Too old for babes

I am turning 33 in about a week.

This weekend, I realized that I am too old for babes.

Now let me be clear: I am not talking about women. Especially, smart, beautiful conscious women. I am talking about what I have been brought up to identify as babes.

I live in an area with quite a few undergrads. A bunch of girls who go to a local college (not UW) live next door. I have had minimal interaction with them in the past year, which is unremarkable because I am typically wary of interactions with neighbors. I have always been a little paranoid in this regard. Those of you who have known me for a long time might have an idea why.

These girls, having endured the same winter that i did, chose this weekend to celebrate summer.

It was like MTV spring break over there. First, these little bikini blondes, who are younger than my younger sister I think it is somehow important to note, set up an inflatable pool and a slip'n'slide.

Then, they played with waterballoons.

Then they broke out supersoakers.

And, finally, of course, hoola-hoops.

Squeals and bikinis all day long.

It was like a fucking beer commercial or a teenager's wet dream.

And?

I thought it was funny at first.

But I as the day went on and they were laughing, and squirting each other, and laughing, and splashing, and shrieking.... I mostly got annoyed.

I was trying to read on my porch.

That about sums me up. Already a grouchy grandpa.

I thought this blog was abandoned

I've been seriously neglecting this thing for a while now. I guess it's hard for me to get on the computer and think in the evening after intensive brain work during the day.

Well, I'm not giving up on this blog, mostly because a few of my friends have been kind enough to respond (I need to get better at returning the favor too). Also, there's plenty to write about it.

So look for more frquent postings here.

In the meantime, check out a local story about the types of things I'm up to this summer:

http://www.madison.com/tct/news/198974

Games are not always fun...

When I say I'm working on a game where players become engineers, people often ask me: but will that be fun? Of course, what makes a game a game isn't that it is fun, but that it is motivating--it makes you care about what you are doing and thus want to do it. In a recent test of Digital Zoo that involved a class of 4th/5th graders, we were interested in comparing the children's focus during the game to their focus during school. The children's classroom teachers observed the game and had the following types of things to say about their students:

"[He] has lasted longer than he would have at school, even with hands-on activities."

"I'm AMAZED that this activity engaged her for 2.5 hours."

"[One Design Advisor] has a couple of boys who can easily get distracted and goof around but also really don't like each other (and one has been accused recently of teasing the other) but you'd never know it from their group behavior."

This teacher's observations, which sound like pretty strong endorsements, will be helpful as we investigate new ways to introduce epistemic games to schools. These observations indicate that the children participating in the game were able to focus in ways that they typically don't in school. But the reason this teacher was surprised that the children were so engaged was not only that they were behaving differently from how they usually would in school, but also because of the nature of the tasks in the game. Digital Zoo is fun, but it is also hard and frustrating!

The children were willing to focus and work hard for long periods of time because they were invested in the premise. Once they accepted the fiction that they were engineers, they were willing to struggle to fulfill the expectation of being an engineer. They were willing to play the game, even when it wasn't "fun." This phenomenon is clearly something missing in schools, where all too often students are motivated by grades, if they are motivated at all.

China and the US admire each other's lawns

Re-education, a recent article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, illustrates a classic case of the grass being greener, with the future of two countries at stake.

The article describes how Chinese educators, "concerned that too many students have become the sort of stressed-out, test-acing drone who fails to acquire the skills — creativity, flexibility, initiative, leadership — said to be necessary in the global marketplace.... are trying to blend a Western emphasis on critical thinking, versatility and leadership into their own traditions."

Meanwhile, on this side of the planet, "American educators seek to emulate Asian pedagogy, a test-centered ethos and a rigorous focus on math, science and engineering."

Not to put too fine a point on the matter, but if the Chinese are not happy with their system, why are we trying to copy it? And vice versa?

Maybe, just maybe, neither system is working. Perhaps it is time to experiment with an entirely new type of education system. What might such a system look like?

Well, my research group is asking that very question. Check out our website, epistemicgames.org to see some of our potential solutions.

Finding Flow: thoughts on creativity #1

Consider juggling. The concept is simple. Keep the balls (or beanbags, or torches, or chainsaws) aloft. However, the game's simplicity allows for impressive creativity:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4776181634656145640

This performance was forwarded to me by a friend as an example of Flow, which is a concept proposed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow is a mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity (succinctly put by Wikipedia)

When I play basketball, I can get immersed in the game, meaning that I am completely present to what I am doing (not thinking about anything else). This state of basketball flow, while generally fun, is not exactly the type of flow that Csikszentmihalyi is talking about, because at any given point in the game I can be frustrated, embarrassed, in pain, etc.

There is another level of flow, often characterized as "the zone," where the immersion is so complete that the game feels easy. Sometimes I feel like I can hit any shot, or I can anticipate action before it happens.

I can only imagine what NBA players must feel like when they get to this level of Flow. Kobe Bryant recently described a quarter of a basketball game where he scored 30 points (a quarter is 12 minutes!) as feeling like a video game.

For Kobe-in-the-zone, basketball is effortless, automatic, and fun. I'm not saying that games should be effortless or automatic, but that mastering games can make playing them so. Kobe Bryant is by all accounts one of the hardest working players in the NBA.

If we look at juggling as fairly simple game, and basketball as a much more complex game (with competitive, collaborative, athletic variables added), we might look at professionals working in innovative fields as participants in games that are so complex that outsiders can barely make sense of them. Sure, we watch hospital and courtroom dramas on TV just as we watch basketball games, but these are dramatizations that are obviously simplified for the sake of comprehension and entertainment.

Successful professionals working in innovative fields operate with Flow because they know the rules of their game so well. Epistemic games unearth the rules of very complicated professions. By simulating the training that instills in professionals the ability to effectively participate in their fields, epistemic games empower students to be creative in ways that will matter for them, and for all of us who will be depending on them, in the real world.

I don't mean to whine, but...

but this is just bullshit. The sun is out and it's -1 degrees. I have never experienced this kind of bitterness. Why did people settle here in the first place? I mean, if you were a hunter, gatherer, farmer, whatever, and some traveler came through and told you that by traveling south you could find places where it's warm all year. No more stinky animal skins. No more eating cured jerky the whole winter. Fresh fruit all the time. More flesh to ogle. Why would you stay?

After my time here is done, I swear I'm moving somewhere warm. Where I can immediately throw out all of my socks. Near the ocean. Where you have to walk slow not to sweat through your clothes.

Expect posts like this for the next few years.

The war continues...

The Diameter of the Bomb

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making
a circle with no end and no God.

by Yehuda Amichai

One more haiku, from the vault

I'll never forget how happy this wise little girl made me:

"fiend" tagged the school wall
but the girl playing tells me
"someone can't spell friend"

Winter

It's snowy here and very beautiful. In the most painful way possible. The high temperature today was 22. Tomorrow the high will be 10. Saturday and Sunday: 4 and 4. Monday: -4. NEGATIVE FOUR! THE HIGH TEMPERATURE! Ain't that some shit.

I remember New York in the winter:

New York Winter Haikus

Snow gray before ground
But flakes flutter to my eyes
Drawn delicately

Green, red, soft white lights
Miraculously open
Cemented windows

All snowmen skipped town
Singing soulful carols blind
Over frozen pee

A child’s mad mitten
Red-faced, with an absent hand
Slaps a snowpile back

NO SLEEP SINCE BROOKLYN

I lay awake, long after I get in bed, unable to sleep. Sleeping has never, ever, been an issue for me in the past. I would usually fall asleep within five minutes of listening to my pillow's secrets. But now... ever since my move it seems like I am bursting with nervous energy from 10 pm to 2 am. And sometimes later.

I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, which never used to happen. I have no trouble getting back to sleep, praise be.

Of course, it's not that I now need less sleep. I have a hell of a time getting up in the morning. My sheets and comforter come alive in the morning their tendrils conspiring against me, pinnning me to the mattress. And then I am just tired all day.

I've tried both types of sleepytime tea (and i mean both the real tea and the pseudonym).
I've tried whiskey.
I've tried, um, relaxing in other more private ways.
I've tried all the usual tricks.

None of it works.

My brother swears by some prescription drug called Ambien for long flights, but I want to avoid pills.

I suspect I need more exercise and less desk-sitting.

Any of you (all 4 of you who read) have good tricks for me to try?

Epistemic Games: My research group's new website

Just an announcement that my research group's new website is up. Thanks to those of you who took the time to look at it before it was live. I have a blog there too, but most of the posts I make there I duplicate here and sometimes vice versa (with obvious tone and language adjustments).

The site is here: http://epistemicgames.org

The Gumshoe Giv-ah

My brother jumps over what he finds.



OK. That's not really him. But he does cool shit like this (that's him in the back):



And sometimes, like this (that's him in the front):

This one's for Vincent

My friend Vincent is a great poet. I particularly think he is a great performer of his poetry. You can check his blog under where it says "links."

In all the years we've been friends, he always has said that he wants to see the stuff that I write (or have written). It's never happened. There are a few other things we always talked about doing but never got around to (we're both music lovers to the fanatical degree, and we always planned to get together for a listening party), but that I never shared my writing when I have been so enriched by his has bothered me the most.

So Vincent, i'll start with baby steps: not a performance but with the stodgiest of stanzas, the sonnet.

This one I wrote for the woman I loved the most (that is not my mom). I wrote it years ago, but I like it still.

Dear ,

Refrain from searching for your name above,
Your eyes attend me even now; alone
We each may bodily be, yet enough
Do I within these lines inhale and moan
Bereft of breath, a somber bust of stone,
That this may intimate love or some thing
And you, unless mistaken, might see sown
In sea striations tears that leap yet cling
To cheeks that sleep, froz’n slate unthawed by spring.
If nothing breaks the rigid lines apart,
Your eyes decide that ink cast lips can’t sing,
The title beckons, forget this vain art.
Reject these lines for failing to be me
And I have failed in letting you see me.

Resident Evil Update: Why missing it matters.

A few weeks ago, I vanquished the final foe, and completed my first video game.

It was less satisfying than I had imagined it might be. In the game, my reward for defeating the final bad guy (two rocket launchers did the trick) was saving the girl. In real life, my reward was… satisfaction in my completed task?

I think I was underwhelmed because while I wanted to beat the game, mostly I wanted to keep playing it. I miss playing it.

That’s the mark of a good game: when even the built-in goal of the game takes a backseat to the simple experience of playing it.

Many of you know about the work I'm doing in graduate school... you can learn more about it at my research group's website, which you can find here.

Epistemic games have inherent goals, such as publishing an online journal or designing and presenting spring-mass creatures for clients, that are exciting and rewarding outcomes for the players. But the activities that lead up to these successes are really fun (even when they are really hard).

Interviewing scientists or experimenting on Sodaconstructor is fun, but one difference is that after the actual game, players can take their personae with them. One great example is the middle-school age girl who played science.net and months later continued to immerse herself in both science and journalism. She wrote a letter about stem cell research to Newseek.

And got it published.

The French: Self-serving or forward-thinking (or both)?

The New York Times reported Monday, November 6th that the French Culture Minister is hoping to guarantee subsidies for the French video game industry, cementing its status along with the cinema industry as a valuable cultural enterprise.

The more cynical of us might judge the French vote of confidence as an act of economic self-preservation in a cutthroat industry.

I prefer to think of this a just another example of how rapidly games are integrating into cultural landscapes across the globe.