{"id":949,"date":"2010-07-20T00:57:52","date_gmt":"2010-07-20T00:57:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/masteringtheobvious.wordpress.com\/?p=38"},"modified":"2010-07-20T00:57:52","modified_gmt":"2010-07-20T00:57:52","slug":"playing-to-learn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev2.agilepartnership.com\/fr\/playing-to-learn\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing to Learn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Learning can be fun.\u00a0 Heck, let\u2019s just get straight to the point and state unequivocally that learning should<\/strong> be fun, dammit!\u00a0 Learning through play is also a powerfully effective way for people of all ages to acquire and accumulate new concepts and practices.\u00a0 Current neuroscience suggests that using a variety of approaches to concretize ideas and create new neural networks through a variety of sensory engagements is the best way to for people to learn.\u00a0 Take a moment to go read Mark Levison\u2019s\u00a0 InfoQ article \u201cLearning: Best Approaches for Your Brain\u201d<\/a> for an introduction to neuroplasticity \u2014 it\u2019s a fascinating topic.<\/p>\n

As an Agile trainer (and in my never-ending experience as a student of Agile), I find that the most memorable elements of the typical 2 day Agile workshop are the games and exercises.\u00a0 Games like the Penny Game<\/a>, Mr. Happy Face<\/a>, and the Multitasking Exercise<\/a> help people take in new and challenging ideas\u00a0 in a playful context.\u00a0 I\u2019ve also observed that time spent playing in the workplace, whether participating in a structured game in a training course or informal kibitzing around the team dartboard\/foosball table\/Carcassonne board, repays the organization in fostering more fruitful and successful working relationships.\u00a0 When pressed to get a new-to-Agile team ramped up quickly to work on a new endeavour, I\u2019ve sometimes been tempted to replace the fun stuff with exercises designed around the team\u2019s actual work (and some students have suggested this in workshop retrospectives).\u00a0 My principal reservation is that as soon as you use real work as a basis for trying on a new idea, the focus is firmly placed on a successful outcome rather than exploring and experimenting with the idea and potentially failing in the process.<\/p>\n

There are many resources out there if you are interested in finding games to use in the workplace to teach new Agile concepts and build the team\u2019s collaboration muscles.\u00a0 I put together an interactive session for the June 2010 Agile Ottawa meeting where participants played several great games, including Colloborative Origami<\/a>, the Chair Game, and the Marshmallow Challenge<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Agile Games: Playing to Learn<\/a> on Prezi<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Much fun was had and no lasting damage was done (the Chair Game can get quite, um, lively).\u00a0 As this was my first Prezi and I couldn\u2019t figure out how to embed multiple links, here are my sources in easy-to-click form:<\/p>\n