Ross Smith, Director of Engineering - Skype, Microsoft
This presentation was given at the 2017 Serious Play Conference, hosted by the George Mason University - Virginia Serious Play Institute.
Games in the classroom help students. This session will talk about how Microsoft’s Skype in the Classroom program uses games to connect classrooms, build bridges between students and the outside world, attend virtual field trips, and motivate teachers through learning exercises. In addition, the speaker will talk about how Microsoft’s community forum makes heavy use of game mechanics to drive engagement, recruit ambassadors, and motivate people to help each other with problems. He’ll reveal some very interesting data behind a large scale community effort.
35. When companies support social or environmental issues,
consumer affinity overwhelmingly upsurges:
93 percent of global citizens will have a more positive image of that company
90 percent will be more likely to trust that company
88 percent will be more loyal (i.e., continue buying products or services)
More than eight-in-10 consider CSR when deciding what to buy or where to shop (84
percent), which products and services to recommend to others (82 percent), which
companies they want to see doing business in their communities (84 percent) and where
to work (79 percent)
41. The Fake News Challenge: a new Skype Game
A recent Stanford study showed that students at all grade levels can't determine
fake news from the real ones. The study showed that while students absorb
media constantly, they often lack the critical thinking skills needed to tell fake
from real news.
The Game: Imagine a game where the teacher presents an article found on the
web or print-out to the class. Students research for two to three minutes, then
respond by standing if they believe it’s fake or staying seated to signal if they
believe the article is true.
Grades: 3rd-12th grade
Game’s Purpose
We need students to be critical thinkers. This game is a way play-to-learn critical
thinking skills surrounding false information found online. This game is designed
to help your students think more deeply about the information they find and
use from online sources.
https://education.microsoft.com/fakenews
42. Skype Breakout EDU
We're going on a Skype Safari Breakout EDU game!
Have you ever heard the "escape room"? “Escape room,” is a recreational team sport in which a group
of people use their wits to break out of a locked room, and turns it inside out. In Breakout EDU instead
of a locked room, teams must figure out how to get inside a locked box. If educators are using Breakout
EDU in their classrooms, they can incorporate Skype to make this learning experience richer for their
students.
The Game:
Students solve clues about different cities and countries while gathering new facts along the way. The
clues lead to Skype calls for students to learn more about each destination.
Ages: Elementary, Middle
Length: Full Day - One Skype Call Per Hour -- OR this can be played as one Skype call per day for a
week
Content Area: Geography, Social Studies, Foreign Language
Special Instructions
In this game, teachers will need to schedule FIVE SKYPE CALLS of their choice. These could be virtual
field trips, guest speakers, or classroom to classroom calls. They can schedule connections through the
Skype in the Classroom website.
Check out education.microsoft.com/skypebreakoutedu for preparation instructions and downloadable
resources
https://education.microsoft.com/skypebreakoutedu
45. Significant Quality Improvements for product
Positive Impact on Ship Schedule
Team Morale and Dogfood User Engagement
Players Over 1,000
Feedback increase > 16x
Feedback received: 10,000+
Players vs. non-players 67% of players participate vs. 3% of non
Results
46. Credit Card Cash Back Donations
• Citibank — ThankYou Network
• Discover Cash Back Bonus
Hotel Rewards Programs
• Choice Privileges Rewards - Choice Hotels
International
• Club Carlson - Carlson Worldwide
• Drury Gold Key Club Members - Drury Hotels
• Marriott Rewards - Marriott International, Inc.
• Hilton HHonors Giving Back Program - Hilton
Worldwide, Inc.
• Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) Members -
Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide
• CharityChoice Donation Cards
Airline Miles
• American Airlines
• Delta Airlines
• Southwest Airlines
• United Airlines
Business and Retailers
• Circle K
• Coinstar
• Evite
• HSN
• Western Union
77. In a global village of 100
61 would be Asian (20 Chinese, 17 Indian),
11 would be from Europe…
and 70 would be gamers…
Global Shift: Diverse and Distributed Workforces
78. • fairness
• transparency
• feedback
• trust
• communication
• engagement
• productivity
• education
games provide what people want:
Notas del editor
Fertile Crescent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertile_Crescent
Jericho – 8000 BC – hunter gathers learn to grow food and domesticate animals
http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?ParagraphID=ayj
Egyptian and Mesopotamian marketplaces – rise of the customer
In ancient Greece, the central shopping area of a city was called the agora. A typical Greek city had a large open area where local merchants could set up displays and sell their products. In Athens, one could find a large variety of items from around the Mediterranean. There was linen from Egypt, ivory from North Africa, spices from Syria, and dates from Phoenicia. Merchants of similar goods had shops together in a specific area in the agora. The market was often crowded and tended to be noisy. Criers called out specials or announced when fresh fish arrived from the boats. Prices were rarely firm, so bargaining with the merchants was a common practice.
In Athens women shopped with a male relative or slave. Only very poor women would shop in the markets alone. Women from other city-states often found the Athenian customs restrictive and overprotective. The rich carried their money in purses, while the poor kept coins in their mouths.
1200-800 BC
http://www.ancient.eu/article/881/
The next time you get the gift of an extra doughnut added to your dozen, thank crooked 13th-century bakers for the bonus treat. In the 1260s, British breadmakers were notorious for shorting customers with skimpy loaves. King Henry III was so irked by the problem that he implemented a new law to standardize the weight of a loaf—selling puny loaves could result in beatings or jail time. Since bakers wanted to stay on the right side of the law, one common trick was to give 13 loaves to any customer buying a dozen. Even if the loaves were light, the extra would cover the shortfall. It was an easy fix for bakers, and since low-carb diets were still seven centuries away, customers rejoiced.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/Bakers-dozen.html
Games at work changed, if not completely eliminated.
People labeled games as “not efficient”
40-hour work-week,
http://www.studioz7.com/stamps.html
As early as 1793, a merchant in Sudbury, New Hampshire (Source: "Trading Stamps: A Long History" by James J. Nagle, New York Times, December 25, 1971) gave away copper tokens with purchases, that were redeemable for goods in his store. The idea caught on and throughout the 19th Century, merchants were handing out discount tokens that could be accumulated and redeemed. Customers returned to the same stores for more tokens, which maintained a steady cash flow and customer base for the merchant.
http://www.nytimes.com/1971/12/26/archives/trading-stamps-a-long-history-premiums-said-to-date-back-in-us-to.html
http://www.hagley.org/librarynews/published-collections-free-purchase
One of the earliest examples of the use of premiums in product promotion came from B.T. Babbitt, who owned a soap company that manufactured Sweet Home Laundry Soap. In 1851, he became the first person to manufacture and market soap in individual bars. Up until that time, soap was sold in large raw cakes from merchants, and it was hard to convince customers of an advantage to individual bars.
Babbitt decided to offer color lithographs to anyone who sent in 25 soap wrappers. The promotion was a huge success. Customers bought multiple bars of Sweet Home Laundry Soap at a time, and collected enough wrappers to obtain a full series of the colorful flower lithographs. Editions of some of the pictures ran into the hundreds of thousands. There was hardly an American home without them at the time.
In 1851, the B. A. Babbitt Company began putting certificates in packages of Sweet Home laundry soap. When a specified number of certificates were collected, they could be exchanged for color lithographs.
When Cyrus D. Jones founded the Grand Union Tea Company in 1872, he issued cardboard tickets to customers of his Grand Union stores, which were redeemed for merchandise in a company catalog.
Tobacco inserts[edit]
Some of the earliest prizes were cigarette cards — trade cards advertising the product (not to be confused with trading cards) that were inserted into paper packs of cigarettes as stiffeners to protect the contents. Allan and Ginter in the U.S. in 1886, and British company W.D. & H.O. Wills in 1888, were the first tobacco companies to print advertisements and, a couple years later, lithograph pictures on the cards with an encyclopedic variety of topics from nature to war to sports — subjects that appealed to men who smoked.[9] By 1900, there were thousands of tobacco card sets manufactured by 300 different companies.[10] Following the success of cigarette cards, trade cards were produced by manufacturers of other products and included in the product or handed to the customer by the store clerk at the time of purchase.[9] World War II put an end to cigarette card production due to limited paper resources, and after the war cigarette cards never really made a comeback. After that collectors of prizes from retail products took to collecting tea cards in the UK and bubble gum cards in the US.[11]
The Schuster and Company department store in Milwaukee introduced the first trading stamps to the public in 1891, known simply as the Blue Trading Stamp System. As with the latter-day plans, one stamp was handed out for every dime spent and customers pasted them in provided booklets, which were redeemed for merchandise in the store. The requirement that the stamps be affixed in books not only gave the customer a convenient place to put them but also helped prevent fraudulent misuse.
http://www.inherited-values.com/2013/09/meet-me-down-by-schusters-vintage-department-store-memories-collectibles/
The phenomenal success Schuster's had with its trading stamp plan was observed by Thomas A. Sperry, a silverware salesman in Jackson, Michigan who did business in Milwaukee. Sperry theorized than an independent stamp company that supplied stamps to a number of merchants in the same community, yet would redeem the stamps itself, taking that burden off the merchant, would find even greater acceptance with customers.With the financial backing of Michigan businessman Shelly B. Hutchinson, the Sperry and Hutchinson Company was formed in 1896. The company began issuing what they called "S. & H." Green Trading Stamps (or "Sperry" Green Trading Stamps in the earliest years) to merchants in Jackson, and soon persuaded some New England dry goods dealers to take on the plan.
http://www.hagley.org/librarynews/published-collections-free-purchase
http://www.studioz7.com/stamps.html
https://blog.smile.io/a-history-of-loyalty-programs
In 1909, the very first cereal premium was offered: The Funny Jungleland Moving Pictures Booklet available with the purchase of 2 packages. The offer was available for twenty-three years!
http://www.crackerjackcollectors.com/cjcahistory.htm
1912 "A Prize in Every Box" is introduced when toys are inserted into every package.
1921
In 1921, a promotion for Gold Medal flour offered consumers a pincushion resembling a flour sack if they correctly completed a jigsaw puzzle of a milling scene. The Washburn Crosby Company, a flour-milling company and largest predecessor of General Mills, Inc., received thousands of responses and a flood of questions about baking. The name Betty Crocker was created to personalize responses to consumer inquiries.
https://www.bettycrocker.com/menus-holidays-parties/mhplibrary/parties-and-get-togethers/vintage-betty/the-story-of-betty-crocker
General Mills Betty Crocker Box Tops 1929
https://blog.smile.io/a-history-of-loyalty-programs
Beginning in 1929, General Mills products contained box top coupons, known as Betty Crocker coupons, with varying point values, which were redeemable for discounts on a variety of housewares products featured in the widely distributed Betty Crocker catalog. The coupons and the catalog were discontinued by the company in 2006.
https://www.generalmills.com/en/.../3ADEF5ECA41F49D7A28505A3F944103F.ashx
http://www.hagley.org/librarynews/published-collections-free-purchase
Betty Crocker products had one of the best-known premium programs when the company started inserting coupons in bags of flour in 1929. Consumers could collect and use these to purchase Oneida flatware at a reduced price. Beginning in 1937, coupons were printed on the outside of the box with point values and could be redeemed through the Betty Crocker Catalog in exchange for cookbooks, kitchenware, and home accessories at a discount. In December 2006, after 75 years, General Mills retired the Betty Crocker Catalog.
the early 1970s, the chain introduced the Funburger and the Funmeal, with packaging that included stories about Burger Chef and Jeff's adventures and friends (including the magician Burgerini, vampire Count Fangburger, talking ape Burgerilla, and Cackleburger the witch), with riddles, puzzles, and small toys. When McDonald's introduced their Happy Meal in 1979, the chain sued, but ultimately lost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burger_Chef
1983 – Holiday Inn, then Marriott
Two brands lay claim to firsts involving frequency programs in the hotel industry. Holiday Inn launched its program in February 1983, followed by Marriott in November of the same year. Holiday Inn discontinued its program in 1986 and restarted it a year later, giving Marriott the claim as the oldest continuously operating program in the hotel space.
The first generation of hotel loyalty schemes were simply conduits to airline programs: Currency earned in hotel programs could be used toward free flights on participating airlines. Quickly, hotel loyalty evolved so rewards accrued could also be used for free roomnights and other perks.
Brand companies continue to modify and refine their loyalty schemes. Four large hotel companies—IHG, Marriott, Hilton Worldwide and Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide—recently made significant changes to their points programs, raising the thresholds for members to receive free-night benefits. For example, Marriott moved some of its hotels into a higher points category, while Hilton added a 10th category to include some of higher-rated properties.
1986 – AT&T Universal card the first to offer cash back
The AT&T Universal Card was the first credit card to offer rewards to customers who used it, providing cash back on every purchase that could be applied toward the cardholder's phone bill.
In 1986, the popular "cash back" program from Discover Financial Services, a division of Morgan Stanley, appeared. Discover introduced the concept of dolling out cash to the cardholder at the end of every year based on the total amount of charges placed on the credit card.
http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/reward-programs-a-short-history-1277.php
MLK, Vietnam, and race riots dominated the news in summer 1967
http://wearablesforgood.com/
Through the Wearables for Good Challenge, UNICEF, ARM and frog, set out to demonstrate how wearable technology can be used to solve some of the most pressing challenges facing children. We put out a global call to action to developers, designers, community partners and problem-solvers to join us in this challenge. We attracted over 1,800 registrants from 65 countries, which resulted in 250 entries from 46 countries around the world. Accompanied by a Use Case Handbook created by UNICEF and frog, the challenge invited the global design, technology, and business industries, as well as social communities and universities, to identify and develop solutions for areas where wearable devices can generate tremendous social good. Announced in November 2015, the two winners of the challenge – Khushi Baby and SoaPen – successfully demonstrated how wearable technology can address some of the fundamental challenges children face in the areas of immunization and water and sanitation, respectively.
http://wish.org/ways-to-help/giving/airline-miles
Nationally, Make-A-Wish® would need more than 2.8 billion miles, or 50,000 round-trip tickets, to cover every travel wish each year.
Education – is a VERY good place to do games. Many serious games exist here from childrens learning games through military or civilian simulators, etc.
But we are most excited about the OCB/Core Work Skll space – where you can get as many players as possible, and they do something outside their normal job.