Where I’ve Been Online (Feb 15, 2014)

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  • How a High School Teacher Is ‘Gamifying’ World News

    “A new game called Fantasy Geopolitics (think Fantasy Football meets Model United Nations) is radically changing the way high school students in Minnesota are interacting with the news.

    In 2009, Eric Nelson, a Social Studies teacher at North Lakes Academy Charter School in Forest Lake, Minn., developed Fantasy Geopolitics after recognizing that his attempts at getting his students to engage with the class weren’t quite hitting the mark.”

    tags:websites ted resources gamification technology

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Human Factors: The Third Wave of Gamification?

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Human Factors: The Third Wave of Gamification?.

This article points to another describing a “third wave” of gamification that involves effectively users creating their own games within the environment they are using, and expresses some dubiousness about its utility.

I am dubious too.
The number of people who actually want to create their own systems is (very) small compared to those who would be OK with using one.
Just look at how many people can program compared to how many people use programs.

One of the first and most important rules of application design (and a gamified system is an application) is that

NOBODY WANTS TO LEARN YOUR APPLICATION – They just want to get their work done.

Forgive the yelling, but I’ve been teaching computer science for 30+ years and it seems to be one of the hardest things to get software developers to accept.

Something many of the “pushers” of gamification as marketing voodoo magic fail to get is that people play games for entertainment. They play by choice. As soon as you make a game or gamify something that they HAVE to do (like work or formal education), things change. Now, that’s not to say that games and gamification are not worthwhile – I feel very strongly that they are – but there is a big difference between designing something fun so people will do it willingly, and making something they have to do more enjoyable or engaging (and if you want more effective, that’s a whole other challenge).

Even though I’m a pretty good programmer and can build my own websites, courses, games, and other systems, I DO NOT want to have to build my own gamification for some task I have to do. Customization is all well and good, but taken too far it becomes counter-productive.

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Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Was Learning How to Code — Learning to Code — Medium

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EXCELLENT advice.

Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Was Learning How to Code — Learning to Code — Medium.

  • Before you learn to code, think about what you want to code.
    …..There’s nothing mystical about it (but she’s right, pointers and recursion are HARD, and not everyone gets those)
  • It never works the first time.
    And probably won’t the second or third time.
  • Someone will always tell you you’re doing it wrong.
    …..and my personal version of this:
    “Thou Shalt Hate Everyone’s Code but Thine Own”
  • Someone will always tell you you’re not a real coder
    …forgive me, but this is especially true if you are a girl. 
  • Worrying about “geek cred” will slowly kill you.
  • Sticking with it is more important than the method.
    …..it’s that 10,000 hours thing….
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Where I’ve Been Online (Jan 25, 2014)

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  • 100 Websites You Should Know and Use (updated!) | TED Blog

    “100 Websites You Should Know and Use (updated!)
    Posted by: Jessica Gross
    August 3, 2007 at 12:00 pm EST

    More

    In the spring of 2007, Julius Wiedemann, editor in charge at Taschen GmbH, gave a legendary TED University talk: an ultra-fast-moving ride through the “100 websites you should know and use.” Six years later, it remains one of the most viewed TED blog posts ever. Time for an update? We think so. Below, the 2013 edition of the 100 websites to put on your radar and in your browser.

    To see the original list, click here. While most of these sites are still going strong and remain wonderful resources, we’ve crossed out any that are no longer functioning. And because there are so many amazing resources out there, please add your own ideas in the comments. Happy surfing!”

    tags:websites ted resources technology

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Media literacy tops traditional education in school smoking-prevention efforts – Medical News Today

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Hmmmmm – helping kids learn how to think is more effective than telling them what to think. Who’d a thunk it?

Media literacy tops traditional education in school smoking-prevention efforts – Medical News Today.

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Rapid Game Prototyping: Tips for Programmers | devmag.org.za

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A handy list. Many/most of these can apply to instructional design too.

Rapid Game Prototyping: Tips for Programmers | devmag.org.za.

A. Rapid is a State of Mind

  • – Know and remember the goal
  • -Find the essence of your idea, and schedule enough time for it
  • -Take creative risks, but avoid technical risks

B. Planning and Process

  • – Think about content
  • – Plan
  • -Follow an implementation strategy, but adapt it to follow the ebbs and flow of the creative process
  • -Know and avoid time drains
    • – controls, balance, gui, animation, procedural content generation,
  • -Consider using serial development (programming pipelines)
  • – Don’t get stuck

C. Code Design and Implementation

  • – use placeholder code: controls, feedback, AI, procedural content, approximation
    – use design shortcuts (use with care)
  • – avoid false design shortcuts
  • – manage your tweakables
  • – write readable code
  • – use implementation patterns

D. Before, After, In-between

  • – reflect
  • – build a library of code that enables rapid prototyping
  • – identify implementation patterns bug patterns and time sinks
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The British amateur who debunked the mathematics of happiness | Science | The Observer

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Here’s how science can be wrong, even when there is “consensus”.

The moral of this story: NEVER STOP QUESTIONING. Being skeptical is a GOOD thing in science. ALWAYS.

Sometimes, even when 30 Helens Agree, they are wrong.

The British amateur who debunked the mathematics of happiness | Science | The Observer.

It was as simple as that. The mysteries of love, happiness, fulfilment, success, disappointment, heartache, failure, experience, random luck, environment, culture, gender, genes, and all the other myriad ingredients that make up a human life could be reduced to the figure of 2.9013.

How is it that one guy can end up bringing down a popular fallacy?

“The answer,” says Brown when I meet him in a north London cafe, “is because that’s how it always happens. Look at whistleblower culture. If you want to be a whistleblower you have to be prepared to lose your job. I’m able to do what I’m doing here because I’m nobody. I don’t have to keep any academics happy. I don’t have to think about the possible consequences of my actions for people I might admire personally who may have based their work on this and they end up looking silly. There are 160,000 psychologists in America and they’ve got mortgages. I’ve got the necessary degree of total independence.”

And what do the “experts” do when they are found to be wrong?

The paper mounted a devastating case against the maths employed by Fredrickson and Losada, who were offered the chance to respond in the same online issue of American Psychologist. Losada declined and has thus far failed to defend his input in any public forum. But Fredrickson did write a reply, which, putting a positive spin on things, she titled Updated Thinking on Positivity Ratios.

She effectively accepted that Losada’s maths was wrong and admitted that she never really understood it anyway. But she refused to accept that the rest of the research was flawed.

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Where I’ve Been Online (Jan 18, 2014)

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  • Improving the World of Educational Gaming

    “Expand

    Quick, name as many great educational games as you can!

    Chances are your list topped out around four or five and they were all decently dated games from your childhood. Math Blaster, Oregon Trail, Putt-Putt, Pajama Sam, Mavis Bacon Teaches Delicious Typing, etc. There always seems to be one educational game or series that stands out from our days of hammering away in computer class., but even back in the days of blasting math and dying of dysentery there didn’t seem to be many quality educational titles to choose from.”

    tags:gaming education serious_games

  • Overnight, No-Cook Refrigerator Oatmeal

    tags:breakfast oatmeal recipes food

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