February 2021

PS: Dig this comic book-like presentation? It’s a fully editable Google Slides template, and just one of the hundreds of resources already available to our community of EMC² Engagement Engineers! We’re talking endlessly resizable comic strip panels, fully illustrated text boxes, sticker sets, word art combinations — the whole nine yards. No joke: it took us […]

When Walt opened the Disneyland Theme Park in 1955, he envisioned creating a place where everyone could come and be playful together. A far cry from the seedy, shady local fairs and boardwalk carnivals of yore, Disney saw the Disneyland park as a destination where kids of all ages could safely enjoy a day on

In eXPlore Like a Pirate, Michael wrote at length about the problem of what he likes to call “The Jeopardy Effect.” Chances are if you’ve ever run a traditional game-like review activity (like Jeopardy! or Kahoot), you’ve probably seen it play out a hundred times in your classroom as well. The “Jeopardy effect” happens when

Here at EMC², we’ve developed a sort of reputation for being pretty big geeks for all things game-inspired. Michael’s Explore Like a Pirate: Gamification and Game-Inspired Course Design to Engage, Enrich and Elevate Your Learners is widely hailed as *THE* go-to book for classroom gamification 101, while John’s EDrenaline Rush: Game-changing Student Engagement Inspired by Theme Parks,

From Crossfit to Orange Theory and just about every trendy new workout craze in between, we’ve noticed a pretty clear trend. Muscle Confusion is actually, like, a really healthy way to mix up your physical fitness routine! It turns out that there a million ways to exercise your various muscle sets — and the best

Trick or treat! Well ok, not really. But the EMC² Traps & Treasures pedagogy is one clever disguise for some serious learning! And it’s an amazing way to get students fired up to do some detail-oriented work in collecting as many look-for items as they can. Remember that feeling of going door to door to get

Imagine that you’ve just been hired by the hottest toy company on the planet, and you’ve been put in charge of a top secret assignment for a product development. Do you have what it takes to launch the coolest new action figure line in time for the holiday rush!?  Whether you’re forging real American heroes,

Picture this: you’re shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean, and you and your teammates must race against the clock while outwitting, outplaying, and outlasting rival student tribes in hopes to build a signal tower that can send a distress signal and secure your safety. Which squad will earn immunity? In the immortal words of

In March of 2019, John posted a short video to his Twitter account of a training activity he’d used for a group of teachers to help illustrate the joy, wonder , and — ok, we’ll admit it — madcap enthusiasm that a clever bit of game-inspired lesson design can offer. All it took was a

Imagine that you’ve just been hired by a major software company, and you’ve been put in charge of a top secret assignment for a next-generation video game development project. Do you have what it takes to launch a major video game smash release? Play is so powerful! And gamers everywhere spend MILLIONS of hours enjoying