Be a Hooker

Ah, got your attention with that one didn’t I? And that is what we have to do, to find the hook that will make students want to learn because the learning has become the most important thing to them. We snag them with the hook of ‘you get to create video games' but it turns into the students buying into the system of the process of gathering information,assimilating the information and then turning that information into a relevant, viable learning situation via a video game format. It goes back to my last post I think, we have to create the environment where their first priority (at the very least while they are in the classroom) is to work on building the best, most informative game ever designed.
I think that I sometimes I go about it the wrong way, telling the students that there are deadlines that they have to meet. I believe that I will begin appealing to their pride a little more, showing them examples of what has been done and appealing to their competitive spirit. I hope that it will begin as extrinsic motivation that morphs into a more intrinsic style of learning. I do know that different students have different motivators and that we need to find the ‘hook’ for each one.