate and intentionality and we talk about all of those things and I feel like gaming is just a wonderful example of creativity in action.

Cyndi Burnett: So do you think that. Games naturally. Foster creativity, or do you think that sometimes they constrain it through, rules and objectives, and how should educators think about that balance when bringing games into the classroom?

Adam Watson: A great question. One of the things that I think. Is powerful about games and rules and structures in general, is that it’s within the realms and boundaries that I think paradoxically almost creativity really fuels up to use another example or an antidote if I’m making an arcade.

Adam Watson: But I have to make it outta cardboard and analog parts, right? It’s not about program error code, but you, here’s what you got. You got this stuff in the floor or in this corner here, and you have to develop a game out of it. Then that’s where the synapses and the neurons are really firing, right? So I think restraint adds an edge to that because if you’re within this box, what do you do?

Adam Watson: But I think the other aspect of it is that in a game-based experience, you take those leaps and I think the powerful part of the creativity is that it’s risk without the possibility of what risk and failure means in other scenarios. If I risk and fail in a multiple choice quiz, then I will get an 80% and get a B minus, whatever that means.

Adam Watson: And that’s a whole nother antidote and story, right? In a traditional environment. But if I fail forward in a game. My friends can pick up the slack or save me or help out. I have another opportunity Later. A failure turns into, okay, this happens, creates a challenge. But what do you do to overcome that?

Adam Watson: That is the power. I think where creativity really comes. Where creativity is an environment that risk is not something to fear. Risk is actually sometimes part of the fun. Let me try out something, and after all, it’s not me that fails, but it’s my avatar in the game, the role I’m playing, the character I’m playing, et cetera.

Matthew Worwood: I just wanna build on that and I think we have to just. Pivot a little bit in this episode because you’re doing such a great job of articulating game-based learning in the classroom. Perhaps one of the bad rep pieces comes from the digital gameplay and but I just wanna pick up on what you say is that we know learning takes place in games.

Matthew Worwood: We know that there is problem solving around strategy, and once again, we have to keep remembering that there are. Different genres in games that are going to develop and rely on different skills. But if you just take something like Mario that everyone under, hopefully everyone listening to the episode at least knows a little bit about Mario.

Matthew Worwood: You have that kind of simple platforming game. You’ve got the character moving from left. To the right of the screen or right to the left, I can’t remember. And they’ve got these different objects. And even when you play it for the first time, you don’t know what this mushroom is or what this character does.

Matthew Worwood: And if it, it hits you, you’re dead. Wait. You jump on it or you grow. And as you’re designing these games. There’s we are gonna give the player three lives and we’re gonna give the player three lives because we know that as they’re interacting in this level for the first time, they have to fail to learn.

Matthew Worwood: So bang oh, if this thing hits me, I die. So you start again. So there’s next time that, that character or object comes your way. You now know to jump, duck, blast it out the way, whatever it might be. And there is a lot power to games. And then of course you’ve got the massive multiplayer online games where you, to your point, you see the collaboration, you’ve seen the teamwork coming in, you see different strategies.

Matthew Worwood: So just to pivot a little bit, and there is a balancing act but when it comes to gaming and parents and teachers, that might be like, I’m speaking primarily now around, digital gameplay um, too much video games, too much video games. Where are you at with that? What advice do you have?

Adam Watson: It’s often about moderation.

Adam Watson: And it’s about intentionality. It’s to quote that lovely song by Kenny Rogers, knowing when to hold them and when to fold them and when to walk away, right?

Adam Watson: And sometimes when to run. So I think the aspects here are important when it comes to digital games. I recognize, for example, that for someone that’s been staring at the phone for the last eight hours before they walked into the school, which may at this point, the class, the thing that’s happening all over the United States and others places, perhaps, is no phones.

Adam Watson: Put them away. That we might be concerned, like we don’t want to add more digitization in their lives or games. I think the thing is to make sure that we understand the intentionality of why are we doing this or we’re not playing d and d. It’s about nomenclature. Two, we’re not playing d and d in my social studies class.

Adam Watson: We’re playing a DD like game in order to. Dot. You have to be able to complete that sentence as an educator and bring in the receipts to use Another phrase that comes up in my book from John Brewer, another educator that does this. You have to bring the proof of how is it really impacting learning.

Adam Watson: I have to add really quick, I love your Mario Brothers in that side scrolling thing that you were describing. The point of that story that I really love is the power of games is versus traditional system. If Mario Brothers was a traditional school system, here’s how it would work.

Adam Watson: You would fail, and that’s duly marked and penalized. And then again and again, and then maybe the last quote, unquote, life you had. You went all the way to the end and you saved the princess, right? But that’s not what we celebrate. In a traditional system, we would say, let’s average the three lives you had.

Adam Watson: And it comes out to be that your success rate was about a 72%. So you have, you barely pass the class or maybe 68 you failed. Congratulations. Didn’t matter that you got the princess in the last run. We have to average with the points and percentages. How you did that is, I think the power of games is you immediately, literally within a second, you regenerate.

Adam Watson: You respond, let’s do it again. It’s okay. Brush the dust off and try again. And the key in a game is that you eventually baster it at your pace when you can. If that’s what we celebrate when the flag pole goes up and congratulations, it’s not actually, it took you three hours, three days, three years to complete that game.

Adam Watson: That you did it.

Cyndi Burnett: What an interesting shift to think about if we assess students based on, getting the princess at their own pace and how different grading would be and how different our school systems would be, and would that shift our motivation? Because as of right now, as you mentioned, they get to the end if they average the grades and they get a C or a B.

Cyndi Burnett: And then they never look at it again.

Cyndi Burnett: Maybe they don’t even reach the princess. Maybe they only get, to the third of the way through the game. So I think that’s a really interesting shift, and I hadn’t thought about it that way. Had you, Matt?

Matthew Worwood: No I hadn’t. I absolutely love it. And I think what I’m hearing, Adam.

Matthew Worwood: In this interview is that, hey, teachers, there might be an opportunity for some of you to actually start doing that. And I love the intention piece as well. There might be ways to configure with ai we might get getting to a point where teachers actually can design their own. Games, I’m gonna say video games, even on a screen with the remedial, because we know with the science, like particularly in math, there are some math games that have some really good success rates.

Matthew Worwood: But it’s interesting, Adam, because we are seeing all these statistics and what you’re doing and it’s more about, okay, in October you did this, in November, you do this, and we’re gathering all that data. Hopefully if. If teachers are in charge, they can say, this data can inform you, maybe modify the game in some ways, but it’s really about meeting that final objective.

Matthew Worwood: And to your point, Cyndi. In their own way, at their own pace, integrate the game elements and the mechanics that perhaps individual students need. And let’s celebrate how far along they came on the journey. And that’s what distinguishes the grade as opposed to how many, to your point, Adam, how many lives were lost along the way.

Matthew Worwood: I love it.

Adam Watson: Yeah. Yeah. You put it in the, in those stark dystopian terms, it sounds, very dramatic. But in video game terms, you have additional lives. And I love how you also put that too is the idea that it comes with three or more because it realizes you’re not likely gonna do this the first time around.

Adam Watson: And your failure one form the second, the third, the fifth, the 27th time that you do it in order to finally, eventually succeed.

Matthew Worwood: I do wanna just quickly add my eldest. I introduced the jump game. I did a blog article on Dads for Creativity, which I don’t think I’ve ever referenced on the show when you got all that time, one child, blah, blah, blah.

Matthew Worwood: And I brought in that jumps game that, not undifferent to Mario. You’re trying to like, jump over things consistently. And we focused on percentages, okay, you just got 4%. Let’s not get frustrated with the 4%. Let’s see if we can get 8%.

Matthew Worwood: Next time, and then from 8%, it’s okay, let’s try and see if we can get 17% and 30%. He lost interest and never got all the way. But my intention, I love the intentionality. My intentionality in that moment was to recognize that yes, you will fail, but then you’re gonna try again. And the goal would be to learn from that fader and get a little bit further.

Matthew Worwood: Even if it takes my eldest son three times, and maybe someone else only takes them once or twice, you’re still making that achievement.

Adam Watson: And to add to that pivoting to tabletop role playing games as an example, one of the things that’s baked into A-T-T-R-P-G classically is that you have, your friends around the table and it’s gonna take all of us collaboratively to succeed.

Adam Watson: That success is a team sport, effort. And that is something, that. All sorts of practice and skills and durable skills fall from that, effectively communicating across the table from each other, being literally face to face especially in the analog of variation and version.

Adam Watson: That’s a classic T-T-R-P-G that also ups the power of how A-T-T-R-P-G specifically can really be a rich at educational experience.

Cyndi Burnett: Well, Adam, this has been a really interesting episode and you certainly have given me so many things to talk about in our debrief. Uh, Before you go, we do wanna ask you a question.

Cyndi Burnett: We’ve been asking all of our guests. Can you share with us your most creative educational experience and why it was the most creative?

Adam Watson: Creative experience. I remember that we were reading Julius Caesar as in Shakespeare’s play. And we were able to do a project of our own to interpret an aspect and, demonstrate our learning as it were.

Adam Watson: And. That alone wasn’t something that happened tons. I certainly had some teachers back. I graduated in 1992. So to put that in perspective certainly had some teachers that here are some choices and here are some different projects or whatever you can do, but that even had its novelty. So what I decided to do is I’d been playing guitar for barely a year, maybe.

Adam Watson: And I was like, I’m gonna make the Marcus Brutus blues. I’m gonna do a blues song about, about Marcus from Marcus Brutus point of view. And I remember. All the arrangement of bringing my electric guitar in a small amplifier to the school in that classroom, and on the day that I was supposed to present.

Adam Watson: And I was so nervous. And I remember that in the minute of doing it, there was even a moment where I had, I forgot the lyrics for a second. I blanked out. But I covered it so well, and the class was really warmly enthusiastic as far as the students that they just thought I was making a moment, like I’d planned it that way.

Adam Watson: And then of course I had a reset moment and continued on with the song. I think the reason I’m sharing that is. Is that it really brought like something from the outside, something that we all as educators hopefully do more of, which is there’s a whole world that happens out there. There’s a whole world of personal interest and creativity and other aspects, talents.

Adam Watson: How can we bring those inside of a classroom? And the other part of it is that thanks to the teacher, but also thanks to my peers to give everyone in the situation credit I was encouraged. And even though in the midst of the moment where I was doing something, playing my song, it was okay.

Adam Watson: I was safe and it was an opportunity for me to play, to practice, to do. And so that was a memorable moment. Not because it was the best song written ever, that I was the best performance and guitar, electric guitar playing ever or anything like that. But just that I had an opportunity in a place where I felt like I could safely do something.

Adam Watson: And possibly even fail forward in the moment.

Matthew Worwood: I love it. I love it. Adam. Adam, I agree with Cyndi. Absolutely. Amazing show. If you’re listening and you or a colleague you’re like, you’re looking for that kind of like moment in the semester or moment in a unit that you just know.

Matthew Worwood: Isn’t that great? And you’re looking for a new experience to give to your students that might increase engagement and of course bring in some creativity, then I think this is a great episode for you to share adam, I love it. This has just been an absolutely wonderful episode. I agree with Cyndi.

Matthew Worwood: We’ve got a lot to talk about on the debrief episode. If you feel the way Cyndi and I feel, and you think you’ve got that colleague out there, and to reference something that Adam said on the show, you’ve got that kind of lesson, that unit or something within the unit, something within the semester that you know is a little bit flat.

Matthew Worwood: And needs a little bit more energy and increase creativity and engagement, then I think this is a really great episode for a colleague in that situation. So please send it that way so we can hopefully think more about how we can shift the how people see gaming, particularly around play problem solving and learning.

Matthew Worwood: My name’s Dr. Matthew Ward,

Cyndi Burnett: and my name is Dr. Cyndi Burnett. This episode was produced by Cyndi Burnett and Matthew War. Our podcast assistant is Anne Fernando, and our editor, is she Ahmed.