"F is the new A"

~Tony Wagner, TEDx Talks

I just attended the Florida Educational Technology Virtual Conference  & Expo 2014 (FETC), and wow, what a great experience (and free)! I found Douglas Kiang's presentation eye opening, especially the tools he uses and his discussion and attention to gamer personality traits (Explorer, Achiever, Socializer, Griefer) and tools he uses to assess during class time and how he puts results to use to tailor peer programming matches and overall class dynamics.

Especially of interest were his ideas about treating grading the way kids do while learning how a game works (his "Failure Dynamic" at 22:14 in the presentation linked above). In short, he feels "engaged" kids take risks to learn when they have the option to level up (achieve game competence), save their time in point in the game, then open a new instance starting from a preceding level up point to practice "failing" to figure out how to get to the next level. To his mind, if kids could reach basic competency within a class, say, get a B, and then know, no matter what risk they take while learning, even if they fail a lot in early attempts from that point forward, they will always be able to "re-start" the process from that B evaluation. It's the difference between returning to previous work while programming when you're going out on a limb to test something, as opposed to the risk you take if you simply try to build linearly from a single code version (have to start over from scratch when things don't go as you expect). It's totally consistent with how "real world" programming works. It's all about teaching kids to teach themselves; tapping into that gets to the core of cultivating what you care about.