Saturday, October 26, 2013

Blog Post #15 - Bucket pitch - My volunteer activity and my experiments

First watch Dan Ariely.

What makes us feel good about our work?

So what that this have to do with an elementary school volunteering for Hoe down. ( i really don't know what it means) but this event was and has been always like a carnival .

Cactus Ranch Elementary (CRE) Hoe Down was the name of this yearly event.

My job was to pick up the pitch ( a resin like substance in a bag) which the kids have to thrown in one of the 4 buckets maked 2,3,4 and 5 ( Why wasn't there a 1?)

To make this boring game interesting to me I tried the following

1. Ask the kids first to determine if they want to try or difficult version of the game. Some kids (most big kids) will say difficult. Some Kids (most small kids) said easy. Smart kids asked the question ' What is easy and what is smart?'

2. In any case for every kids  I explained easy means they need to drop the pitch into bucket 2 or 3. Difficult in my game was bucket 4 or 5. The kids who wanted prize always went to 2 no matter what they chose. Smart kids.

3. I doubled the stake by saying get 2 in same bucket I will give you 2 gifts. Some kids got so interested they wont stop trying. There was a kid who even after I said I wont give you any gift after couple of tries.. kept trying. Welcome to the world of gamification.

The kids had fun and so did I.


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