Teaching: Teachers as Marketing (?!)

Normally I don't just link to the post on some other blog (I'd rather make my own content, thanks) but this article was too relevant to pass on. In brief: marketers spend their time trying to get your brain to pay attention and learn their message (something that teachers could do better at), and teachers spend their time transferring actual, useful information (something marketers could do better at). Sounds like a good idea to me.

I would add game designers into the mix; their entire purpose in life is to take a game and make it Fun (whatever "Fun" means).

So, teachers could learn from game designers: how to take this "Learning" and make it Fun. (Or rather, since learning is inherently fun -- especially in the case of game development classes -- how to take this "Learning" and not suck the inherent Fun out of it.)

Marketers could learn from game designers: how to take your advertising product and make it fun. Interactive advergames that concentrate too much on product marketing end up not being very fun, and thus losing their message.

Game designers can learn from marketers: all that brain research on how to get the brain to pay attention seems rather handy. As it is, we're still stuck with Csikszentmihalyi's 17-year-old research.

Game designers can learn from teachers: if you have some kind of greater social message you want to include in your game, how can you do it without beating your player over the head with the message in every cut scene? Especially useful for those working on training games, advergames or other "serious games" that are more than just entertainment.