Gadgets, games and gizmos for learning (part 2)

Another nifty slogan from the book is to "Become a strategy guide" rather than aspire to be a "boss" or a "know-it-all dictator." He offers some general techniques to help facilitate the management of those gamers accustomed to boverthrowing "bosses" in their games: 1. Make rules, parameters, and goals explicit. 2) Allow for trial and error 3) Build a support and knowledge community 4) Encourage research 5) Assign multiple tasks to a gamer 6) Make tasks meaningful. As is the case with his advice on learning strategies, I think the techniques can be applied to the management of of many boomers and Gen X'ers.

After discussing ways to recruit gamers into the workplace (which is just a bit depressing given the current un and underemployment of college grads), Kapp offers advice on how best to sell gadgets, gizmos and gaming strategies for knowledge transfer to management. He offers three approaches: 1) Business case 2) Make gadgets and games look more corporate and 3) Slowly introduce games and gizmos into an organization so that no on realizes that you've been playful. No matter which approach is taken, it's important to focus on what is attractive to your organization's culture and know at what point in the "Games and Gadgets adoption continuum" , from pragmatist to connector to visionary,employees are located. I found this chapter particularly useful and liked the inclusion of data points designed to enhance business cases although they all could probably be updated by now.

Kapp ends his book with a discussion of Knowledge Requirements Planning, a process designed to ensure the translation of strategic knowledge goals into measurable learning objectives. He takes care to take into account the differences between boomers and gamers throughout the process.

Practicing what he preaches, Kapp turns his final chapter into a cheat sheet by summarizing the methods for making the knowledge transfer process between boomers and gamers more effective discussed in the book. I'll definitely use it as a quick reference guide.

Gadgets, games and gizmos for learning (part 1)

Karl Kapp, like Mark Prensky, has faith in the power of video games to transform education. He sees the rapture of his children when they immerse themselves in a game and he wants to tap into the power when building learning tools. He's also willing to argue that gameplay contributes to the rewiring of the next generations learning circuitry.

Although I firmly believe that organizations can learn from the success of video games, I don't agree with Kapp that we need to recast eLearning because gamers have radically different learning style. Like Ruth Clark, I think we should be paying attention to the principles of multimedia design when creating designing eLearning rather than adapt to the learner's apparent inclinations. I also think we should keep in mind the importance theories of "play" and "flow" when creating learning.

Even though as a non-gamer, I may not see video games as significant as Kapp, I appreciate his passion and his willingness to really think about how discussions of gaming can improve education.

Kapp begins his discussion by exploring frame games and simulations. He uses Gagne's knowledge hierarchy to categorize learning objectives and he offers suggestions for appropriate games. For example, he suggests using a word search to teach declarative knowledge and a more complex game like Jeopardy for concepts and rules. Higher-order knowledge requires the greater complexity provided by simulations. As was the case with frame games, he offers a neat, useful categorization of simulation types.

In the fourth chapter, Kapp shifts his focus to the gadgets that gamers (and I would even venture to say a large percentage of men of all ages) adore such as ipods and cell phones. He smartly recognizes how useful such tools can be for sharing those chunks of knowledge that people want to be able to access at their fingertips.

Continuing to use gamers' preferred learning techniques as his guide, Kapp discusses the value of cheat codes, search engines and Web 2.0 tools such as wikis and blogs. Although I think gamers' learning preferences belong to a much wider audience, Kapp drives home an important point for those of us in Corporate Learning and Development: Provide people with the right tools so that they can access the just the right information(nothing more) at just the right time (when they need to use it).

Chapter 8 contains one of my favorite slogans of the book: Don't educate, automate. Make a system as foolproof as possible using technology and you won't have to invest millions in technology to fix problems and/or train people. Written before Wii took off, he devotes part of the chapter to the improvement of the human-computer interface for learning. I was especially interested in the guidelines he sets forth for creating the illusion of conversation between human and machine: 1) Maintain pacing, 2) Create illusion of awareness and 3) Maintain illusion of awareness.

Learning Online with Games, Simulations and Virtual Worlds

When I read the Amazon email advertising Clark Aldrich’s new book, I thought it sounded like the perfect way to kick off my independent study on immersive Learning, especially since I had just picked up the textbook he co-edited, Games And Simulations in Online Learning: Research and Development Frameworks, and noted that it was chock full of tables and statistics.

I’m happy to report that I wasn’t disappointed in the book. In addition to providing an overview of different types of what he calls HIVES (Highly Interactive Virtual Environments), he offers very practical guidelines for choosing, implementing and “selling” the right HIVE strategy to senior management and participants. Even though his approach is straightforward, he doesn’t just present a list of shoulds and oughts. Rather he encourages readers to make their own decisions about issues such as determining how much support to provide participants during a session. I was impressed that Aldrich seems more concerned with making sure that people make thoughtful choices rather than pushing a specific agenda.

The book is divided into three sections. In “What are HIVES and why should I care?”, Aldrich discusses each aspect of the four elements that constitute a HIVE: 1) Simulation, 2) Game, 3) Pedagogical, and 4) Tasks and Levels. He then differentiates between virtual labs, frame games, branching stories, interactive stories , practiceware and mini-games. He also brings to light a number of participant behaviors that should be addressed like “back channel chatting” and the threshold to quit (i.e., How do you strike a balance between challenge and anxiety so that the participant moves smoothly between moments of frustration that characterize the early moments of learning and resolution?)

Part 2, “ Choosing and Using a Highly Interactive Environment”, centers on identifying the right HIVE for a particular issue and understanding what ‘s involved in selecting a HIVE. He then talks about piloting and deploying the HIVE, paying attention to the preparation and materials needed to make the deployment a success. He ends with offering a number of evaluation strategies that should be taken into consideration once the HIVE has been deployed.
Part 3 is a short but offers very useful advice on how to sell a HIVE to Management. I found myself sketching my own strategy while reading it.

My appetite has now been sufficiently whetted and I’m not only ready to dive into more materials but am already itching to design and implement my own HIVE.

Boy in the Balloon

Like so many other corporate slaves, I was pulled out of my cube into the break room yesterday to see a giant cupcake with silver frosting floating through the air on TV. When I heard what had happened, three thoughts entered my mind: 1) I'd be terrified if I were the parents. How could they let this happen? 2) What a great example for a creative thinking activity this would be! 3) I hope someone solves the problem and the balloon lands with the boy safe and sound so that tomorrow morning he can describe his adventures on the Today show. Imagine a 6-year old with such a childhood memory?

Like the balloon itself, my romantic ideas were burst this morning when I saw the headlines claiming that the whole affair might be a hoax enacted by a publicity-seeking family who regularly put their children at risk. Instead of joyfully describing his adventures with wild things of the air, the balloon boy vomited during an interview with Meredith Vieira.

Even though the children's story I had hoped for didn't pan out, there are still some very interesting questions raised by the boy's adventure. The one that interests me the most relates to the debate over whether we can overprotect our children. It was actually televised in a Wife Swap episode featuring the balloon boy's family of thrill-seeking scientists and a family focused on child safety.

I can see the merits of both sides of the debate, but I don't think it's always easy to find the balance between overprotection and risk taking. As cautious as I am, it's hard for me to let Luc fly without me even though I can see the joy he'd find in the air. And I'm determined not to let my own fears cage my child.

Helicopter parents would never let their children near a flying machine without supervision. it wouldn't be responsible. I can't argue with wanting to keep my children safe. But I also wonder what gets lost if our children never get the chance to take risks and fearlessly soar through the air?

Let the wild rumpus start!

What is it be human?

It's probably pretty obvious that the question of what it is to be human is one of my favorite themes. I enjoy science fiction and horror so much because the definition of humanity is so often challenged. Blade Runner will always be a favorite movie of mine for that reason.

Although Zomblieland is a straight-up comedy, I did end up reflecting a bit on what it is to be human after watching it. In the movie, Tallahasse achieves a sense of "flow" while slaughtering zombies. It's his talent and he enjoys every zombie head he's busted and every zombie belly he's punctured. What always strikes me as a little disturbing is how much I enjoy seeing those zombies blown away. There's some kind of catharsis in seeing something inhuman destroyed in a wildly spectacular way.

Seeing humans devoured by zombies in an equally spectacular way at the beginning of the movie was, in contrast, extremely disturbing. Both zombies and humans are played by human actors. Both run madly around. It's true the zombies regurgitate black goo, shuffle and have green skin, but they look human. What marks them for me as inhuman? Is is the fact that they eat humans? I don't think that means I'd enjoy the killing of cannibals. Is it because they look half dead? I don't think it follows that I'd take pleasure in seeing the death of the mortally wounded in a hospital.

EisenbergLand

In the past week, I've seen two movies that use an amusement park to trigger a young man's coming of age and both, Adventureland and Zombieland, feature Jesse Eisenberg. Like Michael Cera and John Heder, he's the smart, sweet but socially awkward character that you expect to see at the center of a huge romantic mess and love to see come out on top and get the girl against all odds.

Carnivals with their dangerous and transgressive allure are often the settings for such stories. They are places where the young can tap into emerging desire and play dangerously. (In fact, I just saw a trailer for The Vampire's Assistant which seems to chart the same kind of path) What's interesting about the two Eisenberg movies is that the young man's story is framed within 2 completely different genres.

Adventureland is a small, indie film in which Eisenberg finds himself forced to work in a seedy carnival before grad school. A luckless romantic he blindly struggles to forge a relationship with one of his edgy, pretty co-carnies. All set to very cool, appropriate 80s music. Like the seedy carnival and the awful carny job, it's a rather sad and small movie. You root for Eisenberg's character and you're happy when he gets the girl. But there's no real joy.

Eisenberg's character is just as neurotic in Zombieland, but the conversion of most of the human race into raging zombies gives him the opportunity to overcome his anxieties and save the girl in an orgy of cathartic violence. Needless to say, there's a heckuva lot more carnage in Zombieland but there's also a lot more laughter.

Play on my mind

Since I've begun reading Play, I've been interpreting events through a playful lens. At work, I see conflict between colleagues arising from different notions of playfulness. I see management succeeding or failing in terms of how effectively they encourage playfulness among team members. At home, I see how all work and no play can make Jack a miserable spouse (and a homicidal maniac perhaps). On television, I watch Mad Men and think that perhaps all Don Draper needs is to learn to laugh at himself and the world around him. It's no surprise that the Age of Anxiety is followed by a time of rebellion that manifests itself in the eruption of play. When being adult means living the Drapers' lives , dancing around a maypole looks very appealing even if that feeling of innocence requires pharmaceutical assistance.

I've also been thinking about Luc's immersion in video games. Clearly, his play profile is that of a storyteller. He completely loses all sense of time when he's creating special wings that allow him to fly in an online world. It definitely reminds me of the hours and hours I spent reading The Lord of the Rings. But I worry that being shown the world will restrict his imagination. Then again, I thought the criticism of Legos movie-themed sets for the same reason was ridiculous.