The Becker Blog

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything really new when it comes to presenting text, but this one looks like it has a lot of potential. Here is a link to the original article (the samples below come from there):

http://www.readingonline.org/articles/art_index.asp?HREF=/articles/r_walker/

The technique described in this paper turns this:

into:

For online reading this looks like a terrific idea.

I have recently been working on a new methodology for the analysis of commercial video games in order to uncover mechanisms used to support learning. I am calling this new approach Instructional Ethology. It combines
structural analysis based on black box reverse engineering (adapted from ontological excavation) with behavioural analysis based on an adaptation of the basic approach to studying animal behaviour. (For more as it develops see: http://www.minkhollow.ca/KB/PhD/Thesis07/doku.php?id=thesis:06.methodology)

It occurs to me that this methodology could also have much broader applications in software generally – as a way to analyse usability. It obviously needs development and lots of testing, but as far as I know *no-one* has thought off applying ethological techniques to program behaviour. As for “Why ANIMAL behaviour and not human behaviour studies?” Animals can’t talk to us so all we have is observations of behaviour. This is the same position that most users of software are in – they have no clue what is happening underneath (nor should they have to, mostly) so code analysis is unlikely to provide insights to making software more usable/intuitive/comprehensible to users. So perhaps, software ethology has some potential.

There is a wonderful article about Usable GUI design at http://benroe.com/files/gui.html; one of the best things to remember is:

The most basic point in all computer UI design is that the user does not want to use your application. They want to get their work done as quickly and easily as possible, and the application is simply a tool aiding that. The more you can keep your application out of the way of the user, the better. Effort spent on using your application is effort not spent on the work the user is trying to do.

This connects very nicely with studying UI design by studying the behaviour of the program.

Stay tuned.

On Game Length

[started Dec. 4 2006] http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20061201/qotw_01.shtml Talks about the length of games.

This is of value to me because [I say] long games are ill-suited to school environments.
School learning comes in bite-sized chunks, single lessons; units that last a few weeks. Unless we begin to require dozens of hours in homework, there is no way for games to fit into formal school environments. It may be part of the reason why puzzle games predominate when it comes to school games. Their length is better suited to the environment than a game like Oblivion.

I think that many modern games are *not* suited for use in schools because of the time commitment required to play them vs. what we can get out of them in terms of meeting outcomes. That also means that the model provided by such games may not be especially useful for ed-games. A game that takes 100 hours to complete is just not going to work in school, whereas a 10-hour game might. Even if the 100-hour game were to match perfectly with a whole pile of general outcomes, it is still a huge time commitment. The amount of flexibility around the time commitment for any game is going to depend (at least in part) on what level of organization the ’schedule’ is set at. In other words, if the province sets the amount of time available for something we have almost no hope of affecting that; if it is done at the board level the chances are better but the case still has to be made that this change will be good for all schools in the district. However, if the decision is school-based we have the greatest chance of influence.

On “wasting valuable lesson time”

We must.

When ‘content’ is stripped of its context, which MUST include those pesky extraneous details, it becomes disconnected.

No wonder learners can’t remember stuff. Virtually all of the memory tricks we use to help us remember things involve some way to attach the thing we are learning to something meaningful to us. If ‘we trim the fat’ from our lessons in an effort to make it more efficient (i.e. if we take away the bits that are not directly relevant to our ‘content’) we also remove the context which is so crucial for anchoring learning.

Case in point:

I find politics tedious. I especially find American politics tedious (I’m not American). However, I have come to really (I mean REALLY) like the television show West Wing. While watching, I have learned WAY more about American politics and their political system than I ever really wanted to. It makes watching the Bush and Cheney show quite frightening. http://www2.warnerbros.com/web/westwingtv/index.jsp?frompage=sitemap
http://www.nbc.com/The_West_Wing/index.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0200276/quotes

This story was originally written May 31 1998. Copyright, K.Becker

Today was one of *those* days. I went downstairs to check on the 2 little mallards that hatched a few days ago only to find that our new kitten had managed to pull one of them through the bars of the cage and kill it. They were the only 2 eggs rescued from a nest attacked by a fox.

Kittens are so cute.

Good Morning, kitten.
Nice to see you had a fun night. Kipa, the kitten decided it would be fun to climb up my bare legs. I peeled him off my legs and he bit my hand.

He’s so cute.

Sad and in pain, I checked the answering machine – my long awaited fruit tree seedlings were shipped by bus on Thursday and they still haven’t arrived. No messages. Rats.

Oh yes, I also remember to open the sliding doors in the hopes that the gopher that got into the house and is having a grand time chewing up the kid’s toys would leave again (he spent the night hiding behind the un-used stove squeaking for help).
Good Morning, gopher. He squeaked.

Gophers are so cute.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally written Feb 18/2007

Today I found a mouse in my glove.

I hate mice.

I found one in my boot once – I was barefoot when I put it on – something squishy in the toe – shook out my boot and there it was. Ack.

ACK!!!

This time I put on my glove (you know those big, cheap (not the work kind) winter ones) – and my middle finger pushed up against something soft, squishy, and a little warm. My first thought was “How did that guinea fowl manage to poo in my glove?” (we currenty have a guinea in the house – named Glen…. or maybe Glenda… I can’t tell.)

Then – YUK!

– I hate mice – I shook out my glove – nothing.

So I started to work it out of the finger by squeezing it like a tube of toothpaste – more yuk – when it finally came out – there it was – small; barely alive. I wonder how long it’s been there? Did it get there on its own or did one of the cats toss it there? Well, like I said, I hate mice – I tossed it out into the snow (I’m still too much of a coward to kill it outright – God forgive me) I figured it wouldn’t take long outside; I’d heard that freezing is not altogether unpleasant.

I prayed for forgiveness.

Read the rest of this entry »

A typical encounter at a yet-to-be built massively multiplayer online school:

Suddenly, Amy realized that unless they all worked together, they wouldn’t get out alive. She wiggles the fuzzy slippers dangling from her swinging feet and glances out the window as if looking for an answer.

She had miscalculated, and now they didn’t have enough fuel left to make it to the landing strip. After several abbreviated (cryptic) messages back and forth, all five members of the crew agreed that this would be as good a time as any to test whether or not the wing modifications they introduced yesterday would have the desired effect. Penny was in charge of gathering weather data – they needed to plot a new flight path that would take advantage of the winds and updrafts in light of their wing mods to save fuel. Kevin’s job was to locate alternate landing sites – they had to coordinate closely to make sure they found a place that would not only allow them to touch down without too much damage to the landing gear, but also take advantage of the winds currents. Each time they found another possible site, Mick and Krista would run several simulated landings to see what their chances for success were. Amy asks her mom if lunch will be ready soon – all this excitement is making her hungry.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was at a conference recently, at a workshop where we were given an exercise that included a brainstorming activity.

Among the guidelines was the now-all-too-common refrain: “There are NO wrong answers!”

Poppycock.

There are too wrong answers!

Plenty of them.

There are even dumb answers. BUT….

We should still be encouraged to try them out. How will we know they are wrong or dumb if we never give them voice? Claiming there are no wrong answers is one of those warm-and-fuzzy sophisms that, in the long run, causes more problems than it solves. In a subtle and subversive way it erodes our willingness to take risks by claiming there is no risk. Risk-taking is essential to learning.

What’s wrong with admitting that there really ARE wrong answers, but that it’s OK to state them???? After all, don’t we learn from mistakes? What’s so bad about making mistakes? If the study of digital games has taught me anything, it is that making mistakes in a safe environment is a great way to learn stuff.

So rather than misleading people by pretending “there are no wrong answers”, how about if we start to admit “It’s OK to be wrong here.”

Note: There are still some places where it’s really not OK to be wrong, like life-threatening emergencies. In most learning environments it IS OK to be wrong though – and the risk-taking that is associated with the possibility of being wrong should be both encouraged and supported.

I’ve noticed that quite a few big names in ID (Instructional Design: Papert, Schank, Merrill,..) have backgrounds in AI (Artificial Intelligence, rather than the other AI) I find this a little disconcerting.

In some sense the application of concepts from artificial intelligence to human intelligence and learning is rather circular. Artificial intelligence begins with theories about how humans think, and builds machine systems that model this. Implementations of these models are of necessity distorted by the nature of the machine’s logic and circuitry – there is no reason to believe that humans process or store information in a manner anything like that required by a computer. If we then take these models of machine learning and intelligence, and reapply them to human learning, as has been done, for example, in Merrill’s Instructional Transaction Theory (Simon, 1973), we have created a circular application whose validity depends primarily on how accurate our initial AI assumptions are to reality. In other words, we create ID theories based on models of machine learning, which in turn are based on machine implementations of theories of mind. The soundness of this last connection remains an unresolved debate, as various and sometimes contrasting perspectives on theories of mind remain plausible, from theories of “mind-as-machine” through cultural evolution, the theory of extelligence, and beyond (Merrill, 1999) The notion that we can design models of human learning based on the idea that our minds are like the computers we have invented seems peculiar to this author.

Merrill, M. D. (1999). Instructional Transaction Theory (ITT): Instructional Design Based on Knowledge Objects. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional-design theories and models : vol. 2, a new paradigm of instructional theory (pp. 397 – 424). Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Simon, H. A. (1973). The Structure of Ill Structured Problems. Artificial Intelligence, 4(3), 181-201.

Do Animals Play Games?

I guess it is always possible to discuss definitions, but if one is willing to accept a common-sense definition of play, then animals absolutely play.

Kittens (and almost all adult cats) often ‘play’ when alone, which sort of eliminates the notion of led training. Watching animals is one of my favorite pastimes, and there is no doubt in my mind that they are sometimes playing. There are characteristic postures that differentiate play from other behaviours in any animal I have observed. A watchful eye can also detect when play turns into something else, which it occasionally does.

Cats, dogs, and most predator species play (I don’t think anyone can convince me that otters don’t play). Some prey animals play also, although to a lesser extent, it seems. Horses, donkeys and goats play all throughout their lives; sheep and cows, not so much. I’m not sure I would call what baby ducks and geese do ‘play’, and I don’t think adult ducks play at all (I wouldn’t call enjoying a great bath ‘play’) – on the other hand I’d have trouble calling some of what parrots do anything *but* play.

Some gorillas and elephants like to paint. There’s even one gorilla (http://www.solcomhouse.com/Michael.htm) who named his paintings.

I’ve been living and working with animals all my life, and have learned that what makes me happy does not necessarily make them happy – nor do my needs or feelings necessarily translate to theirs. My donkey and horse react and behave quite differently – and they require different approaches in handling and training. That’s even true with different breeds of dog. I don’t think that’s anthropomorphising.

Knowing that there are distinct differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’ doesn’t necessarily preclude some remarkable similarities.

The view of cats (and other animals) teaching through simulation touches on a number of things here – from what level of fidelity is necessary (and how it might need to change as experience/learning does) – to ‘constrained reality’ – to how deeply some of this may be rooted in what appear to be natural behaviours.

Cats seem to like teaching – Read the rest of this entry »

I have seriously misjudged M. David Merrill.

His Component Display Theory was very computer sciencey, and unwieldy, and really turned me off; but First Principles is *really* good. Thank you Gail for pointing me at it!

I’ve had this notion for a while: that the process of becoming an expert is a very long one (with the exception of the occasional aberrational protégé). Eventually, along the path to becoming a ‘master of your craft’, most people seem to discover the big picture (perspective), which seems invisible to beginners. Beginners concern themselves with lots of details (and with exhaustive inventories, catalogues, prescriptions for how-to, etc.); masters concern themselves with first principles (the essence).

After reading this, I want to ask, “What more do I need?” This seems to say it all. (and how come nobody put this under my nose before?) http://id2.usu.edu/Papers/5FirstPrinciples.PDF

I agree with almost every claim he makes (although I think that fantasy problems can be just as compelling and facilitating as real-world problems), and, even better,… good games are already designed to meet all of these First Principles: Read the rest of this entry »

This looks like this might be worth a bit of time to investigate: http://immersiveeducation.org/It came across the game_edu list this morning.

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Media Grid call for participation: Immersive Education and Virtual Learning Environments

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High quality PDF and Web versions: http://MediaGrid.org/#NEWS

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BOSTON, MA – June 04, 2007 – MediaGrid.org launches Immersive Education initiative with an open call to educators, students, and professionals who have experience using virtual learning environments or video game technologies (such as Second Life, Croquet, Extensible 3D [X3D], Panda3D, Quake, Unreal, Torque Game Engine, and so forth). Individuals and organizations can visit ImmersiveEducation.org to select the next-generation Immersive Education platform, contribute to best practices, and establish standards for virtual learning environments and game-based learning platforms.