They say time flies when you’re having fun. Here at EMC² Learning, we couldn’t agree more.
Today is a landmark occasion in the history of this playful pedagogy platform. Because as of this morning, we’ve just added our 600th fully editable resource to our ever-expanding library of student-centered classroom activities. SIX. HUNDRED. RESOURCES. Y’ALL.
As a frame of reference, there are typically just 180 instructional days in your average school year. Assuming you used a different resource from the EMC² Learning library EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. in your classroom, it would literally take you every bit of three and a half school years to make your way through the entire collection. And that number is actually far lower than the actual total, as a whole bunch of the activities that live inside of the platform are actually designed to be used across multiple days of instruction.
So how did we get here? Let’s take a trip down memory lane…
When we first launched EMC² Learning in March 2021, we weren’t exactly sure of just what we were getting ourselves into, or how big this whole thing would turn out to be. What we did know is that between us, we had a shared love of playful pedagogy, upwards of 30 years of teaching experience, and had published three books about classroom gamification and gamified course design. And over the years, we’d each developed a pretty respectable collection of tools, tips, tricks and resources that helped us bring the power of play to life in our classrooms.
But we’ll admit: there’s a whole lot of pressure to deliver something really special when critics might dismiss your entire life’s work as mere “fun and games.” We know that one-size-fits-all teaching doesn’t work, and “the game of school” is in serious need of a hard reset. Teachers are constantly told to make their classes more engaging, but the simple truth is that far too many edtech products merely offer shallow, brightly colored multiple choice button mashing contests that are really no more than 21st century Scantron exams.
Here at EMC² Learning, we wholeheartedly believe that students simply deserve a better way to play — and we provide resources to help passionate teachers tap into the power of playful lesson design to create the kinds of activities that learners of any age will want to experience again and again.
That’s why from the outset, we wanted to use this platform to help show teachers everywhere that there is serious power in playful pedagogy. Because when you strip away all of the bells and whistles, pretty much everything that the very best games provide is an inclusive, player-centered environment where creativity and strategy are openly encouraged, choice and challenge are constantly providing an endless stream of real-time feedback, and the reward for the correct answers is always harder questions.
So when COVID-19 shut down just about every avenue for traditional professional development, we decided to put our heads together and set to work on creating the platform that now stands before you today.
Armed with little more than a rudimentary knowledge of WordPress and a whole lot of free time on our hands, we spent much of the 2020 lockdown months taking meetings, teaching ourselves coding and web design, and migrating a massive collection of just over 200 resources onto this platform to help lay the foundations of this pipe dream project that we envisioned as sort of an “academic Disneyland.”
(Fun fact: we set a goal for ourselves to cross the 200 resource threshold at launch because we thought that even if the platform never quite got off the ground, it would sound really impressive to look back and be able to legitimately claim that our little website was once home to hunDREDS — with an “s” — of fully editable resources. Little did we know how right that prediction would go on to be!)
Aspirationally, though, we had much, much bigger plans than settling to look back on little more than a failed launch and a ton of wasted potential.
Full of life, creativity, wonder and excitement with each new addition — our vision for the site was that, like Disneyland, it would never truly be complete. And if our dream was to turn into reality, then perhaps our playful alternative to traditional PD might just end up serving as an online happy place where passionate teachers everywhere could enjoy all kinds of resources designed to help them make meaningful shifts to creating more student-centered, feedback-focused classrooms for learners of any age.
In August of 2022, we relaunched the entire site to add faster search features, detailed resource write-ups, and a more intuitive user interface to celebrate the start of the new school year.
In October of 2022, we crossed the milestone threshold of a whopping 500 fully editable resources available inside the EMC² Learning platform.
In November of 2022, District Administration Magazine named EMC² Learning a finalist in its list of Top EdTech Products of 2023.
In January of 2023, EMC² Learning was named the winner of the Future of Education Technology Conference Pitchfest in the category of Best Online Classes.
Today, we celebrate the addition of our 600th fully editable resource.
And we are truly just getting started.
Inside the EMC² Learning platform you’ll find dozens of sub-categories and activity collections that can quickly be leveraged into any stage of your lesson planning to help you bring the fun and excitement of a fully gamified classroom far beyond the confines of a single review day. So whether you’re looking to Lose the Lecture, mix things up with a Team Building activity, dip your toes into the uncharted waters of Artificial Intelligence, or throw your students a curveball with a high-energy Alternative Assessment, we’ve got plenty of resources to help you get the job done with creative solutions that are ready to roll.
Maximum student-centered engagement with minimal teacher prep? Now that’s a game changer!
Whether you’re a long-time user or a new visitor to our platform, we’re confident that you’ll find something to love in our ever-expanding library. Our resources are created and tested by real, live, experienced educators with a passion for playful pedagogy (not to mention a willingness to put in a ton of behind the scenes legwork), and every activity on the site is fully editable so that you can customize it to meet the unique needs of your students.
If you’re a new fan or a longtime supporter of the EMC² Learning community, we sincerely thank you for your inspiration and encouragement at each step along the way for these past two years as we’ve made our way to this milestone. We are thrilled to do this work alongside of you, and honored to know that we are helping to play even a small role in the awesome work you do to bring the power of play into classrooms all around the world.
The activities featured in this blog post are just a handful of the 600+ resources available in the EMC² Learning library. This entire library is available to Engagement Engineers and members of the Creative Corps, and is included with your annual site membership. We hope you’ll consider joining us as an Engagement Engineer to unlock a full year of site access. For complete details including our exclusive limited time offer for annual site membership, click here.
