Rules of Play

I've just finished reading Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman.  I've found alot in there that applies to designing classroom activities, not surprising since Salen herself has found a way to apply game design to a middle school in New York called Quest to Learn (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHtj6PCpyLQ).

I've distilled the ideas into 10 concepts:

1. How to define the concept of game: What's an activity? What is a core mechanic (the basic tasks students perform during an activity such as fill in the blank or guess the word)? What is meaningful play and how does choice fit into that?
2. How to design meaningful play from the students point of view
3. How to incorporate teacing into the activity rather than lecturing
4. How to show the different ways information can be given and manipulated
5. How to walk students through a task or a series of tasks so that the goals are clear
6. How to identify and deal with different types of players (including cheaters!)
7. How to adjust the activity for different types of students
8. How to create meaningful and appropriate rewards and punishments
9. How to create emergent play
10. How to connect classroom activities to culture (and possibly subvert it!)

Stay tuned as these concepts get refined and turned into courses, projects and hopefully books!