Teacher Gamer
The TGPC highlights all aspects and different styles of teacher-gamers and games in education. Kids need more playful learning wherever they are getting learning: homeschools, in the classroom, school and community. And hopefully on fewer screens and on more tabletops. Although role-playing games (RPGs) are a primary focus, Teacher-Gamers can be anyone bringing a playful edge to any domain of teaching and learning. In season one we talk to Jesse Driver, Maryanne Cullinan, Aaron Vanek, Mark Hoge, Peter Jung, and Dr. Olu Taiwo. In season two we get into it with Sam The Educational DM, Kevin Jennings, & Richard Campanaro, Noan Fesnoux and the kids from Real School Budapest, Shawn O‘Docharty, and others We talk about RPGs, Life-Skills, Larping, Art, Theatre, PhDs in games development, Movie References, Homebrewing games for History class, Creative Writing, Mini-War Gaming, Picking up cheap materials, Middle school hobby and craft time, Gateways for games in schools, Setting up crypto wallets for homebrew games about real economics, tabletop gaming as a reaction to digital culture, why WarHammer is like Polo, robust character background vs pre-generated characters, homebrewing games for school focus and learner engagement through games. And more and more...
Listen on:
Episodes
Monday Nov 20, 2023
Monday Nov 20, 2023
High school teacher-gamers Kevin and Richard chat with me from Switzerland (Leysin American Boarding School) about using RPGs in history and social science classes, specifically "Creating History" RPGs like Pompeii 79AD, and Kevin's History's Mysteries game focusing around a rebellion in the Aztec empire and eventually the introduction of Hernán Cortés.
Creating historical module adventures with simplified rules as a way to get students excited about History, Social Studies and Theory of Knowledge, the main premise is: creating a stripped-back adventure template to help students and teachers create immersive role playing experiences and narratives.
New musical intro by Zach and Sevan Reznichek.
Music courtesy of the band YOU, from the album "Freedom From The Known" and John Schroeder.
Follow @teachergamerhandbook on Insta.
@TeacherGamerZ on X.
©2021-2023 Wild Mind Training Publishing
Monday Oct 16, 2023
Monday Oct 16, 2023
Welcoming REAL School Budapest kids to join the podcast and talk about their RPG "Spirits of Gaia" and Noan's "New States of Atlantis". This is how kids think and talk about games. Enjoy!
Music courtesy of the band YOU, from the album "Freedom From The Known" and John Schroeder.
Follow @teachergamerhandbook on Insta.
@TeacherGamerZ on X.
©2021-2023 Wild Mind Training Publishing
Tuesday Oct 03, 2023
Tuesday Oct 03, 2023
Sam The Educational DM talks to Zach about his playful and academic past, his method(s), and brings great insight into their continued debate about whether RPGs will ever make it into the public school system. Can we imagine school beyond SATs and siloed academia?
Music courtesy of YOU, from the album "Freedom From The Known" and John Schroeder.
©2021-2023 Wild Mind Training Publishing
Monday Oct 10, 2022
Monday Oct 10, 2022
The big themes of today’s podcast are “play”, “failure”, “improvisation”, “story” and “Eudaimonia”. How failure through play is not only creative, it creates story. Where dice meet improvisation in role-playing games we are both in first and third person at the same time.
“How do we unlock the vast universe of landscape in the imagination of each individual?”
Dr Olu Taiwo: Senior lecturer at the University of Winchester. Olu teaches in Street Arts, Visual Development and Contemporary Performance in a combination of real and virtual formats. He has a background in Fine Art, Street Dance, African percussion, physical theatre and the martial arts.
We talk about cycles, adapting through intuition, surviving through physical technology, differentiating the levels of University teachers, exploring the concept of “Kung Fu” as “flowing skill”, playing a chaotic good paladin, deciding between pro basketball and forming a theatre company. As we go deeper into what is play, we start nerding out over the randomization of dice rolling, variables, control, accidents and playing roles and how that leads to understanding our place in the world - either through the control of “editing change” or being open to how uncertainty facilitates play as a way to grow. We get into how putting masks in museums is insulting and are imprisoning them as they lie dormant. And we get philosophical about how the historical shift to writing sat the human being down to favor cognitive activities reducing our engagement with the environment with our bodies, the rhythms of the body and listening to the rhythms of nature. Fascinating stuff! Come along as we playfully explore teaching skills, applied learning approaches and share many cultural perspectives – modern, Western, African, ancient - such as “Players play with playwrights’ plays to make plays” and “I am because we are, since we are therefore I am.” And other coded fractals from the past.
His book:
Taiwo, Olugbenja Olusola Elijah (2021). The Return Beat - Interfacing with Our Interface: A Spiritual Approach to the Golden Triangle. Peter Lang, New York.
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We hope you’ve enjoyed the Teacher-Gamer Podcast. A Wild Mind Training production. Text and production copyright 2021-2022 by Wild Mind Training for Teacher-Gamer Revolution. All rights reserved.
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Sunday Jan 30, 2022
Sunday Jan 30, 2022
Fascinating conversation with Sanford Teacher Award Winner Maryanne Cullinan (@culliope on Twitter) about her approach to RPGs in Schools - including and beyond DnD. “Middle School itself is like one giant role-playing game.” We talk strategies for large scale RPG groups, her thesis around building content for games in education and how to make RPGs in Schools safe, efficient and empowering.
Wednesday Dec 29, 2021
Wednesday Dec 29, 2021
What went right this year? What changed? What were the difficulties? And other questions such as How do you find other Teacher-Gamers in your school? How can we make schools into puzzles and play environments with either device-driven or non-virtual RPGs? And how do RPGs invite opportunities to reconcile failure? And we tackle the multiheaded hydra: Can RPGs move from afterschool programs, camps, SEL and Leadership classes into transdisciplinary learning in schools?
Wednesday Dec 29, 2021
Wednesday Dec 29, 2021
We talk about the past, present and future of RPGs with a thematic focus on Challenges and Accomplishments. Joining us Aaron Vanek, Mark Hoge and Peter Jung - three professional Teacher-Gamers who develop RPGs with great care to heighten empathy, expand social emotional life-skills and champion neural diversity in their thriving communities and beyond.
Sunday Dec 12, 2021
Sunday Dec 12, 2021
Our opening episode highlights different styles of teacher-gaming.
We talk "Make Play", Mantic Games, cheap materials, MS hobby & craft time, TT vs digital culture, mini-war gaming, homebrewing
Music by John Schroeder (bandcamp) || Get the Teacher-Gamer Handbook