...because every so often you get a letter like the following, which I received this week from a student, who is very close to being a graduate of The Werner Institute:

"My practicum is coming to a close and I wanted to share a bit of it with you (and because containing the excitement can be too much at times). I implemented a prisoner's dilemma type game with 2 groups early on with predictable results including all kinds of competition that spawned great dialogue. But something was missing.

I took your Pasta Wars and produced a variant called Soda Wars using the same dynamics, groups, and rules. Each group was a soda distributor and could sell Pepsi or Mt. Dew for each round (Pepsi was the competition and Mt. Dew was collaboration). There were some ad hoc rules flying around as far as meeting with other groups or bringing their voting sheets to the meetings to reduce their risk.

I laugh as I think about it because it was so much fun. The results were richer and the dialogue during and after was worth it. The point system went by 10s and for each point each group member earned a piece of candy. They thought they would all leave with 100s of pieces!!! They were surprised when they didn't (but we decided to split it up anyway). Long story short, it was awesome. Thanks for teaching!"