John Fallon

Description

I am an English teacher going into my 10th year of educating. Before I even entered a classroom, I knew that games had an underappreciated ability to teach. English teachers especially have been among the first to leverage cutting-edge media to expose their students to the world and engage their minds and spirit. Let’s not forget that “novels” got their name because they were disruptive, controversial, and…new.

I have designed Dolus: Finding the Journal of Odysseus an immersive ARG (alternate reality game) designed to augment my 7th-grade students’ exploration of Homer’s Odyssey.

I also co-designed Blind Protocol with Paul Darvasi, an inter-school ARG for my 9th-grade students that instructs on research skills and privacy related current events. I also developed lessons to teach commercial games, like Her Story, as literary texts.

My game based learning work has been featured on National Public Radio’s MindShift, Edutopia, several books from Carnegie Mellon’s ETC Press and Peter Lang Publishing, BAM! Radio Network, and District Administration magazine. I’m a member of the IGDA Learning and Education Games Special Interest Group, and I regularly speak on issues relating to education, particularly game based learning, at conferences like the International Boys School Coalition Annual conference, the Connected Learning Summit, the Serious Play Conference, the Games in Education Symposium, and more. I believe games are natural learning engines that both augment traditional methods of learning and are essential learning experiences themselves.