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David Robinson's avatar

Great piece. A bit tangential, but on the subject of making learning fun—I saw Hamilton on stage last year. On the way out, I overheard a particularly grumpy audience member chastising secondary school history teachers for not making their lessons as fun and engaging as the hip hop musical. I didn’t have the heart to point out that if teachers could write a global smash hit stage show, they probably wouldn’t be stuck marking essays—and I don’t think anyone could pass a test on the American Revolution based on watching the musical.

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Dominic Salles's avatar

Very thought provoking as always. But I think the analogy is a bit different. Classrooms absolutely can be like Duolingo. The engagement in Duolingo is not that it is entertaining (I am one of the daily users who hates it). The engagement is that you are constantly successful because of the way information is chunked and practice is organised and sequenced. Lessons can absolutely be organised this way.

Likewise the incentives of points gained, league tables and slightly annoying celebrations of streaks within lessons and across days and weeks creates proof of success and progress, which motivates despite the lack of 'fun'.

I'll go a step further - students would learn languages in school much better if 50% of lesson time was devoted to Duolingo. 25 hours took me to grade 5 on a reading paper, which is the equivalent of January in a year 7 curriculum.

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