Summary: <br> Our podcast guest this week is Dustin Staats, from the <a href="https://www.boardgamingwitheducation.com/">Board Gaming with Education</a> podcast!<br> <br> <br> <br> Originally, the podcast was called “Board Gaming with English” – Dustin and a friend created the podcast when they were English teachers in Taiwan. Their goal was to teach how to play, while introducing grammar & vocabulary used in a game.<br> <br> <br> <br> In short, the podcast’s original goal was to help English learners through games.<br> <br> <br> <br> Many teachers are already using “game based learning” and “gamification” in their classes, without necessarily knowing those terms.<br> <br> <br> <br> What We’ve Been Playing<br> <br> <br> <br> Dustin just came back from the <a href="http://www.gamelevellearn.com/">Game Level Learn</a> conference (all about using games in education) and one of his favorite games played after the convention is Wavelength – it plays in the box and is very intuitive.<br> <br> <br> <br> Splendor – a newer classic game that is very accessible.<br> <br> <br> <br> Bon Appetit! – review coming soon.<br> <br> <br> <br> Drop It – always a favorite. (<a href="http://www.thefamilygamers.com/drop-it-review/">Our review</a>)<br> <br> <br> <br> Get the MacGuffin – a great filler game for any number of players. (<a href="http://www.thefamilygamers.com/get-the-macguffin/">Our review</a>)<br> <br> <br> <br> Visitor in Blackwood Grove – has been a big hit at Monday game nights. We discuss how to play and why it’s constantly compared to E.T. (<a href="http://www.thefamilygamers.com/visitor-in-blackwood-grove/">Our review</a>)<br> <br> <br> <br> Azul and Miyabi – both excellent puzzley games by Michael Kiesling.<br> <br> <br> <br> Photosynthesis<br> <br> <br> <br> Board Gaming with Education<br> <br> <br> <br> How did it start? Dustin was already using games and gamifying his classroom management, but then he discovered the modern board gaming hobby when he moved to Taiwan in 2016.<br> <br> <br> <br> He began bringing some of these games into the classroom, and modifying them to make them suitable for his classroom. Could other English teachers and English learners benefit from what he discovered? A podcast was born.<br> <br> <br> <br> Later on, Dustin began to realize that teachers in other disciplines could benefit from this work as well.<br> <br> <br> <br> At first, the podcast was a tool for English learners to use to improve their vocabulary while learning a fun game, while being a tool that English teachers could also use (ie. assign an episode as homework). Later they began to bring on experts and game designers to help other teachers learn how to use games in their teaching.<br> <br> <br> <br> Dustin’s favorite moments from guests on the podcast:<br> <br> <br> <br> Challenges of using games in education (what doesn’t work).<br> <br> <br> <br> How to incorporate games in more streamlined ways.<br> <br> <br> <br> Companies that do “games for education” in more focused ways.<br> <br> <br> <br> Activities that can be used along with games to target specific learning outcomes.<br> <br> <br> <br> Favorite games to use in an educational way<br> <br> <br> <br> Let’s reframe the question: Efficient vs. inefficient use of games to teach. In learning a language, literally anything with words will help teach language, but some games have more impact and less frustration.<br> <br> <br> <br> Taboo vs. Trapwords<br> <br> <br> <br> In Taboo, you need guess a word, avoiding words from a related list. In Trapwords, the other team creates the list of “illegal” words; this means both teams are thinki...
