Professor Game Podcast

Greg Toppo is a senior editor for Inside Higher Ed. Before that, he spent 15 years as the national education reporter for USA Today. A graduate of St. John's College in Santa Fe, N.M., he taught in both public and private schools for eight years before moving into journalism. His first job was with the Santa Fe New Mexican, a 50,000-circulation daily. He worked for four years as a wire service reporter with the Associated Press, first in Baltimore and then in Washington, D.C., where he became the AP's national K-12 education writer. Toppo also co-led the USA Today team that in 2011 looked at educator-led cheating on standardized tests. The paper's series prompted the Washington, D.C., inspector general to investigate high erasure rates in D.C. schools. Toppo was a 2010 Spencer fellow at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a 2016 Yale University Poynter Fellow. He is the author of the book The Game Believes In You: How Digital Play Can Make Our Kids Smarter (April 2015). In 2017, he became president of the Education Writers Association.

This podcast episode features Willem-Jan Renger (1967) who is the Head of Innovation Studio at HKU, part of the Center for Research & Innovation@ HKU. It is a crossover creative space for research, design and education, and functions as an innovation lab for design and applied research on the design of human behavior, motivation and perception. Their proposition is rooted in design, psychology, using design principles from the field game- and play design to solve real-world problems in an innovative way. Their mission is to foster innovation in Healthcare, Education, and Cultural Heritage, to build up knowledge and expertise on innovation processes in these contexts and share this knowledge both within and outside HKU. He is also the founder of 'ludodidactiek', a unique design methodology focused on a specific application of game and play principles for teaching and learning. Ludodidactiek is a specific form of applying game and play principles in the design of learning processes leading to both analog or digital solutions.

This is a really special episode! We celebrate the first year of the podcast with the engagers, past guests, reflections, looking at the future, inviting you to the podcast and even a giveaway for the lucky ones to win from our email list (register here if you would like to participate!) Past guests talk about some fun facts from their episodes, comment on what has changed since their interview and give us a quick tip to implement today. The messages from guests come from Andrzej Marczewski, Zac Fitz-Walter, Erik van Mechelen, Bart Hufen, Candis Best, Dave Eng, Jon Cassie, Altug Yilmaz, David Mullich, Valary Oleinik, Scott Reinke, Vasilis Gkogkidis, Manuel Pimenta, Bernardo Letayf, Monica Cornetti and Karl Kapp!

Chris Aviles is the 21st Century Skills, Technology, and Innovation Coordinator for the Fair Haven school district in Fair Haven, New Jersey where he runs the renown Fair Haven Innovates program he created in 2015.

Karen Sikkema is an experienced game, gamification and experience designer. With her creative companies Living Story and Wintertuin Experience BV, she is designing experiences, location-based games, adventures for cultural heritage, and game-based learning for teams and businesses. Her aim is to create meaning in the world by connecting people to themselves, to others and to great locations, and thus contribute to creating a sense of belonging, connection and respect for yourself and others. Karen is also a visiting professor at HKU Utrecht University of the Arts (NL) and Politecnico di Milano (IT), teaching on game design, gamification and entrepreneurship in the creative industries.

JD Dillon is one of the most prolific authors and speakers in workplace learning today. With his practical approach, JD integrates science, technology, storytelling and pure common sense to enable employees, improve performance and drive business results. For 20 years, JD has executed strategies for global organizations, including The Walt Disney Company, Kaplan, Brambles, and AMC Theatres. He is currently Chief Learning Architect with Axonify, where he partners with an award-winning team to solve business problems for leading organizations through modern learning practices and cutting-edge technology. He is also the founder of LearnGeek, which provides advising and educational services.

Samantha is a game designer, developer and researcher of game-based learning and gamification applications at the Disruptive Media Learning Lab (DMLL), Coventry University, UK. She works with both internal and external learners, practitioners and stakeholders to develop all manner of quirky gamey things. She sometimes even writes about the quirky gamey things. Her research and practice interests are mainly in the area of curiosity, narrative and puzzle led games that include escape rooms, D&D, mystery boxes and choose your own adventure style games. She is a bit obsessed with D&D and likes nothing more to kick back in an afternoon and kill some deserving cultists.

Charles "Chuck" Coonradt is Founder and CEO of The Game of Work, which was founded in 1973, and recently Forbes Magazine called Chuck "The Grandfather of Gamification". Over one million executives, managers, and supervisors on five continents have been exposed to Chuck's ideas on feedback, scorekeeping, goal setting, coaching, personal choice and accountability. His five best-selling books The Game of Work, The Better People Leader, Scorekeeping For Success, Managing The Obvious, and The Four Laws of Financial Prosperity have been labeled management "must read" and are found around the world in many countries and languages. The Game of Work's client list includes many Fortune 500 companies, as well as other nationally and internationally recognized firms. Companies that have successfully utilized and implemented Chuck's unique concepts include Pepsi, US Postal Service, General Foods, Leslie's Poolmart, Nordstrom, The US Air Force, Boeing, American Express, Molina Healthcare, Coca-Cola Consolidated, The Chicago Tribune, Coors Brewing and International Paper.

Bart is the author of 'A brand new playground' (Kluwer, 2010) and 'Playing on the job' (van Duuren, 2016). In these books, he focuses on the power of game mechanics and how they can be applied to organizations to achieve continuous improvement. He's been a steady force on the Global Gamification Gurus top 100 and is certainly one of the founders of gamification and game thinking in Europe. His track record with his company BrandNewGame holds over twenty -often award-winning - digital game innovations. The solutions provided for clients are always developed using a proven agile method that Bart developed. This method is also part of the curriculum at the University of Amsterdam and the Gamification Academy. With an average score of 8,7, Bart is a highly valued speaker both in the Netherlands and abroad.

Valary is one part artist and one part geek and has been accused of having a contagious level of passion and curiosity. Her career path has twisted and turned through the performing arts, computer support, business communication, and more along the path to multiple roles in the adult learning and development space. Along the way she decided that learners deserved better, so she set out on a quest to uncover ways to disrupt boring traditional approaches and improve learner experiences and outcomes. As a result, Valary has become a consultant and sought-after speaker at learning events across the United States. She has contributed to a number of articles and publications on learning, creativity and gamification and is the creator of the GAME Plan framework for gamifying learning.