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Join the Nerds!
Welcome to the funtastic world of the Fabulous Learning Nerds! Scott Schuette and Daniel Coonrod and Zeta Gardner are Learning Executives with over 50 years’ experience between them. Together they share new ideas, learning tools, approaches and technology that increase learner engagement and impact. All while having FUN! To participate in the show and community please contact them at learningnerdscast@gmail.com
The nerds are all about creating a community of learning, innovation and growth amongst educational professionals: Instructors, facilitators, instructional designers, learning and development professionals, trainers, leadership development professionals, learning metric gurus, sales enablement wizards and more. So, if you want to learn, connect, grow and have a good time doing it, The Fabulous Learning Nerds Podcast is for YOU!
Scott (00:01.23)
Hey everybody, welcome to another fantastic episode of your fabulous learning nerds. I'm Scott, your host and with us, you love him. He's here for at least another year. Dan Coonrod.
Daniel -san.
daniel (00:16.416)
What happens next year? I was about say, it's kind of ominous. Like, he's here until next year. Like, what do you know that I don't, Scott?
Scott (00:19.63)
That's up to you, sir. That is up to you. It was up to me! You're here forever! I mean, you're tot -
Scott (00:28.898)
I don't know anything. I know nothing. I just thought it was cool because it rhymed. You know? Yeah.
daniel (00:37.312)
That's fair, that's fair. I can accept the coolness of just pure rhyming. Yeah, okay.
Scott (00:42.094)
Rhyming is cool. I don't do it a lot, but occasionally it's cool. How are you my friend?
daniel (00:47.712)
Oh, I'm pretty good. Oh, I gotcha. I gotcha.
Scott (00:56.078)
I'm gonna just say this and be I Knew the end of the holiday raise your hand if this was you Ready to go back to work like ready to go back to work. Like, you know what I'm saying? I'm like, oh my gosh There's just sometimes there's just too much to do at the end of December and I'm just done with it and every you know I'm like, okay I want to go back to work at least I can kind of manage expectations there versus manage these
daniel (00:57.312)
HAHAHAHAHA
Scott (01:22.958)
ridiculous expectations that I set upon myself. I'm the worst person at it. Like, you know what I'm saying? So that was my experience. How about you, Dan?
daniel (01:31.232)
I will say that I feel like, man, I was ready to go back to work, but, but my first day back, man, that day was tough. That day was super tough. No, it's, and not for any, like any bad reason, but just like, okay, back in the office, I'll be getting the car. Let me drive back to work. Let me figure out where I gotta go again. And, oh, I've had too much time off and.
Scott (01:37.134)
Mm -hmm.
Scott (01:42.19)
Really
Scott (01:57.004)
Oh yeah.
Oh.
daniel (02:00.48)
Oh man, I'm really tired. Why am I so tired? Well, probably because, you know, like I'm sitting here in the office and like, man, it's three o 'clock. Maybe I'll go home early. I probably shouldn't do that. That sets a bad precedent for the new year. Yeah, you know.
Scott (02:09.966)
I'm ready to go home. Yeah.
Scott (02:19.534)
Yeah, no, I'm a remote mostly person. I love going into the office when I have the opportunity to go to the office, but it requires a plane ride to go to the office. You know what I'm saying? Which is fine. So it is a long commute that I don't have to do every day. Thank goodness. But I will say like from the remote experience, it was like a lot of people mailed that day and like, yeah.
daniel (02:28.992)
That's a long commute.
Scott (02:42.304)
Not probably yeah But it was good. It was good. I'm glad you had a good holiday. You know who I bet also had a good holiday You love her here. She's back everybody's it is in the house
daniel (02:42.378)
Probably. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Scott (03:04.558)
ZE -RA!
Zeta (03:05.969)
Hey, Scott. Yeah, I am. Oh, things are doing great. I'm so happy to be back at it. So happy to be back and a whole new year, a whole new us. I have some questions for you, Scott. Resolutions, do you have them? Do you have any New Year's resolutions? There's like anything that you're looking forward to this year.
Scott (03:07.822)
How's it going, my friend?
Scott (03:17.486)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Oh no. Go for it. Okay. Okay. Do I what now? Oh!
Scott (03:33.134)
Okay, loaded question. That being said, yes, I do have some New Year's resolutions. Get back into reasonable shape is number one. The shape that I have chosen, by the way, is a triangle. That's the triangle shape that I'm gonna go ahead and try to get into. I'm kidding. No, that's that. If I can be completely honest, like before the show, we were kind of talking like where do we put our efforts and where do I put my energy and.
Zeta (03:35.887)
Uh huh.
Zeta (03:57.969)
Please do.
Scott (04:02.318)
making sure that I'm doing like the stuff that we're doing here is great and I want to make sure that I'm putting enough energy here to really have an impact because this brings me joy. So more joy in my life is another resolution that we're going to have. How's that? Being a triangle and having more joy. How's that?
Zeta (04:17.584)
I think that's like the best. Yeah.
I think having more joy is perfect. Tell me how being a triangle tracks, because I don't know how that's going to work.
Scott (04:32.206)
I needed to think about that and we can talk about that shape when we're done. Daniel -san, how about you, New Year's resolutions, things you want to do this year?
daniel (04:40.768)
I don't do New Year's resolutions. Yeah, because I feel like that's just setting yourself up for success. If you've got an element that you want to change, you should probably at that moment start setting up what you want to do rather than being like, ah, you know what, because of the day, I'm going to do some introspection rather than like, you should just do the introspection when the moment strikes you. I feel like that's healthier. I'm a party pooper. Sorry.
Scott (04:43.918)
I see.
Zeta (04:44.145)
Hm. Shame.
Scott (05:07.662)
It's no, you're not a party pooper. That's the way to go. Like if you're not constantly trying to be the 2 .0 version of yourself, something's up. Right. So this idea that once a year we get to go and say, I'm going to do this this year, which isn't necessarily bad. Like, OK, cool. But what does tomorrow mean? I guess is that what you're trying to say? Like.
Zeta (05:18.641)
Oh yeah.
daniel (05:30.848)
No, a hundred percent. Like you said, version 2 .0. I'm like, I'm on like version like 7 .1 of Daniel. And that happens just because it's like, like, you know, like, man, I should probably lose some weight. If that thought strikes me in like the middle of the year, I probably shouldn't wait till like the new year to be like, oh, you know what? In January, I'm going to start working out. Like, nope, that's a bad idea. Because eventually, I'm not sure if you guys are aware of this, but January will come to an end.
Zeta (05:37.809)
Oh wow.
Scott (05:54.19)
Mm -hmm.
Scott (05:58.67)
Oh.
daniel (05:58.688)
And then the whole cause for that, like, let me go get a resolution. We'll, we'll be gone.
Zeta (06:00.431)
No.
Zeta (06:05.105)
Well, see, that's the reason why I think of it as like a focus, because you want to improve, right? But to like grab one little bit, one little section, like a focus, like finding more joy, stressing less. Like for me, I just want to learn.
Scott (06:19.662)
Ooh, OK, here it is. It's CANI, C -A -N -I. Do you guys know what CANI stands for?
Zeta (06:25.649)
Oh yeah.
daniel (06:25.792)
No. No.
Scott (06:27.414)
Constant and never -ending improvement. Can I right? That's what I the people that work for me. That's what we've got on our Deal for this year. We learned last year we got for next year Hey, we're gonna create an environment of constant never -ending improvement, which is totally awesome Yeah, kind of like the show constantly and never -ending improvement Applies what we're doing, which is a great segue to our guests are our first guest of the year
Zeta (06:28.785)
and
daniel (06:30.176)
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
Zeta (06:31.791)
Oh yeah.
Zeta (06:43.375)
Love it.
Christel Reaves (06:56.146)
Woohoo!
Scott (06:56.384)
super excited to bring her on and learn more about it. So without further ado, we're going to learn all about her in our segment that we call, What's Your Deal?
Scott (07:11.758)
Crystal!
Christel Reaves (07:13.652)
Scott!
Scott (07:15.234)
What's your deal, my friend?
Christel Reaves (07:17.588)
Love this. Well, my deal is I am a game changer. You know why? Because I find fun ways to educate. And it's awesome. So I've been doing this for 28 years. And I know you want to be a triangle, but in the past, I have been a trapezoid. And would you like to know why?
Scott (07:22.83)
Why?
Scott (07:47.022)
Yeah, please explain that. Yeah, trapezoid.
daniel (07:47.936)
Yeah, I'll bite.
Christel Reaves (07:48.34)
So this is one of those those fun games to play. Time out. Time out.
Zeta (07:51.281)
I'm intrigued.
Scott (07:52.8)
Time out, time out, time out. Please describe a trapezoid for those people who, like me, are like, I know what it is, but I can't visualize it. What is it? Yes.
Christel Reaves (08:00.836)
Okay, are you ready? It's a quadrilateral. Does that help? Yeah. So you have, you know, one side that's a little shorter than the other and then the two sides that come in, but.
Scott (08:06.574)
That has done me no good. You have def -
daniel (08:08.608)
Oh, oh, okay. Oh good, that clears everything up, math nerds.
Zeta (08:10.427)
It's a quadrilateral, but not a parallelogram. There we go.
Zeta (08:20.369)
Whatevs.
Scott (08:20.91)
Oh my god.
Scott (08:27.374)
Uh -huh.
Christel Reaves (08:29.844)
This is why I love trapezoid. Okay? This is what I used to do with my kindergarten students. They can never remember the names of all the shapes, especially trapezoid. I said, but listen to it. It sounds like what a superhero would say. Trapezoid to the rescue. Is that not fun? Yeah, I'm telling you.
Scott (08:30.158)
Okay.
Tell me.
daniel (08:53.408)
That's so awesome.
Christel Reaves (08:56.98)
Kids used to run off of the bus and say, you know, Ms. Crystal, trapezoid to the rescue. And I'm gonna tell you, this may blow your mind, but they would also say, don't ride on the bus, ride on the wrong bus.
Scott (09:05.646)
that.
Go for it.
daniel (09:14.4)
Awww. Alright everybody, thank you guys very much. Have a great night. We're done!
Scott (09:16.814)
Unbelievable.
Christel Reaves (09:17.146)
Sorry, little geometry lesson. These are kindergarten standards.
Christel Reaves (09:24.446)
Yeah, game changer, game changer right here. But really, I'm on a mission. I'm on a mission, Scott and Zayda and Daniel. I want to build communication between the classroom and the home environment through exciting games, strategies, and activities. I want teachers to use it in the classroom so they differentiate instruction, that they get kids excited about learning so they're not bored, that they're actually looking at.
Zeta (09:24.751)
Yup!
daniel (09:28.096)
That's awesome.
Christel Reaves (09:51.252)
other people, other humans in the face and communicating with them instead of ignoring them. And then they want them to push it home so that family members, they know how to engage in their child in creative ways. It's gonna happen to increase their math and literacy skills without them even knowing and build a little competition. Game changer.
Scott (10:15.566)
Wow, that is so great. And I just can't wait to dive into it and talk about some of my favorite things, which is playing games. So without that, without further ado, everybody, let's get into our topic of the week.
daniel (10:25.664)
I'm super excited.
Scott (10:36.93)
All right, our topic of this week, game changers, fun ways to educate for both kids and adults. Great stuff. Crystal, we'll start with you. Like, what are the benefits of playing games as a child?
Christel Reaves (10:51.188)
Oh, so many different benefits with children. Depending on the type of game, they're going to develop their motor skills, their coordination, their balance. With children, you're also helping them with their attention, strategic thinking, teaching them how to win and how to lose, right? Like today, so many teachers will say to me,
you know, my kids who are gifted, the minute they experience failure, they quit. So I said, you know what we have to do as teachers and as family members? We have to give kids opportunities to play games and lose. They need to feel it in the loving hands of the adults around them. So it helps them, you know, physically, cognitively, emotionally, and it gives them something to talk about with other kids, especially our kids that tend to be a little more introverted.
If they're playing say like a fact fluency game and they're whipping out the facts really fast, they're actually communicating with their neighbor and it gives them something to talk about afterwards. So we need that.
Scott (12:02.826)
That's great. How about for adults? Why is it important for us to keep playing games as adults, both inside the workplace and outside of the work?
daniel (12:03.104)
That's awesome.
Zeta (12:04.273)
Oh yeah.
Christel Reaves (12:13.072)
Oh, so many reasons. So I train educators. And honestly, when I plan for my events, I always include games. And it's funny because sometimes, like if they're high school teachers that I'm working with, they'll say, you know, Crystal, we can't really do games with our kids because that's really like, it's too elementary. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Today, I spent the day at a high school doing math games and had so much fun.
Same with adults. What does it do? It, you know, gets them physically engaged. It will cognitively challenge them. Again, the social, emotional piece is there as well. But it creates creativity and imagination. And I think it just gets people's blood flowing.
Scott (13:05.194)
So that is incredible. One of the things that you brought up right away, and I'm so glad you brought it up, like this whole idea of learning through failure, which I think is one of the best ways to learn. And as an educator or someone that's in the learning space, how many times do we create activities with failure built in? Because here's a nice safe place for people to fail where they can learn really great, right? We're not going to spend a million dollars.
Christel Reaves (13:14.926)
Yeah.
Oh.
Scott (13:34.058)
No one is going to die, we hope, right? And we can learn from it, right? It's such an important thing. The most important critical learnings I've had throughout my life are those things that didn't go the way that I wanted it to go. So I think it's finding those opportunities to build failure models into what we're doing, big, small, whatever, and then have reflection back, which is also a great place for learning, super, super critical.
Christel Reaves (13:37.166)
Bye.
daniel (13:38.022)
What?
Christel Reaves (13:41.552)
Mm -hmm.
Christel Reaves (14:00.016)
Yeah, absolutely, because the best lessons come from failure. You don't forget them.
daniel (14:06.784)
I absolutely agree. I think last week, last episode, I joked about, I didn't joke, but I mentioned like Super Mario Brothers and
Christel Reaves (14:17.008)
and
daniel (14:18.144)
training and it's because failure is built in the very first stage as you're playing it, you're given three lives, you're given three attempts and if you die, you just go right back to the start. And like even in that moment, like the game teaches you everything you need to know. And like those first, like that opening level, like, Hey, here comes a guy. If it touches you, you die. The game doesn't like turn off. It says, okay, you know that now go back to the beginning, you know, like, Hey, when you smash blocks.
Christel Reaves (14:44.656)
Yeah. Yeah.
daniel (14:48.16)
Look, stuff happens. Coins come out, mushrooms come out. Look, if you fall in this hole, you die. The game doesn't turn off. You can't ever play it again. You just get to go right back to it. And 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
Christel Reaves (14:59.376)
You can do it again. And you get better at it every time you try. Which is awesome. If kids only felt that way with writing. Every time you revise it, you get better.
Zeta (15:01.305)
Mm -hmm.
Zeta (15:07.505)
Oh yeah.
daniel (15:11.68)
Hahaha!
daniel (15:15.84)
I think I was listening to Stephen King and he was talking about writing and he says, read through your stuff, take the worst stuff you've got and throw it away. And then take the best stuff you wrote and throw that away too, because it's just words. And that's one of those things, you talk about failure and just talk about getting the ideas across, getting the point and the purpose rather than the...
Fail. Failure is important. I just today was talking with somebody about the culture they had built and how awesome it was that they left room for their teams to fail. And then a safe, psychological safety to be like, hey, I goofed up, but now I'm never going to do that again because I know. And it's awesome.
Christel Reaves (15:45.584)
Yeah. I'll do it.
Christel Reaves (16:01.936)
Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Zeta (16:04.727)
Oh yeah, like the first try you won't fly. Imagine if the Wright brothers only had one life. They would have never taken off, right? Yeah. Love it.
Scott (16:05.428)
Yeah.
daniel (16:11.786)
Yeah.
Christel Reaves (16:13.2)
Yeah.
Scott (16:15.828)
Yeah, so funny because you create that environment where there's psychological safety around making mistakes, which we do every day, right? So I'm going to make a mistake every day. Like I made one today, right? So, um, and in a meeting I was corrected. Well, make sure you change this in that slide because it's wrong and he was wrong. And so, um, I remember it was with my team and I had a little teams chat, which
happen. So we're chatting during the meeting in a side channel. I'm like, whoops, shame, shame. Well, no, no, no, no. I think that's good. So an opportunity for us, technology opportunity for us. They're going to talk what's going on. I said, oh my gosh, whoops, I should have checked that. And all of them, all of them came back. I said, no worries, man, you got this. Not a problem. No big deal. One of the things I say all the time, we're not saving babies here. And if we would, it might be different.
daniel (16:46.762)
Shame shame.
Christel Reaves (17:01.712)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Christel Reaves (17:07.888)
Yeah.
Scott (17:09.012)
Right. So but we're not like if you are saving babies, God bless you. Be perfect every time. Like that's really important. But what I'm doing today ain't that important. And so it really isn't. I mean, it is, but it's not. So we're not saying babies make mistakes. Yeah, I fix it. Learn. Move forward. I'll make sure that people prove my work next time before I show it off. Like that's totally, totally cool. Transition, if I could. Like one of the some of the things let's talk about some of the games that.
Christel Reaves (17:14.672)
Mm -hmm. That's right. Yep.
Scott (17:37.108)
you're creating in the K through 12 space and how you are facilitating those games both inside and outside of the classroom because I think it's really cool and important.
Christel Reaves (17:49.648)
Yeah, awesome. So we have a product called Learning Link and they are two to six minute videos and the platform embeds them into an email that the teacher sends home to parents. The beauty behind that email is that there's no password for the parent. All they do is open up the video. Why? I build everything that would make my life easier and passwords are the one thing that I tend to.
Forget every day. So when the family member opens up that video, it's an animated video with a game, a strategy or activity in either literacy or math. It's standard space. Again, the teacher can play it in the classroom for additional practice before they send it home. But it models for the family how they can engage with that game with their child.
And because believe it or not, there are people that don't like math. Can you believe that? I mean, it's terrible. Like trapezoid to the rescue here. So we literally, we teach the concept quickly and what's awesome because, you know, I'm a former math teacher, but I have a child who's in algebra one and you know, there are.
Scott (18:50.964)
No!
daniel (18:51.594)
Mwahahahaha!
Zeta (18:52.483)
No, no, that's heresy.
Christel Reaves (19:12.432)
things that come home and I'm like, oh man, I better lift that up. I don't remember how to do that. It's been too long. Our videos, they show graph, you know, through images, through graphics to the parents how to do it. So that way they don't even have to, you know, show their kids they don't remember how because I know my daughter, she has said to me, mom, I thought you were a math teacher. I was like, yeah, it's been a little while since I did linear equations.
Zeta (19:35.249)
Oof.
daniel (19:35.754)
Ha ha!
Zeta (19:42.267)
I'm gonna admit something. One of my favorite games when I was much younger, and I'm gonna date myself here, was called Number Crunchers. And it was like a really basic green shaped guy that you had to like, oh, what's multiples of five? And you have to crunch the numbers that were the multiples of five. And I got to admit that, I think that math game like helped unlock the love of math. Like, oh, hey, it's not just, you know,
Christel Reaves (19:43.152)
You want to?
Christel Reaves (19:52.176)
Oh, no.
Zeta (20:11.955)
doing homework, this can be fun. This can be engaging. Yeah.
Christel Reaves (20:12.912)
Yeah, it can be fun. It can be so much fun. And I love it, especially when I'm working with adults, because a lot of adults still don't like math either. And when I will do like my rock, paper, scissors, multiply game, or even monkey in the middle where you're using five playing cards to write an equation, they get so competitive. And the noise volume in the room goes up and it's pretty much like, get them all excited and then you have to bring them back down so you can move on to the next topic.
Zeta (20:33.971)
Oh no.
Scott (20:45.428)
Yeah, no, I think that's really awesome. We could probably go round robin with cool games that we've put in. I know that there was one point in time I used to do week long instruction for Fire Alarm Install Text, which is not an exciting topic. It is certainly not anything that I would want anybody to go through. Those people need it because it's important, and it was important. But I remember we...
One of the things that was always a challenge was there was always a different level for me. There was always a different level of competency in that room. I had people that have been doing it for 30 years. You get other people brand new, whatever. And so from a review perspective for start off like day two, so day one is just like dump. We're just going to dump you all this stuff, right? Somebody kill me, right? So at the end of all that, like either at the end of that day or at the beginning of the day when I wanted to do is do a review. So I created a little Jeopardy game on all that kind of stuff.
massive hit, right? Massive hit for that. By the way, there are templates for Jeopardy all over the internet. You can certainly find it's, and I think I probably reused that template for, oh my God, eight or nine different clients in the room and whatnot. And you can be creative. Like you don't have to build a board and have little buzzers and stuff like that. Like you can.
Christel Reaves (21:46.16)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Scott (22:07.892)
You can have people make their own buzzers. Like I had people make your own buzzer. Well, what does that sound like? Well, you tell me what that sounds like. And people would say, well, Scott's the best. That's my buzzer. And, and people would be yelling that out and all that good stuff. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are myriads of ways to apply competitive learning or even, um, competitive gameplay within what you're doing to reinforce stuff. And even those people who, for whatever level of competency can't participate at a level that somebody else.
Christel Reaves (22:30.532)
Mm hmm.
Christel Reaves (22:34.288)
Yeah.
Scott (22:36.66)
who maybe have more experience in, they're learning, right? So through that process of game participation and observation, they're learning. It was a wonderful experience.
Christel Reaves (22:39.568)
Yeah. Yeah.
Christel Reaves (22:45.904)
Yeah, that's awesome. You know, there's actually some background with game playing and why it increases engagement. So I worked with John Antonetti and Dr. James Garver, and they have 17 ,000 classroom walkthroughs, can't be wrong. And they did a lot of research on Phil Selecki's work called Working on the Work. And really what they did is they identified eight engaging qualities in a learning environment that will...
really raise that participant's engagement so that they're learning. And several of those is novelty and variety, which gaming will do that. Learning with others. Also giving like personal choice behind different situations in games can raise that level of engagement. So whenever you have three of those eight qualities, you're gonna have BIA. Do you know what that means?
daniel (23:43.462)
No.
Scott (23:44.178)
No.
Zeta (23:45.105)
Mm -mm.
Christel Reaves (23:45.134)
If you're a teacher, it's called butts in the air. So when kids are out of their seats and their booties are up in the air because they're just so excited and having fun, that's what you're gonna get.
Scott (23:48.852)
Ooh.
daniel (23:49.406)
Hahaha!
Zeta (23:49.619)
You
daniel (23:53.418)
Ahem.
daniel (23:59.946)
That's awesome.
Scott (24:02.068)
One of the things that I know you've talked to me on the side about is this idea of abstraction, which I think is a really important concept when we're thinking about designing, learning, designing, learning games. Could you kind of expound on that for our audience? Because I think it's a really important part of what we're talking about. Yeah.
Christel Reaves (24:18.704)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So abstraction is when you take a complex concept and you make it easier for the player to understand. So for example, most of us, we've all played Monopoly before, right? Or the game of chess. And really the abstractions are to such a degree that financial monopolies and military strategies are literally reduced to the space of a game board.
So it makes it possible for players to engage with the concepts of the strategy and the financial acquisition without having to experience war or being a monopoly themselves. So it's possible to manage them through games in an easy way for them to grasp. And Daniel with Mario Kart, they don't have to worry about oil changes or getting gas, right?
daniel (25:11.626)
No, yeah. I mean, it's a hundred percent. Like I, there are so many uses. I can think of a time I was in charge of a team and we needed to like up engagement and like we needed to teach, you know, frontline agents really complicated, like customer service, like system skills. And, you know, it's always a struggle because like, how much access do you really have and how much is going to be in the system?
Christel Reaves (25:13.104)
Yeah.
daniel (25:39.946)
and you need to teach them a whole bunch in like eight hours. And this person was like, well, we could make it a game. We could turn it into a game and we could hide all of these little bells and whistles in the system and have them doing the same things and then reveal to them, like, hey, just so you know, what you've really been doing is using the system this whole time. But we won't tell them till the end. And I was like, oh, man.
Like that seems at first, at first I was like, oh, that doesn't seem right. Yeah. But then I thought about it and I was like, I was like, no, I was like, actually that's, that's really great. Cause as soon as you tell them like, oh, Hey, you know, let's, let's dive into the systems. Let's do this. Like it's, it's work. And as soon as it's work, like that's important, but yeah, it's not fun. And like people tune out. Yeah. That's awesome.
Christel Reaves (26:05.488)
left.
Christel Reaves (26:18.896)
Yeah, barely. That's not fun.
I love it. Yeah. That's a diabolical plan that I love. And I used to do that. I used to teach in a math lab and I had walls of manipulatives. So my students would come in. I was like, listen, we're playing with toys, but if you see the principal, they're called manipulatives. And we just had so much fun.
Zeta (26:26.323)
Yeah.
daniel (26:41.96)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Christel Reaves (26:46.16)
But there is research behind this too as well when you turn things into games that people retain that information and that recall longer and better. It's really the Federation of American Scientists. They found students recall 20 % of what they hear, 30 % if you add a graphic to it. But if you put it in a game, 90 % retention.
Scott (27:12.614)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, learning by doing nothing better, nothing better. Yeah.
Christel Reaves (27:14.608)
Pretty cool. Yeah. See? Game changer.
daniel (27:15.082)
That's awesome.
Zeta (27:15.699)
That's very powerful. Yeah.
daniel (27:18.41)
Let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. So like, as somebody who's been building training and for years, you know, we get into these ideas of like how long a training should be like, oh, I've really got like 10 minutes for this CBT. I've really got like maybe like 40 minutes for this ILT. And do you think that's because we're not focused enough on engagement?
when we're building. Okay, yeah.
Christel Reaves (27:48.272)
Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I don't have to think about that. Absolutely. Because if you even knew that I had like a four day instructional leadership institute, oh, we're analyzing data with people who don't like math. They love it. They keep coming back year after year after year. Why? Because every year there's a theme. People are dressing up. We change it up.
Every 20 minutes, we make sure they're learning with others, that there's choice, that there's personal response. We model our expectations. If you put in all of those qualities, you're going to get a lot of BIA. And let me tell you, by the end of the week, they still are like, I can't believe it, but I went home and I was analyzing extra data. I cannot believe this. So you just, novelty and variety, you need to make it fun. Yeah.
Scott (28:37.308)
Mm -hmm.
daniel (28:37.482)
That's awesome. I feel like too often, especially in adult education, we just get the mentality of like, suck it up buttercup, so to speak. And like, okay, you just have to, and you have to learn this for your job. And then when retention is really low and the training doesn't land, we're like, what happened? And so to really talk about, yeah, yeah. So to focus in, yeah. So to focus in on like,
Christel Reaves (28:47.49)
Yeah.
Christel Reaves (28:56.804)
Yes, I caught it! Why did they pass the test? That's my PowerPoint.
daniel (29:07.338)
on using games as this engagement tool is awesome. I love it. It's awesome.
Christel Reaves (29:10.788)
Yeah. Yeah.
Scott (29:13.182)
I love how you brought up the environment. One of the things that I think is really important when I used to train facilitators, it's one of the first things we teach them. Create a safe environment. We don't teach our facilitators a lot, is create a fun environment. I love it. We have a theme. It's 20 degrees below zero in the middle of Winnipeg, Canada. Tomorrow is beach day. Wear your best.
Christel Reaves (29:29.092)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, please.
Christel Reaves (29:41.746)
HA HA HA!
Scott (29:42.974)
beach stuff and they all show up. They all show up all beached up. They all got their flip -flops on. They're super happy. And guess what? We've got, we've got some learning going on. Um, or, you know, sometimes, uh, I shouldn't say sometimes, but one of the tricks I always have to do, like people actually learn better if they can fiddle with stuff. And so throwing, um, little army men, or maybe, maybe that's not politically correct, but you know, I'm talking jumping jacks and balls and crayons and all this kind of stuff and put it on the table. And a lot of the.
Christel Reaves (29:46.578)
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Christel Reaves (29:52.592)
Yeah.
Christel Reaves (30:07.218)
Yes. Yes.
Scott (30:12.67)
fuzzy woods would walk into my room and go, what is this? I'm giving them things to play with while the learning is going on because they're actually going to absorb the learning a little bit better. Oh, you're crazy. No, I'm not. Today we have challenges with tech too. Maybe you could talk about that. We've got tech challenges. I'm like, bring tech into it. Bring the tech into it because you know what? They're going to be on their tech anyway.
Christel Reaves (30:16.234)
Right.
Christel Reaves (30:35.218)
Yeah. Yeah.
Scott (30:41.022)
So find a way to go ahead and bring that in. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Christel Reaves (30:41.074)
Oh, that's right!
Christel Reaves (30:45.618)
Yeah, absolutely. So we have quite a few learning games that will embed technology in them. For example, Silly Snapcat. This one, we have a series called Stop Whining and Just Read with Me Already. And that series is really about promoting nightly reading at home because research shows that when families are reading together, it increases comprehension and fluency.
helps kids with pacing and prosody in their reading. But the problem is, is we're all really busy, right? Or we're all on our devices already. So parents, if they have Snapchat, they don't actually have to snap it out to anybody, but you can change the filters and hit the button down so it records a video. Now, I have a child with ADHD who is very high energy.
This child will say, mom, can we do some more silly Snapchat? And he will literally sit there an hour. We'll go through all of the filters with all of our stories. But he's so engaged and he loves it, right? So it's a way of taking technology because most homes, I'm just assuming from the people I talk to and even my own home.
People are on devices a lot, right? And we tend to ignore our families. So if we could actually, if we're still holding that device, we can still engage in it. And there's also other reading activities. For example, if you're giving a child something to read that's slightly higher than their lexile measure, which is like their comprehension sweet spot. If you have them reading it once while you're recording it on a phone,
and you give them specific feedback on how to say it better. Like, you know, like maybe the sentence says, fabulous learning nerds is the best, but the child's like going fast.
Christel Reaves (32:49.59)
you know, signing it out slowly, learning nerds. But then the parent says, you know what, it's fabulous learning nerds. So then the next time when they read it, they're recording it, they're saying it a little bit better. So it's teaching the parent how to give their child feedback to the end where they have that expression, these are like the fabulous learning nerds. And it's right there. So I think there's a lot of ways you can use technology with learning.
Is there glitches and problems with technology? Absolutely. Is it ever going the way? No. So we need to embrace it.
Did I answer your question?
Scott (33:24.04)
Fantastic. You did. I love that question. That is fantastic. I love that. Thank you. Hey, so here's a really good one, but right back at you, right? So we've been talking a lot about games, talk about design, right? So for those of us that are, want to add a game into our curriculum, either that's a 20 minute class that we're doing, or maybe it's a week long class that you're building or whatever it is that you're building out. So.
daniel (33:25.722)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Zeta (33:26.699)
Thank you.
Scott (33:52.424)
What's best practice around how do I build that in? Do I come up with that activity first? Do I build that activity after we identify the key points? What's your experience been as far as building it up? Yeah.
Christel Reaves (34:02.184)
Hmm.
Christel Reaves (34:08.776)
the secret sauce. Okay, the secret sauce. So really what I do as an educator, first and foremost, I always have to know where my student is, whether they're a child or an adult. So I'm going to do a formative assessment in any situation, which formative assessment means for learning and understanding. You can use games very easily as a formative assessment to quickly size up your room. Do they know the concept? Do they not know the concept?
Then from there, what you can do is you'll know if you need to teach a little bit more background knowledge and then use the game as reinforcement and practice. So there's like, there's really a million ways you can do it, Scott. It just depends. But it's, I think, I think the key secret sauce is knowing where your participants are and where you want them to go.
And so you can use the games in the beginning to see where they're at. You can use the games in the end for practice. You can use the games like Daniel said earlier during the middle while they're, you know, they're learning.
Christel Reaves (35:17.958)
Yeah.
Zeta (35:19.083)
Come.
Scott (35:19.976)
All right. I'm asking a lot of questions, but I'm super hyped. Like I love, I love games. This is great, but I'm going to throw some at you, which is an activity that, um, a lot of times, um, in adult learning, we're asked to use, we, we'd know it's effective, but people hate and that's role play. Like people hate it. Like they totally hate the role play. Like we're going to role play. Oh my.
daniel (35:23.93)
Ha ha ha ha!
Christel Reaves (35:46.808)
I love it.
Scott (35:48.328)
Yeah, I know I know my experience though is that I don't have a hundred crystals in my class I have a hundred other people in my class that just hate it and so we try to mask it and say today We're not gonna roleplay today. We're gonna skill practice, but I found that adults have now figured that out like oh You're really gonna roleplay. You just change the name of it, right? So How do I get the same results right so I know that's effective I'm gonna practice what I taught and it's great. How do we get the same results in a different way?
Christel Reaves (35:51.72)
Yeah.
Christel Reaves (35:57.672)
Yes. Yeah.
daniel (36:05.818)
Ha! Ha ha ha ha ha!
Christel Reaves (36:07.272)
I have an idea for you.
Scott (36:18.408)
without dumbing it down and or trying to trick my audience. How's that?
Christel Reaves (36:23.656)
Okay, so here's an idea. You can tell me if it would work with your content, but I'm thinking reader's theater and you write it out in scripts and they actually have to act up as a character. And if you wanted to, you could give them really cool costumes, but to make them want to do it more, you can give them choice. So they have to pick which character they want to be. I don't know, would that work?
daniel (36:48.122)
I want to say I want to live in the world where I look at a room full of directors and I'm like guys I brought costumes and we're gonna be doing some roleplay activities.
Scott (37:00.072)
Absolutely! Oh my gosh! Um, okay, so -
Christel Reaves (37:00.328)
That's awesome! That's awesome!
Zeta (37:00.331)
You
daniel (37:06.074)
That's happening. That's happening.
Christel Reaves (37:06.248)
I mean, could you do sports teams instead? Could you do sports teams instead? And they have to maybe write it as like a sportscast. I mean, you have to obviously know your audience. So what makes them sick?
daniel (37:19.192)
Nope, it's all gonna be Shakespearean theater with era -appropriate costumes. That's what it is now.
Scott (37:23.336)
I've done the build... Okay.
Zeta (37:23.915)
Oh, I love it.
Christel Reaves (37:25.168)
Interpretive dance.
Scott (37:29.32)
So you have just demonstrated something that's so important because I think a lot of us get into this rut. So Dan, you brought up a really, really, really good point. My directors are going to think I'm crazy, so I'm not going to do it. So we make assumptions, right? So we are making assumptions about what people are going to say about our activities before we even put them together and we're throwing them away. And what I'm hearing from you, Crystal, is don't do that.
Christel Reaves (37:58.408)
Be bold, be brave.
Scott (38:00.008)
That's right. What's the worst that can happen, Dan? You're going to get fired? Probably not, right? At least not that day, maybe the next day. But.
daniel (38:00.506)
There you go. There you go.
Zeta (38:01.035)
Oh yeah.
Christel Reaves (38:03.72)
No.
daniel (38:05.242)
Oh, no, no, it's good. Listen, everyone will talk about that training forever. I promise no one will forget anything that happened in that class. Boom.
Christel Reaves (38:12.68)
That's right! It's memorable! 90 % right there!
Scott (38:18.952)
Like we, this is such a cathartic episode. It's a great way to start the year because I've truly believe that as, as learning folks, we, we do want to make the world a better place and we, and we are fun and we're really good people, but somewhere along the way, some of that joy just kind of goes away. And what I'm hearing from you is just like, no, no, go get that and bring it back. We're the learning experts here in the room. Everybody like, we know what we're talking about.
daniel (38:24.972)
Haha!
Christel Reaves (38:42.92)
Just do it and listen.
Scott (38:49.064)
It may sound crazy, but just go with me and do it. We're going to totally remember it. I love it. Be brave and be bold.
Zeta (38:53.867)
Yeah, it's 90%.
Christel Reaves (38:55.56)
Absolutely. Be bold, be brave. And you know the thing is, is I, we dressed up as superheroes one day and I was a last girl, the last girl, okay? There's a weight, I was a last girl and there's a weight limit on that and thank God it was virtual because I would have not passed that weight limit. But you didn't know because it was virtual. Okay? But I was, you know, I was like, are they gonna show up? Are they gonna receive this? Well, if you even see,
Scott (39:05.946)
You were last the girl?
daniel (39:13.896)
Oh, what?
Christel Reaves (39:25.108)
The costumes were amazing. They all dressed up. And I'm like, these are teachers. They're like, are they gonna do this? Like there's a lot of high school teachers there. Yeah, they were amazing. Superman, Wonder Woman, we had them all. You just have to try it. And if not, at least you had fun. I don't recommend the Alaska Girl costume. I can't even say her name. See, it's just, it's, you know, trauma.
Scott (39:39.924)
That is incredible.
daniel (39:43.706)
Hahaha!
Scott (39:50.772)
You got it elasta girl We get let's make a game out of it like you go ahead record it and say it better. Yeah for sure I'm sure you were a lovely elasta girl No, I mean you're talking to Yeah, I know I love this we could talk about this all night long, but unfortunately we can't so what I would love to do is crystal
Christel Reaves (39:54.138)
girl. Yes. Oh, there you go. What learning objectives? What learning intentions do you?
Zeta (39:57.271)
There you go.
daniel (39:57.274)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Christel Reaves (40:08.948)
Awesome.
Christel Reaves (40:12.628)
Yes.
Take care.
Scott (40:20.078)
As we wrap things up, is there something that you really wanted to talk about tonight that you didn't have the opportunity to? And or maybe there's a nice little summary and or inspirational thing you want to leave our audience with.
Christel Reaves (40:31.572)
Yeah, absolutely. First of all, thank you so much for letting me be on the Fabulous Learning Nerds. But really, I just want to ask you all to join my mission. Join my mission to have fun learning. Help me bridge communication between the classroom and the home environment through exciting game strategies and activities. If you don't mind, like and follow us on Facebook and Instagram. I believe you'll have that information up for us.
Scott (40:37.1)
Woohoo!
Christel Reaves (41:01.33)
We do a monthly fact fluency challenge because so many of the secondary schools I support say, Crystal, can you just get kids to multiply? So we do, yeah, we do monthly fact fluency challenges. We've seen 37 % learning gains in just four weeks, which is phenomenal. And more importantly, they're having a ton of fun. Like I was in a high school today with high school math students. I did the fact fluency, even though they're in algebra.
daniel (41:12.234)
Ha ha ha.
Christel Reaves (41:30.932)
in geometry, but because their fact fluency was so slow, it was hindering their ability to solve equations. So, I'm there today. We had a great time eating pizza and playing a lot of games. And you know what, about the whole failure piece, I raised kids and I was like, I don't even care how cute you are, you are going down. And I maintained my trapezoid hero position with 41 seconds.
daniel (41:57.994)
Uh.
Zeta (42:01.929)
Nice.
Christel Reaves (42:02.068)
Yeah. But I got a couple of kids that were trying it a little faster the second time. So just like and follow us, join the mission, join the challenge. Get connected, stay connected and learn for a brighter tomorrow.
Scott (42:18.99)
Crystal Reeves, thank you. Oh my gosh. Such energy, really good stuff. I really appreciate you being here. Could you do us a favor? Could you let our audience know how they could connect with you?
Christel Reaves (42:30.644)
Yeah, absolutely. Go to connectedclass .com and you will see lots of opportunities to submit your information to reach us. Or you can even go directly to my email, creebs at connectedclass .com and ask me any questions.
Scott (42:47.502)
awesome stuff. Thank you so much. We'll have to bring you back again. And I think we'll all wear our Elastigirl costumes and whatnot. It'll be perfectly a ton of fun. Thank you so much again, Crystal. Daniel -san, could you do me a favor? Could you let our audience know how they could connect with us?
Christel Reaves (42:49.972)
Thank you.