Jonathan Cassie - Level Up Your Classroom: The Quest to Gamify Your Lessons and Engage Your Students: The Quest to Gamify Your Lessons and Engage Your Students

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I bet we're similar in a lot of ways. Game-playing and game-thinking have been in my blood since the 1970s when I was a wee lad. It didn't really matter what the game was; they were all interesting to me. Perhaps the same was true with you? All of the different things one had to do: hoping to pull the right card in Uncle Wiggly, remembering the locations of matching symbols in Hsker D, needing to roll an 8 to escape (once again) certain doom on a hotel-wielding Boardwalk in Monopoly, the physical dexterity demanded by Perfection's ever-ticking clock, and the memory of previous games when I couldn't get the pieces back into the board in timespelling catastrophe and a big mess! Yahtzee and Rummy with my grandmother (both games more strategic than you might think). Scrabble when I was a bit older with my mother. When I played these and other games, it was as though time itself were an abstraction, its passing unremarked upon because I was having so much fun. Surely it was the same with you, regardless of whether you consider yourself a "gamer" or not.

What also went unremarked was how much I was learning by playing these games: basic ideas such as taking turns and developing patience while others completed their turns, the strengthening of simple memory, improved physical coordination, an ability to recognize and act on patterns, the capacity to see what might happen in a few turns if I took one move as opposed to another, resilience when losing, and the kind of strategic thinking that emerges once you realize that Scrabble is both a game of words and a game of placement (where you choose to put your words). Perhaps most important for me, playing games gave me control over something that had a tangible quality to it. Parents and friends couldn't play for me; I had to make decisions for myself and live with whatever consequences came from those decisionsat least until the end of the game. All paths were available when the board was set up and the pieces distributed. All that mattered then was what I did next.

My sense of what a game could be was immeasurably expanded when, thanks to my father, I discovered role-playing games in their heyday of 1980s. These were games like the Choose Your Own Adventure books I loved reading so much. What dictated the flow of the game wasn't a board or a deck of cards but the limits of my imagination. Inherently social, role-playing games ask players to take on the persona of an alter-ego and direct the actions of that character through complex stories devised by a gamemaster. They often have formidably difficult rules, but these kinds of games are ultimately about the quality of the story jointly told by the players and the gamemaster. The great role-playing experiences I had while still in middle and high school not only stimulated my appreciation for orderliness (unavoidable given the rules) and the trickiness of solving highly complex problems but also deepened my love of sharing and building stories.

Skip ahead 40 years. From where I am sitting in my Pittsburgh loft, I can see no fewer than 100 board and card games featuring dozens of different playing mechanics, objectives, and intentions. This doesn't count the card games I know are hiding within translucent storage boxes, nor does it count the computer games I have loaded onto my laptop, iPad, and phone. Also uncounted are the role-playing game books that are upstairs, just out of sight; the 100+ board games at my house in California; and the still-functioning Atari 2600and Xbox consoleand Nintendo Wii. From the fertile ground of the great tabletop, role-playing, and computer games of my youth have grown my present love of games and my interest in the ways that game mechanicsthe fundamental engines of gamescan inspire transformative education.

This book has been many years in the thinking and in the writing. In that time, I have been grateful to three people who have supported me on this particular journey. First, Diane Durkin of the UCLA Educational Leadership Program, who was a tireless friend and mentor as I pursued my doctorate. Without her help, I can't imagine having finished. Second, Jason Ablin, my Head of School at Milken Community Schools in Los Angeles, who was an intellectual compatriot, colleague and supporter of this work in its nascent stages. And last, my deepest thanks and appreciation to Kolia O'Connor, my Head of School at Sewickley Academy. He is a principled scholar and visionary leader who has never been less than 100 percent supportive of me as I undertook this quirky project.

And much love to John MundyI couldn't have done any of this without his love and support.

Level 1

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You awake to a nearly blinding blast of light from the corridor outside your classroom. Startled, you look at the clock. 8:45 p.m.? Your red marking pencil is behind your ear. When did you put it there? Had you fallen asleep? You're the sort of teacher who never leaves your classroom when that final bell rings for the day. You've got too much to do. Your kids need your best effort, and that's what the time after school is for. But 8:45 is quite late, even for you. Papers are scattered across your desk. Your laptop screen is up, but dark. Your tablet rests in its stand, awaiting your instructions. Your smartphone has a host of text messages, most of them along the lines of "When are you coming home?" You shake the sleep from your tired mind and your mind turns to that flash of light. What was that about?

Being the intrepid teacher you are, you set out to investigate.

You cross your classroom, straightening the pencils on Jane's desk for the morning and putting Anwar's books inside his desk. (One day, he'll come to value organization, you're sure of it!) You hesitate, but only for a fleeting moment, before you open the door. Its hinges creak a bit as it opens. (You must remember to get some WD-40 when you go to the storethat creak is driving you and the kids crazy.) You step out into the hallway and look right. Nothing. You look left, and backlit from a source you can't discern, four figures stand in the hallway.

"Hello?" you hear yourself ask as you wonder who among your colleagues has decided to arrange such an elaborate prank.

"Hero," says one of the figures, her voice strong. She steps forward, her presence commanding. Her hand grips a staff at least two feet taller than her graceful six-foot height. Her face is radiant and youthful. Her smile is confident; her stance unmistakable in its authority. She is robed in purple silk. You're certain you've never seen her before.

"I am Lady Agon," she says. "My colleagues and I are to be your guides on a journey that will transform you."

"If you dare to risk taking it," comes a young voicemale but still with a hint of youthful enthusiasm. He somersaults in front of Lady Agon and tosses five dice in your direction. They clatter on the hard tile floor. You look at them. Five fours. You can't help yourself. "Yahtzee!" you say.

"The luck of the dice, hero," the young man says. A mustache graces his upper lip, and his smile is rakish. He can't be more than five feet tall and he's wearing some sort of, well, leather armor? He looks a bit like a character from one of those fantasy movies your students like.