I was Interviewed on The Ed Podcast
- Zack
- Oct 10, 2019
- 1 min read
What's going on everyone?
I was interviewed by Shane over at The Ed Podcast, once again talking about how I use video games in my classroom.
Theedpodcast: a podcast about the teaching life
Links to episode
There's games and there's gamification. Zack Hartzman is about the former. He talks with me about his experiences bringing video games into his classroom and how it has helped his students - mostly recent immigrants and ELL's - to engage with English and literature in an active and meaningful way. Along with recommendations for useful texts, Zack shares about the benefits and the how-to's as well.
Thanks for listening,
Zack
Short and sincere: this was great, and I'll be back. To anyone scrolling the comments first, just read full post and judge for yourself. It makes a far stronger case than I ever could down here. The quality is obvious from the opening lines. Looking forward to the next one.
This new post is a good example of what it looks like when someone writes about a subject they genuinely understand from the inside. The reasoning behind the explanations is sound and the conclusions feel earned rather than just asserted. I came in with some background on the topic and still found several things here that shifted my thinking in a meaningful way. That's a rare outcome and worth acknowledging. I've shared it with my team and the response was positive across the board. Really well put together.
Reading this gave me exactly the foundation I needed to get started on a subject I had been putting off because I wasn't sure where to begin. That's one of the most valuable things good introductory content can do — remove the barrier of not knowing where to start. The writing here is precise and the structure reflects genuine care about the reader's experience. I came away ready to move forward rather than just vaguely more informed. That's a high bar to clear and this piece clears it. Worth every minute.
Reading this complete guide gave me a better foundation for approaching this subject than I had managed to build from several other sources combined. The explanations are well-calibrated — detailed enough to be genuinely useful, clear enough not to slow you down. The author acknowledged the areas where things are genuinely complicated rather than presenting everything as settled. That kind of intellectual honesty makes the content more credible and trustworthy. I've shared it with my team and the response was positive. Really well done.
Here is my problem with this article — it has completely recalibrated my expectations and now everything else I read feels slightly disappointing by comparison. Quality content at this level does that to you and while I am not complaining exactly I do think the author owes me some kind of warning. The depth of knowledge here is impressive but what really sets this apart is the writing itself — the rhythm of the sentences, the precision of the word choices, the way each paragraph builds on the last with such apparent ease. This is craft as much as expertise and the combination is genuinely intoxicating. I will be here for a very long time. Absolutely brilliant!