Member since: June 19, 2012

A Little About Me

Some of this is in the proposal already; if I'd known this was a separate section, I would have saved it for now!  Ah well, onwards and upwards.  I've been in education for over ten years now, specialising in working with youth who experience significant difficulty existing in school successfully.  I'm 34 years old, married, with two beautiful children and a third one on the way.  For those of you wondering about the accent, I am originally from Scotland, moved to Alberta Canada four years ago and am loving every minute.  Play your cards right, and I'll do the next video using my best-in-class Sean Connery impression...

I am totally fascinated with all things education, always looking for new ways to reach kids, and my project reflects that.  As I said in my, painfully-shot(!), video, there's a strong anthropological slant to my project - it's more about the giving than the getting, although I believe that what you'll receive back will be of tremendous value.

There's a movement in gaming, and in education, towards non-traditional models of experience and learning.  I believe very strongly that these two worlds can cross-pollinate successfully to create something spectacular and worthwhile.  The shift for gaming is the effort to move away from traditional structures and themes, and this is mirrored in education, where we are truly seeing the profession gravitate away from book-based learning to experiential gain, and this is what I am interested in leveraging.

So why use a crowdfunding model?  There's still a lot of resistance in my profession to the use of games in the class, but I believe that a professionally-written and experience-based handbook can aid other teachers with similar ideas to have concrete experiences with their students.  It will also help them pitch the use of gaming more successfully to their Principals when asking for funding (or even just permission) if they have the back-up of a scholarly text to use as evidence that there is more to gaming than how it is traditionally seen.  I know with the one gaming project I managed to get off the ground before, my Principal was very sceptical and openly admitted that she was only giving me the money because there was additional, unexpected, money in the coffers!  Fortunately, that little project was really successful!

That's it in a nutshell, folks.  You'll get to know me better along the way, as I intend to post regular videos and answer evey email I get about the project.

Thanks!