Really fascinating post on reddit today accompanied by an awesome picture and some interesting insights in the comments. This kid, clearly a young adult now,  reminiscing his past and how he was motivated to read 100 books to get a Gameboy! Look at how happy he is! How amazing to be able to capture that!  We’ve always wondered whether something that’s so intrinsically worthwhile (like reading and interacting in the library) requires any other rewards, and whether rewards unrelated to the core of an activity really affect a young persons expectations of how the world should work. Rewards and should be lasting, measurable, have a relationship with achieving mastery of an activity, and more importantly be personal. In the context of a piece of software that facilitates some of those reward facets and prompts them to happen, it’s no mean feat to get it spot on! If we’re going deeper into the gamification genre, how about being recognised/rewarded in spite of failure? (theres a controversial one!) As we gear up towards marketing our offering of Librarygame in two flavours (Lemontree for academia, and yet-to-be-unveiled-tree for public libraries)  these are the things that keep our brains whirring away!  The thing we want to do the most is encourage and reward the use of the library for the sheer pleasure it would induce and the lasting impact it would have but we can’t help but think about the broader themes of motivation and reward and how opinionated people are about their interplay especially in education. This article for example harks back to 2009 and defines some of these points in relation to school reward culture. In the UK,  in the context of behaviour management programmes, the disparity and inconsistency of the educational experience and the recent concept of schools governing themselves we wonder if there are any schools with a good deal of experience in implementing reward systems for younger kids through to young adults and whether this has had a favourable impact through their educational journey and life prospects. Do you know anyone who’s done any longitudal studies in this area worth checking out? it surely can’t be a recent phenomenon. 

Really fascinating post on reddit today accompanied by an awesome picture and some interesting insights in the comments. This kid, clearly a young adult now,  reminiscing his past and how he was motivated to read 100 books to get a Gameboy! Look at how happy he is! How amazing to be able to capture that! 

We’ve always wondered whether something that’s so intrinsically worthwhile (like reading and interacting in the library) requires any other rewards, and whether rewards unrelated to the core of an activity really affect a young persons expectations of how the world should work.

Rewards and should be lasting, measurable, have a relationship with achieving mastery of an activity, and more importantly be personal. In the context of a piece of software that facilitates some of those reward facets and prompts them to happen, it’s no mean feat to get it spot on! If we’re going deeper into the gamification genre, how about being recognised/rewarded in spite of failure? (theres a controversial one!)

As we gear up towards marketing our offering of Librarygame in two flavours (Lemontree for academia, and yet-to-be-unveiled-tree for public libraries)  these are the things that keep our brains whirring away! 

The thing we want to do the most is encourage and reward the use of the library for the sheer pleasure it would induce and the lasting impact it would have but we can’t help but think about the broader themes of motivation and reward and how opinionated people are about their interplay especially in education. This article for example harks back to 2009 and defines some of these points in relation to school reward culture.

In the UK,  in the context of behaviour management programmes, the disparity and inconsistency of the educational experience and the recent concept of schools governing themselves we wonder if there are any schools with a good deal of experience in implementing reward systems for younger kids through to young adults and whether this has had a favourable impact through their educational journey and life prospects.

Do you know anyone who’s done any longitudal studies in this area worth checking out? it surely can’t be a recent phenomenon. 

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