How To Create an Escape Room Lesson Part 2: Learning Content in an Educational Escape Room
The Importance of Learning Content This is intended to be Part 2 of a 6-part series. When it comes to educational escape rooms, the learning is paramount. That’s because for an educational escape room, the focus is on the educational portion – which means that they must come away with having gained knowledge, skills, or…
How To Create an Escape Room Lesson Part 1: The Components of an Educational Escape Room
Yes, you can build your own escape room lesson! This is intended to be Part 1 of a 6-part series. Everyone can create their own educational escape room – it’s simply a matter of how complex or how simple you want it to be. As long as you have your learners working together to achieve…
Educational Escape Rooms: Using Play To Boost Learning
An alien invasion of student engagement My very first escape room arose from writing a vocabulary lesson about figurative language. It was about the usual lists of phrases, getting students to use them in different sentences, a very standard English lesson. If you’re not a native English speaker, figurative language is like an alien language…
Adult Educator Mentorship – What’s It Like?
A good mentor is like gold If you ever get the chance to have a mentor, treasure it. I’m not going to go through all the benefits of mentorship – if you’re reading this, you’re sold. It’s about having someone who can guide you through a path that they’ve walked before – and helping with…
4 DIY Learning Games for Your Class (and How to Elevate Them)
Gamified learning is efficient learning If you’re an educator, gamifying your lessons feels like adding extra work to your already tremendous workload. If you’re a curriculum writer, gamifying your course material feels like adding more pages to a document that might not even be appreciated. So why add games to your lessons? Because it enhances…
The 3 secrets to achieving difficult learning goals (and it’s not about “trying your best”)
Do your best!!! You’ve seen this before. Some soulless teacher hears “very difficult, cher!”. Some distracted trainer hears “this is very difficult”. And they respond the same way. “Try your best lor.” That is absolutely useless. Firstly, I don’t think it’s comforting at all – because I told you I had a problem and your…
The 6 types of motivation and how to integrate it into lesson design
Cause and consequence We often think that motivation is all about strength. Do whatever it takes to generate the most motivation. This comes across most often in the workplace, where the most motivated worker is often the one that’s the most lauded. But motivation isn’t all about intensity. It’s also about the type of motivation…
Want joyful learners? Master these 4 elements
Does easier schoolwork result in greater joy? I read this article which purported that to increase joy in learning, one should reduce the difficulty level of the subject (“Learning Chinese has become too difficult for kids today, and that’s not okay”). The point of the article was actually to say that Chinese is too difficult,…
Encouraging adult educators to upskill: are CPD requirements actually forced learning? (TAEPP)
The inciting incident Come April 2026, adult educators (AEs) who wish to conduct SkillsFuture (SSG)-supported courses must be on the National Adult Educator Registry, which is under the Training and Adult Educator Professional Pathway (TAEPP) that is being developed by the Institute for Adult Learning (IAL). To be on the registry, adult educators must complete…
Why great lesson design is actually great UX design
When I’m not in front of my learners, my favourite phrase for lesson design is: How can I trick them into learning? Now that I’ve given that away and await flaming online, let me explain what I’ve learned from that. I’ve learned that wanting to trick them into learning is, in effect, a form of…
Fun isn’t frivolous – it’s the secret sauce of great learning design
Fun is a feature, not a bug Once, I had to deliver a content-heavy lesson about marketing. Facts, figures, concepts. While I love imparting marketing knowledge, I also had to pack a lot of info to ensure the learners were competent after 3 hours. So I picked out an example of a dumb LinkedIn post…
12 years without learning was a mistake: 4 (lifelong) learning design principles I learnt
Living in my own little world of not learning After graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree, I thought that was the end of my education. At the time, I had not heard of lifelong learning. I thought that once you go into the workforce, you don’t go back to studying. Studying after you start working is…
Lessons are the new Netflix: Scripting lessons like a TV show
TV shows taught me how to write lessons You know how audiences binge watch TV shows? There’s something we can learn from that for lesson design. You’ve seen how people get mesmerised by a good TV show – eyes glued to the screen, absorbing every word and scene that comes out. In the good old…
Loving your learners: the lesson design secret nobody talks about
It’s scary but vital to love your learners You clicked on this article, so bravo! As touchy-feely as this might sound, I hope that deep down, this idea resonates with you. And that’s the idea of designing your lessons with the idea that your students will one day surpass you. I know it’s a scary…
Designing lessons for learners, not just content: empowering education for everyone
Have you ever eaten foie gras? It’s fatty liver of a duck or goose. These birds don’t normally have fatty livers, so farmers employ a process called “gavage” to do so. Gavage is the process of force feeding ducks or geese to cause their livers to swell – by ramming a feeding tube down their…
The secret parallel between lessons and games: writing lessons like a game designer
Remember the last time you finished a level in a game? The excitement, the engagement, the euphoria? What if your learners could also feel that same way after completing one of your lessons? I’ve discovered that lesson planning and game design share surprising similarities. So with the addition and leverage of game design principles, I’ve…
The dangers of rushing: why kids need time
If you go to a surgeon for a critical operation, would you want her to rush? Likewise, if you go to a private chef for an omakase experience, would you want him to rush? While our fast-paced society often encourages us to do things quickly and rush through everything, it isn’t always to our benefit…
Singapore’s overloaded academic system – what can we do?
Our academic system is overloaded. Not only do students have to cram in all the information they need to ace their watershed examinations – because let’s face it, our academic system encourages excellence, not just “passing” examinations – they also have a bevy of other activities, programmes, and objectives that they have to attend to.…
Why I used to hate Chinese (that’s changed)
For much of my life, I’ve been tormented by Chinese speakers. “He’s Chinese, how come he cannot speak Chinese?” – spoken in Mandarin, very loudly, by a service agent in Singapore who thought I was deaf, apparently “Hello I’m not your Chinese teacher” – spoken by an adult friend who’s good in Chinese, after I…
The hidden benefits of admitting your mistakes to children
Whoops! (Credit: Unsplash) When I read about how Ryan Reynolds openly talks about his losses to his children (in addition to his victories), it struck a chord with me. Why? Because that’s what I do to my students and to children as well. I tell them about the times I’ve lost, the times I’ve made…
Dirty jokes can be your most valuable teachable moment
If that day hasn’t come yet – then it will soon. The day that your child makes dirty jokes. And tempted as we are to clamp down on them, tell them off for it, and make absolutely clear that dirty jokes are in no way acceptable… They’re a fact of life. Now, if you personally…
Fun to be Smart 