Summer for a professional development facilitator and digital learning consultant is a busy time. I've also found time for play! As we cross the mid-point of the season, I wanted to highlight some of my summer adventures so far.
Let's go chronological.
 |
| Soon before kickoff at the Cave City Conference Center on June 18. |
On June 18 (right before I left for a family vacation), I was both the morning and afternoon keynote for an artificial intelligence conference held by the Green River Regional Educational Cooperative (GRREC). (I also squeezed in a breakout session on AI and PLCs.) In a packed ballroom at the Cave City Conference Center, more than 250 educators from across Kentucky learned, collaborated, and shared. One teacher from Allen County came up afterward to tell me it was the best keynote she's ever attended -- a high compliment I'm not sure I deserved, but I humbly thanked her for it. And speaking of thanks, I'm very grateful to GRREC's Jessica Turner (who I congratulate for just taking a principal position at Meade County!) and Merissa Waddy for asking me to keynote their conference.
As soon as vacation ended, I was off to Washington Community High School (Illinois). My old friends Dan Reem and Tom Gross (Teachers in the Dungeon) are WCHS's head of social studies and librarian/game club sponsor, respectively. For years, they have run an annual student RPG summer camp, with multiple breakout session options and two different strands (a player and "Dungeon Master" [DM} track). Community partners lead sessions or facilitate games; for example, d20 Dinner show students how to make homemade dice. This year (with the help of Stefanie Crawford of Illinois Digital Educators Alliance), Dan and Tom arranged a precursor to the student camp with a teacher "express conference" on July 7 and invited me to kick it off with a keynote on tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) in education. On July 8, attendees were able to shadow students on the first day of their camp. (Chris Tatum of NerdLouisville also came up to talk to the educators and ran some breakout sessions for students.)
 |
| Dan Reem (left) and Tom Gross. |
 |
| Students rolling up their D&D characters on the first day of camp. |
There was such great enthusiasm from attendees eager to bring TTRPGs back to their own schools, and the adults encouraging them to do so. (Special nod to Dan Crawford of Cabbages and Kings Games for donating dice to the teachers as well as DM'ing a student D&D game!) I was particularly inspired by the students at the camp, who were positive, polite, excited, and focused. I had the chance to teach students by running a breakout camp session for budding DMs on building an adventure, but more importantly, I was taught how to better DM from a D&D one-shot led by a just-graduated WCHS senior. The summer camp isn't just for fun -- it creates leaders.
As always, I'm grateful for the chance to learn from others, and of course special thanks to Dan and Tom for inviting me up! As they shared on a recent episode, they seem committed to having the conference again next year, so stay tuned to their podcast for updates.
As a final share, my wife and I were fortunate to attend the kickoff of the world tour for Dungeons & Dragons: The Twenty Sided Tavern in Richmond, Kentucky on July 18. While the EKU Center for the Arts might seem a inauspicious site for such an endeavor, it's a beautiful theater, and it was full of raucous fans. The traveling company could not have picked a better place to preview their show.
 |
| For more pictures, visit this Instagram post. |
 |
| Note the "Hit Point" bars at the top of the screen, representing the real-time health of the three "player characters." |
With a sly sense of humor, the story is infinitely changeable (no two shows on this tour will be exactly the same!), as one would expect from a theatrical experience based on D&D. In a sense, the show is a liveplay of a D&D adventure, and my wife -- who has never played -- began quickly catching on to the basic mechanics. The embedded improvisation is not only hectic (the actors often asked for shouted out answers to feed the story, such as names for monsters), but haptic; it's also powered by audience interaction via our mobile phones and a browser-based platform from Gamiotics. We were involved from the start, voting on which kind of characters each of the three "players" would take on; choosing whether they should go left or right, which shop to visit, or which spell to use; and even valiantly mashing a screen button to give characters enough "oomph" to accomplish goals. Kudos not only to the actors portraying the DMs and players, but to the production crew -- the stage sets, lighting and backdrop screen effects keep you perpetually delighted and immersed.
The Twenty Sided Tavern definitely had my mental wheels turning (and mental dice rolling?) for applicability to a classroom. While you might need a DM to rule set and give players a sandbox to play in, a true D&D adventure needs everyone to participate in order to complete a journey, much as a cohesive classroom is one made up of learners, not just "teacher and students." A community of learners is a community of trust, with room to both fail and play. Speaking of play, I wonder how the kinds of interactive polling that makes The Twenty Sided Tavern so much fun can also be an innovative strategy for teaching? For years, we have used such real-time tools for judging comprehension (i.e. pushing out a question, seeing if students get the right answer), but what if teachers similarly used them to transform direct instruction into a story with agentic student control, provided we are prepared to quickly pivot? Imagine a social studies class learning about ancient Egypt:
Okay, the archaeologist goes inside the pyramid's inner chamber and finds...a sarcophagus! Does she look closely at the sarcophagus, or at the various objects placed around it inside the chamber? [class voting on their devices] Looks like...you want to see the sarcophagus! You notice the intricate hieroglyphics....
Lastly, the story that binds the discrete parts is key in both D&D and in teaching -- and narrative is what makes learning memorable. Indeed, all TTRPG stories are co-created, and truly vibrant learning is similarly an act of a co-created classroom.
I'll wrap up this blog entry by wishing you all the rest and rejuvenation you need and deserve this summer, while realizing that even in your most playful moments, you are likely still plotting for the school year ahead!
For more resources on TTRPGs in the classroom, visit Kentucky Educators for Role Playing Games.
