About Lucas Gillispie
Lucas Gillispie is Director of Technology and Media for Surry County Schools in North Carolina. A passionate educator and gamer, Lucas explores the intersection of games and learning. He is the creator of the WoWinSchool Project, exploring the educational potential of online games like World of Warcraft with middle schoolers, was one of the earliest pioneers to bring Minecraft into classrooms, and is working to build game-inspired professional development for teachers in his district through his EPIC Academy program. As an international speaker and facilitator, Lucas explores all things related to games and learning, from board games to esports, and shares a variety of resources with educators on his website: http://www.edurealms.com.
Game On! – Guest Lucas Gillispie - Transcript
Adam Bellow [00:03]: Hello, and welcome to the Game On podcast. My name is Adam Bellow. I am the CEO and co-founder of Breakout EDU, but I'm also a father, a serial ed-tech entrepreneur, and an advocate for positive change in the classroom. Each episode of the Game On podcast is going to feature a new voice of someone who's making an amazing impact in helping to pave the way for the future of education. We're going to get to explore their ideas and opinions as well as learn from those successes and failures from these amazing educational gurus. All right, let's get started.
Welcome to the Game On podcast. I'm your host, Adam Bellow, and I'm so excited to be joined with an incredible, just an amazing inspirational educator and an innovator. Someone who really is on the cutting edge of games and education, and someone I'm proud to call a friend, Lucas Gillispie. Lucas, welcome.
Lucas Gillispie [00:49]: Thanks Adam. So good to be here. I'm excited.
Adam Bellow [00:51]: I'm so glad you decided to hang out for a little bit and share your story with our listeners. Before we get started, I think we've known each other for a while. We were just talking about wandering around Seattle. But I think my first real memory of meeting you and learning from you was at the NCTIES conference. I want to say it was 2014, it feels like a million years ago, and you had, I think it was the first Oculus, if I'm not mistaken.
Lucas Gillispie [01:21]: It was, yes! I don't work in this district anymore and Oculus has been purchased by Facebook. So, I can probably say this. I registered our district as a developer with Oculus and once they approved it, they said I was able to purchase a headset. That was an interesting thing for our finance department to work through. We got our hands on one and it's been a rollercoaster since.
Adam Bellow [01:49]: It was amazing. I remember, it was the first time I had seen other than virtual game or anything else, like precursors. It was really, really cool. But I remember the one thing, it was tethered to obviously a mega-PC and as a lifelong Mac user, I was like, “well, when will my time come?” Now, it's what? We're on Quest 2. It's amazing to see how far those things have come, but I thank you and credit you for sharing that with and I'm sure not just me. Obviously with many, many people, you turned them onto what's going on with the metaverse, as they say now, I guess.
Lucas Gillispie [02:21]: Yes, absolutely. That's one of the things I'm passionate about. Mostly because I'm an absolute geek. I eat this stuff up, I love it. It's just what a cool time to be alive. In my role as an ed tech person working in schools and working with NCTIES, I get the opportunity to give people their first experiences. It's great to have your own experiences, but I thrive on watching other people have their first experiences and the oooohs and the ahhhhs. I love that.
Taking that to the NCTIES conference that year that you were there was, just a no brainer. Hey, let's line them up people and let them see. Give a taste of the future. It's just like you said, here we are Quest 2. In fact, no lie, impulse buy. I was at our local Walmart and I was just like, yes, I believe I will. I bought a Quest 2 this past weekend. How far we have come, not tethered and a fantastic experience so far.
Adam Bellow [03:19]: So much more accessible. I love it. For those that are not fortunate enough to know you and know about you, why don't you give the elevator pitch as to who you are so that they can know what you're all about.
Lucas Gillispie [03:29]: Sure. I'm an educator and a geek and I'm everywhere those things run together. When those roads cross, that's where I'm hanging out. I've been teaching in North Carolina or working in North Carolina public education since 1998. Worked as a high school science teacher for a number of years before moving to the district level with instructional technology. I was fortunate enough around 2014, around that year that we had that NCTIES where we were together, moved back to my hometown and took a director position in my old school system, which is fantastic. Working with people that I know, my friends and relatives and the kids and families in this area. Just love doing this.
Been a gamer since I was a kid and through my experiences there and my experiences in education and really my graduate work in instructional design and instructional technology got to see how games really are a powerful avenue for learning and oh my gosh, why aren't we leveraging this more? And thus, some of the things that you may have heard about me, read about me, those things got started.
Adam Bellow [04:42]: That's awesome. Obviously, at Breakout, we take games very seriously. We definitely love to have fun. And that brings us to Level one - our icebreaker question, which is, as a company that really values play, we'd love to know from you, what was your favorite game to play as a kid? And then, the second part of that is, what something you are playing now that you really like?
Lucas Gillispie [05:03]: Oh gosh, wow! Now, I have to narrow it down. I'll shoot for somewhere in the middle. I had an Atari 2600 as a kid. And then, migrated to a Commodore 64. With the Commodore 64, there was a couple games that I probably spent more time in than anything else and that was a game called Temple of Apshai. It was this really cheesy, terrible graphics, but a dungeon crawler.
And then, a game called Mail Order Monsters, where you have these monsters and you fought with them against other monsters in the arena and you develop mutations and things like that, send them back in to fight and level up. Love those games as kid and spent quite a bit of time with those. Those were a lot of fun.
Gosh, today, my favorite games. I guess, what I'm currently playing. I have a “game ADD”. My attention with games wanders. The ones that I've stuck with the most lately, Magic: The Gathering: Arena. I used to play Magic. I got introduced to Magic: The Gathering while I was in college. Have dabbled. Jumped in and out of cardboard paper-based Magic since then. Love it, but to be competitive in it, it's a money pit and might as well just dig a hole, throw money in it in the backyard and I love it, but I just can't sustain it financially. Magic: Arena launched on mobile back about a year ago now. Once that happened, that plus the iPad, oh my gosh. Just down the rabbit hole I go. A lot cheaper, a little more sustainable. Play games, pretty much anytime I want to. Spend a lot of time playing that.
I have also been playing Fortnite. I am getting to play Fortnite. I love the no build thing because I have the reflexes of a 46-year-old man because I am a 46-year-old man. I’ll be going head against the kid and with first-person shooters, I still can hold my own. But then, when I start building, next thing I know they're three stories above me and shooting down on me. I'm like, what do I even do here? I look for things that I can set their building on fire and run away. I just run away. That's the only strategy I have. I love this no build thing.
I have told people recently, a game mechanic that absolutely puts its hooks in me. I'm all in is, any game that has a game pass, mastery pass or whatever, where you pay for a season or whatever. As you experience, you unlock new things, I am a sucker for that. It makes it like a job, I guess, but I love it.
I guess other than that, most recently I've been playing Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, which is really cool. It's basically a reskin of Borderlands, but as Dungeons & Dragons with guns. Poking fun at all the D&D tropes, things like that. I've been playing a lot of that.
And then, I've been in the non-digital sense, because I have game club that I sponsored at our early college, which we talk about more probably. And then, I've been DMing Dungeons & Dragons group for my daughter and some of her friends. So that's been a blast. Been a blast playing playing D&D with some high schoolers. Love it.
Adam Bellow [08:17]: Oh, that's awesome. My kids are all in on D&D. When you mentioned Magic, my son's been playing Magic on the iPad as well, but D&D has been their passion for the last four or five years. They've been obsessed.
Lucas Gillispie [08:31]: It's so good and it's so social. With the pandemic, we have been starved for that social piece and it just continues to explode and that's really encouraging to me.
Adam Bellow [08:43]: Oh yes. It's amazing. I think, with all the new TV shows and focus on it, Stranger Things aside, I think I read that there's two shows and a movie in development.
Lucas Gillispie [08:52]: Bring it on.
Adam Bellow [08:53]: We'll see. I know. It should be fun. Well, that's awesome. I'd love to hear you're playing and I'll definitely check out that other recommendation. That sounds really cool. Commodore 64. It just brought me all the way back. I see every one of those titles we used to play. So cool.
Alright - Level Two is about history and it's your history. Your origin story. What was it that put you on the path to become who you are today, at least in your educational journey?
Lucas Gillispie [09:23]: Sure. I'll skip ahead through the science part, which I love. I love teaching. Love teaching science. Love science. Love high schoolers. That was my background. One of the things that emerged not purposely, interestingly enough was that, I had students who introduced me to virtual worlds and video games. I had a student who came to me one day. His name is Ryan. Awesome dude. Love you, Ryan. If you happen to be listening to this. Thank you. Ryan was like, hey, Mr. G, I know you like fantasy and you like video games. You should try this game EverQuest. It’s like - your first month is free.
I'm going through store. Again, impulse buyer. I'm like, $30? Sure, no problem. Then, I look on the back of this. It says 30 days free then, a $10 monthly subscription or $15 whatever it was at the time. I thought, who would pay to play a video game everybody bought it. I was like, ah, 30 days, I've got some disposable income right now in my young teaching career. I'll do this and oh my God, talk about down the rabbit hole I go.
Just so many mind-blowing experiences, that game and in the virtual world and interactions with other people. But the cool thing was that, he was there and then other students were there and so we got together and said, hey, let's all play on the same server and we can do things together. So, we would play together but being the teacher that I am, I care about their education. I'm like, hey, are you studying for your physical science test tomorrow? He's like, well, why don't we review?
There's a lot of running in EverQuest. You'd spend half the game just running places because I don't know, it was designed to be punishing, I think. I would put him on auto follow. I would type command in. I would just go wherever he went and I would start typing in review questions. "Hey, what’s the chemical symbol for this?" We're through dodging works and whatever, as we run across the planes of Corana or whatever it was at the time and I'm reviewing physical science with him, and fast forward to World of Warcraft.
And then, again, my classroom becomes the place where these kids who have an affinity for this sort of thing, like to hang out. They want to be there and so we automatically have something in common. I'm not at some higher position or authority because I'm their teacher. We both are at somewhat of a level playing field or they may be at a higher-level playing field in the game world than I am and we both can help each other. Again, we would coordinate things and get together and do game experiences. Run Dungeons together and level up together and have characters.
Eventually, we had a player guild, and it was 50% students that I knew and 50% people from around the world. One of the things that I saw in that process that started turning on the lightbulbs for me was, I had students, I had a particular student who was in my science class and he wasn't a bad student, but he wasn't the one that was on your radar. He wasn't this rock and roll A plus student and he wasn't the one that was failing and I had to constantly call his parents.
He was just A, B student, competent, quiet, but in World of Warcraft, this guy was leading groups of 40 to 60 people in these complex multi-hours dungeon runs, giving experiences, organize and showing leadership that I never had the opportunity to experience in a biology classroom because where do you show leadership in a biology classroom? It's a strange thing to think about. So, I began to think about what would it be like if I could formally use an experience like this with students and bring them into this world.
Again, fast forward a little bit, moved out of the classroom, started working at the district level with instructional technology and had an opportunity. I pitched it to my supervisor, the assistant superintendent of instruction. I said, hey, I got this crazy idea, but I've got some funding. I can cover it for at least a year, but I want to run World of Warcraft as an after-school club and I think through it, we can teach kids about literature. We can talk about leadership, interpersonal skills, social, what we would call now social emotional learning and all these great soft skill type things.
I said, I don't want your A plus kids. Give me your kids who are attendance issues, who are behavior issues, who are struggling in their classes and all that. I worked with one of my teacher friends down there who was also in my guild. We started after school club basically and saw incredible things. Brought people in, brought the principal in, brought this assistant superintendent, and told them, “Hey, why don’t you to come and watch what's happening in this space” as this was going on. The engagement of course was through the roof. The kinds of things that kids were doing, the products and the output that they were seeing for these kids in this space versus their typical classroom was just not even comparable. So, we formalized it.
Happened to get a very generous grant. And then, we took and wrote a curriculum and it's all based around Common Core standards for language arts, I think seventh or eighth grade and formalized it. Ran it as a class. Not that at the time Minecraft came in, everything blew up with Minecraft. I worked with my tech department and we took server that was designed to be a filter. Interestingly enough, to keep kids out of things like Minecraft, wiped its memory and installed Minecraft on it while running a Minecraft server in our district, and had kids from across the district, doing things in Minecraft.
It's been that kind of path I brought Minecraft with me to my home district, virtual reality. We've got virtual reality headsets, six or seven of our schools. I'm talking like Oculus, HTC vive, even a PlayStation VR, stuff like that. Because school should be engaging. If this is where kids are, and this is where they engaging, let's go to where they are and just have fun. Have fun with learning and teaching. That's where I'm at today.
Adam Bellow [15:11]: I love it. Obviously, from the Breakout side of things, I completely relate and that's our mission, is to make learning fun and prove that it's not dichotomous that learning and fun can coexist. I love the story about proving that those things are something that could go together where it's engaged and they're doing a game. But at the same point, obviously the SEL skills and soft skills, so to speak, I think probably the most important thing that we can give kids, especially right now. That's so cool.
Lucas Gillispie [15:37]: That was just a beautiful irony of the thing. The number one thing is, building that experience and inviting people in because still people don't get it until they see it. I think all teachers know engagement and interaction and that kind of thing. We all want it. Sometimes we don't. We can settle into ruts. I know I did as a teacher. I was absolutely thriving in this space where there's interaction was going on, but I had to invite people in to see it before they could really truly embrace it and understand it.
I think that's the beauty of games is that, games are contextual learning. That's what they are. The context is embedded in the experience and sometimes as a biology teacher, mitochondria and endoplasmic reticulum are just words. Even though I'm full of them, they don't have any meaning to me as a person. But when I have an experience in a game, there's meaning there, even if it's a game world. So, if the learning is attached to that, it's so much better in my opinion and in my experience.
Adam Bellow [16:42]: I would totally agree. That's awesome. I love hearing, being so bleeding edge as you were, it's true. Especially with virtual reality, you talked about, and the Minecraft stuff, that is not a space where people were willing to buy in. That's like, oh yes, of course, that belongs in school. You helped with some other amazing folks that helped to chart that path forward, which is really cool.
That gets us to our Level Three question, which is challenges. When you think back in terms of where you've been able to go in your career and what you've been able to do and bring to different school districts along the way, what was the biggest challenge or obstacle that you overcame to get to where you are in this journey?
Lucas Gillispie [17:23]: Good question. As far as challenges go, the challenges that I would've guessed that I would've experienced were not the challenges I experienced. I would've guessed that I would've had tremendous pushback from parents. I would've guessed that I would've had tremendous pushback from other educators and things like that. Maybe I live a charmed life. I don't know. I'm in the right place at the right time a lot. I don't know. Maybe I'm convincing, I don’t know. Maybe I could sell people things.
But regardless, those were the kinds of things I would've expected to be challenges and in fact that it was the opposite. The parents were not a problem at all. We sent home permission forms for this crazy stuff that we were doing and said, hey, this what we're doing, this is a T-rated game. This is the kinds of things where focuses on our goals and none of the parent permission forms that we sent home came back with a no. In fact, we had parents contacting my boss saying I have some concerns. I'm like, “Oh no, what?”. They're concerned because my child's an eighth grader. When goes to the high school, this program is not there and I don't know what's going to keep him engaged in school after that.
That's both tragic and validating at the same time. Mostly the challenge has been financial. That was always a thing. Fortunately, found some grants that were very generous and helped fund some of this stuff. The other thing too, that I think is more of a current challenge, at least where I'm at currently and I have lots of ideas, but there's only one me and I have my tech director role and my media director role and my digital learning director role and et cetera, et cetera. I don't get the opportunity to execute on those because I'd love to be in the driver's seat, but I'm not above living vicariously through people that I can con, I mean encourage, to come on this journey with me.
My problem now, it is that, our teachers are overtaxed right now. I'm very willing to say, hey, I have this opportunity for you and I will be doing that soon with some projects coming up. I'm hesitant to be too pushy just because of everybody's bandwidth is so pegged right now. We're in the red-zone with our bandwidth right now. That's all I'm a little concerned about that. That's probably what my current biggest challenge is.
Adam Bellow [19:42]: Hey, that's a good challenge to have. Unfortunately, everyone I think is in that same boat, but it's really fascinating to me to hear that you wouldn't have gotten some of the push, and you so eloquently laid out what you thought the push would be, which is exactly what I thought it would be as well. It's funny to hear that, that's something you didn't face, which is great.
Well, that brings us to the next level, which is about passion. I think you're dripping with it in terms of all the different things that you're really into, but what are you most passionate right now about in education? And I caveat that by saying, what are you trying to teach people? Or what are you most looking forward to learning more about yourself?
Lucas Gillispie [20:18]: Passions in education - I'm learning to have the ability to shift just like my attention to games shifts. While I am still incredibly passionate about games and learning and continue to push in that space, again, coming out of the pandemic that we've been through, I've put that on the side. It's not on the back burner, but it's pushed aside right now. Really, I would say my passion is really just caring for teachers right now. I worry about our teachers and want to leverage technology in ways that helps them as much as I can. That sometimes is not cool games. Sometimes it's just making sure the internet works in their classroom and then helping them work through this new learning management system that we've adopted and that kind of thing.
That's taken the forefront right now and I continue to hope and feel like things will eventually level out or will establish a new plateau, a new norm. And then, we can continue to push in that games and learning space again. Because I have things in the works and I'm not done with virtual reality yet, and I'm not done with Minecraft and games in general. So, there's opportunities.
Adam Bellow [21:38]: For sure. Our focus on Oculus and stuff like that, how far it's come in the last eight years since you were showing off the original Oculus. I know between what Apple’s cooking up and the other Meta devices that are coming, and I've spoken with that education team. There is a lot of stuff that's in the works that I think you'll be able to still be at the forefront of this for a long time.
Lucas Gillispie [21:59]: Yeah. Adam, do you worry though? Do you worry that the development pace of this kind of technology and the adoption rate is going to outpace us in education?
Adam Bellow [22:09]: I do. It's a great question. I worry about it from two angles. One is, I worry about the technology leading us into the same educational errors that we've had before which is, oh, we’ll buy the expensive devices? I'm not going to throw companies under the bus, but interactive whiteboards, clicker systems, if you look back in recent history, there's tons of these that we can point to. I think that even something like Google Cardboard, which was ostensibly free, except for the device, those types of things, it's like, yes, that opportunity is there. But I think that, just because you can doesn't mean you always should. I think that, as the EdTech folks and the early adopters and listen, I love my gadgets. I buy all the things I can get my hands on and I love it. But from an educational standpoint, I do question and I want us to be thoughtful about our integrations. My questions aren't oh, is the technology going to harm kids? My worry is, is there enough there that makes it a valid use for the classroom.
Because if you spend that money and you push another initiative that doesn't have the promise of really "transforming learning". Yes, it will be engaging. I've seen kids dissect a frog in real life, and I've seen them dissect it on $4,000 dedicated virtual reality machine or augmented reality machine that only does that. That is my concern. What about you? Do you share those feelings or you feel like it's something else?
Lucas Gillispie [23:29]: No, everything you said. Totally agree with that. There are forces at work. I look at, there are large companies that have declared that education is their next market. Look, I'm a nerd. I read Ready Player One. The sad thing is, and I had this discussion with people from around the world the other day in the Oculus Quest, 2. It was amazing. Part of this is, is that this idea that anytime you see this in fiction, the rise of virtual reality and all that, it's paired with a dystopian real world. Of course, in Ready Player One, There's that tension between those two things. That's kind of interesting.
But I wonder how it plays out for education. That's something I'm curious about. I'm excited to play in that space and have those discussions. As much as I love technology, I’m like you, any gadget, gimme, gimme, gimme. But I will never say that technology is a panacea for all education woes, that it's going to fix every problem. I think education is more complicated than that and I'm skeptical of anybody who pedals it otherwise. I think teachers who are masters of their craft are irreplaceable by any technology ever. But get a great teacher, great technology and step out the way. That's kind of how I see my role is I want to give them the tools that they need to do amazing things.
Adam Bellow [24:56]: I love that. I think it was literally what I was going to say is, with folks like you, that were with it before it was a trend and you've evaluated, like here's where it could be introduced and here's what it could do to level up certain things in class versus yes, everyone should get these devices. There's a balance there that I think is, people like yourself that really written the playbooks literally and figuratively on how to start bridging that gap. But I agree with you. There will be new technology. There's going to be the Apple headsets, all these things. I could see schools going crazy and going into.
I can't wait personally! I love it. I think we got a bonus round in there which was great, which was really good. I love that question. I love thinking about those things as well, but I want to bring it back to our last question before we close out.
Level Five is about advice. What is the best piece of advice you've gotten in your educational journey?
Lucas Gillispie [25:54]: Well, in my role as technology director It's always been like, does that jive with policy? What are you willing to be in the newspaper for? But aside from that, I have given it, when I present on this topic at conferences and teachers are interested in exploring this space. Transparency above all like, overshare. We can't overshare. In fact, I encourage teachers, you've got to tell your story or someone that's going to tell it for you. When you have this crazy idea, I want to use this game to teach this thing or whatever the cutting against technology or method is, talk to people about it, send home a permission form. Not as much as a thing about getting permission, but as a way of informing parents of what's going on. This cool thing that you are going to do and their child's going to have the opportunity to be a part of it.
And then have is open a door policy as you can. Invite people in. Share everything that you can, again, with "policy". Sorry, I have to say that. Now I'm in this role. Of course, they share this stuff on social media and connect to other people that are doing similar work. One of the things that's always been important to me is, is to the extent that I can document and share everything. Give it all away. Because look, if somebody else can take the ball and run even further with it, that's awesome because it helps kids and makes learning cool and it should be.
Just get your administrators on board, always say, make cookies for your IT team. You'll have to ask some favors of them possibly. Read books by authors like James G and others who are doing work in this space and just think big. That's probably the advice that I have.
Adam Bellow [27:35]: I love it. That was a whole bunch of good advice. Thank you for sharing that. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to connect and sharing your story, which is just remarkable. Again, I mentioned a few touch points we've had, and I just really respect pioneering that you've done in various ed tech gaming arenas, which is just so cool. It's incredible to chat. Where could our listeners connect with you and follow you online?
Lucas Gillispie [28:00]: Yes. I'm on Twitter. I am @lucasgillispie. That's Gill-is-pie. The best way I know how to spell it. That's on Twitter. I have a website. Please don't judge me. It's been a long time since I've updated it. Life has taken the reigns of that. I don't update often as I should, but that's Edurealms.com. Just reach out. I would love to share with you. Connect with your listeners who are looking at doing stuff like this and share resources. I hoard and share through my website. So, dig around in there. All the resources are available through that.
Adam Bellow [28:38]: Oh, that's awesome. Always very generous and I appreciate again, that being generous with your time. Alright folks. Well, that's it. Until the next time, Game On.