Prisoner's Dilemma

Today's in class exercise mirrored what's called the prisoner's dilemma: namely, the inner struggle you face when given the option to get off on a lighter sentence (of sorts in a real life situation) at the expense of telling all you know about your partner in crime.  The pro's, con's, psychological stress, etc.

Our experience however was a little different, and thankfully so.  I mean, in trying to turn a group into a team I should hope there would be no turning against one another, and though it wasn't directly outspoken I feel the entire class had this same impression.  So how we handled which one of the entire class would receive the only available A - after a series of brain storming and voting - came down to an obstacle course challenge full of spinning in circles, finding the teacher in her office, and racing back to the classroom.  Even if there was only one winner at least this way everyone could have fun.

The winner, it turned out, wasn't really the winner since this so-called competition was really more of an exercise as I suspected, but fun and learning was had in a creative and collaborative process so I like to think we're all winners here.  I just wish prisoners had an easier time of it, but who knows?  Maybe one day they'll see the light and wind up settling their differences with dry erase board marker obstacle course challenges.