David Seah : A Chindogu Clock for Procrastinators
Remember RLOs? The term "Reusable Learning Object" has not disappeared but it has left the headlines of every learning conference brochure. I think the more meaningful work of sustainability and instructional use based on concepts of reusability has begun to emerge as the theme, rather than the earlier focus on a specific technology (a good thing).
In the spirit of creating more acronyms, however, I would like to offer a new object type: TPO** or Thought Provoking Objects (not to be confused with TPS Reports). Where RLOs focus on content, TPOs focus on getting you to think about things from a different perspective.
This idea came to me based on a new widget created by David Seah. His Procrastinator's
Clock is for those self-aware procrastinators who set their clocks ahead to get them to a destination on time. As David states, however, we know we set the clock ahead and by how much so the help is minimal. His clock varies the amount of time the clock is set ahead so that it eliminates the ability to know how far ahead you are running, thus modifying the person's behavior. The whole thing is done somewhat tongue-in-cheek to bring up a point about time.
David notes:
So why go through all this trouble to make a clock that’s sometimes fast and sometimes not? FEAR, UNCERTAINTY and DOUBT, my friends! If you use this clock to keep appointments and deadlines, and you really care about being on time, you have to assume that the clock might actually be telling the correct time though it’s likely to actually be up to 15 minutes fast. Yikes! All that anxiety should give you a good kick in the pants to get moving, because you can’t really trust the clock to be anything but on time, even though it probably is fast....I offer this clock in the spirit of Chindogu, the Japanese art of creating almost useless objects
The clock gave me a short, extreme burst of thoughtfulness around my own time management. It was not content, it did not give me 3 plus or minus 2 learning objectives like some versions of RLOs, but it was amazingly thought provoking. I could easily see pointing students in a time management class to this TPO. You could then ask them to develop thoughts about the clock and hypothesize about its use for themselves. In just showing this fun little applet to a few colleagues, brief conversations ensued about our own time management styles.
Does anyone else have examples of TPOs out there on the web?
**Disclaimer: I am not actually encouraging the use or creation of more acronyms. TPO is a weak attempt at instructional acronym humor. Please do not use this acronym at home.
I had a psychology professor who had a sign on her office wall near the computer that said "Blessed is the pessimist for he/she hath made back ups"
This was many years ago when most work was still done on a mainframe but the sign still sticks in my head.
I recently posted on the Xdrive online back up system and how I was waiting for a bit more stability before uploading more of my drive to the service. After last night, I wish I had not decided to wait...
It is in the midst of adversity that we have the greatest opportunity for learning. I had the opportunity to learn quite a bit last night. I cannot remember the last time I saw a blue screen of death that I could not fix (I think it was back in Windows NT days) but it happened last night. How a computer works perfectly in the morning when I shut it down and then completely crashes 11 hours later after not being used is a mystery.
One new discovery I had was that Dell does not provide recovery disks with their new computers or even a boot disk. The manual says to go to your Windows desktop if you need to reinstall Windows or see online support for other recovery options (both a problem when you cannot boot up). I was glad I had my work laptop to conduct some research. This is when I learned that there is a recovery partition on the drive but it restores the original software (most of which I had deleted) and wipes all data. If I had purchased the Dell data recovery option, I would not have had an issue...
I did find a diagnostic partition and ran every test I could find on both drives (I run a Raid array, but it is not the mirror version because I opted for speed, unfortunately). Both drives passed all tests so, it did not seem to be a hardware failure but there was clearly some form of corruption. (There might yet be some bad sectors but I am not far enough in the process to have run the disk check again).
After several hours of effort, I reluctantly hit the restore function, expecting that flaws in the disk would probably not allow it to function. The recovery worked perfectly and restored the operating system to its original pristine glory along with all of the 30+ trial versions of software I had tediously deleted.
Another element of new knowledge I gained last night was the fact that Microsoft has issued a lot of updates in the last 10 months. When they come a little at the time they are not too noticeable but when you have to download more than 60 at one time, it is painful to get them all installed. And these updates do not even include MS Office because I have not yet reinstalled that product. And MS is not the only one with a lot of ongoing product updates, my anti virus software had 30 megs of updates too.
Finally, I learned that I don't know what I don't know. As I write this post, I am trying to jot down what I have lost off my drives. I have an external network drive at home and have back-ups of most photos and, most importantly, my dissertation but it is not big enough to auto back-up everything. I know have lost: a few purchased iTunes files and a bunch of CDs I ripped this weekend (music prior to that is also on another computer but I had cleaned all the metadata up recently), my emails that were not still on a server (most of them). I also lost two family video projects but fortunately I have the original tapes.
I am going to try some recovery software tonight to see if anything is still there that can be salvaged so there is more learning ahead!
Meanwhile, my son was having fun with the new Warcraft expansion that came out yesterday and urging me to hurry up and get on the game. *sigh* maybe this weekend...or is that being too optimistic?
I attended the first ever meeting of the new Enlightened Games Group (EGG) at Indiana University Bloomington. The speaker was Ted
Castronova and it would seem that the topic was relatively straight-forward: "why have a Ph.D. program in game research and design at IU?" Given that it was MLK Jr. day, however, Castronova wove an intelligent discussion about race and gaming. The conversation touched on topics from cross-race and cross-gender play to the potential stereotypes embedded in some characters in popular games today. There were not many answers at this talk but the point was to raise questions worthy of Ph.D. research.
This meeting was the culmination of the work of more than two dozen faculty who are currently working independently on game-related research. There is now a move to formalize a program on campus and appears to have top-down support from the Dean, etc. It is still very early but it was good to make connections with what promises to be an interesting group.
(Note: website is not up yet and they were seeking volunteers)
The perfectly managed hype and excitement is reaching its zenith for the 7.5 million people who spend their free time roaming the lands of Azeroth. Forget the PS3 (ok, it seems as though quite a few already have) or Harry Potter, at 12:01am Tuesday morning millions will be lined up at Best Buy, GameStop and anywhere else fine software is sold to acquire the first major expansion to the World of Warcraft.
Some lucky patrons in California will even be able to meet, and get autographs from the game designers (to me nothing else signals the shift in where entertainment is headed than this statement).
Teasers have been coming out all week, including the announcement that extended customer service hours would be available. For those not immersed in Warcraft, this expansion to the game is more than just additional content, there are significant changes to gameplay also being introduced. Some of these changes have been slowly introduced over the last month but many are coming Tuesday.
This brings me to the point of the post. With 7.5 million eager subscribers and so many changes happening, how do you work to alleviate some of the burden on your customer support center? Having designed many smaller media products, I know there are always issues to contend with as the product rolls out, regardless of how much testing has been done. Today, as I logged onto the game there was a new teaser that enticed users to go to a Flash site to get more insight into the expansion. I have seen enough hype and would have ignored it but it said ""secret prizes can be found and awarded to your character in-game."
Even if you are not a gamer, take a look at the the Flash site for the Burning Crusade (BC). As I began to work my way through the graphically and musically rich site, I spotted the "secret" exclamation marks embedded on the pages. They popped up small learning challenges. Most very easy and simple, but you had to get 100% to get credit (and acquire 1 of 5 elements needed to get whatever the secret prize is). After the first one, I realized I was being trained on the new game elements.
If you look at the site, it will be evident that Blizzard spent quite a bit of money on developing this mix of hype and training for their game. If, however, it reduces call-center volume or boosts sales of the product by a small margin, the expense was worth it.
(Designer/business hat coming off): Even as a jaded, self-aware player, I am going back now to see what challenge pops up next and to see what "secret item" I can earn. Great design is an amazing thing...
After reading Pogue’s Post about free online storage, I had to try out one of the services. Xdrive is an AOL subsidiary and provides 5 gigs of free online storage. It has a fairly sophisticated web interface that allows most uploading. The real ease of use comes with downloading the desktop software. This software makes the storage space seem like one of the drives on your computer.
Overall, there are not many better deals than free. I had a few problems uploading folders with large numbers of files (namely family photos). First I tried just using the web interface because I did not have time to install software the first night. It was intuitive for the simple task of uploading folders. One small usability note: I really wanted to drag folders onto the interface and my mouse icon seemed to indicated that I could but you must use the “Add” button then use a traditional Windows Browse function to select folders.
I selected two folders with about 237 MB of photo files. The upload started and all seemed fine. After about 10 files, however, I got a message that said, “an error has occurred that does not have a scripted message.” Score two points for an honest system. It could have given some strange hex code that no one on earth could interpret. The interface would then start a 30 second count to attempt to reconnect to the server and then the same process would repeat. I thought it might be a firewall issue but every few minutes it would give a fairly long sustained burst of uploading. Finally those files were up but I decided to see if the desktop software fared any better.
The desktop software was easy to install and set up. Instructions for navigating my Norton firewall were simple enough. It seemed to work right off the bat with a couple of small test uploads. Then I loaded up about 300 megs and the same server error occurred. Only this time it cause my Windows Explorer (not IE) to crash and , as all you Windows folks know, when Windows Explorer hangs, you might recover but you might lose some other processes at the same time. The first time I recovered, the second time required a system reboot.
It is quite possible that the service was getting hammered due to the publicity from the NY Times article. The software itself seems solid and the features are easy to use. There are some nice auto-backup features I have not explored yet. I am going to give it a bit of time to get through the subscriber boost and then try again. If you want to try smaller uploads, it will probably work fine. I am impressed with the quality of the applications and the price for 5 gigs is reasonable!
Thanks to the Eide's (one of my must-read blogs) for pointing to the Time article on the current state of our schools. Their assessment is correct when they note that:
...the solutions are not so easy - because the quality of teaching depends on the quality of training by the teacher, the time available for instruction in an already crowded curriculum, and the quality of the teacher-student interactions. Putting students in front of computer terminals is no answer to technological training. Powerpoints are one thing, but programming or designing is another.
I could not agree more. When teaching my course on Integrating Technology in the Curriculum to K-12 teachers, we spend quite a bit of time discussing why effective use of technology is so difficult. The inevitable conclusion is that the problems that schools face today run much deeper that the speed of processors or even good design of a Webquest.
With change happening at such a rapid pace, it is debatable whether the current educational system can change fast enough to effectively compete. It is likely that another competing system will emerge that provides a completely different approach. The risk is that such an emergent system would be private, and an immense gap could be created that makes the current rich/poor school divide seem small. Given the risk, it is worth every effort to work toward transformation of the current system.
Innovate - Resolving Conflicts in Educational Game Design Through Playtesting
This article from Innovate (free registration required), describes a case study in iterative design of educational games.
The article highlights the dilemmas encountered in any design situation when trying to bridge disciplines. In this case, game designers, pedagogy experts, and content experts have difficulty merging ideas into a unified product. I have had similar discussions with colleagues around the industry recently as we have seen conference after conference with great game companies, who do not understand learning and great instructional design companies who make very boring games. In reality, however, a good game designer knows how to build good learning into a game. It is usually just invisible to the player. A great instructional designer, in contrast, builds engaging and energizing learning solutions (whether game-based or not). It is all about good design and knowing how to empower the user to get what they need from the experience. I am not debating the fact that there are disagreements when you bring people together to create a product (any product requiring the input of more than one person) but I believe we short-change a product by playing to the middle.
I am a big fan of usability...errrr, playtesting, and I appreciate how this team allowed the user data to guide its final product. There are clearly vast improvements as it moves through the process. The unanswerable question is whether the product would have arrived at the same state of quality if only one design perspective + subject-matter expertise had been used in the same iterative fashion. Certainly the result of the development would not have been the same product, but did having multiple designer inputs improve the learning outcomes? Or, would a great designer from either field (learning/gaming) have achieved the same or better product without having to compromise?
One of the more intriguing aspects of this article is that you can see (and play) each iteration of the game as it moves from one iteration to the next. The final version, called Life Preservers, is now available).
Firefox 3 and Microformats at iterating toward openness
In my last post, I joked about the re-designed a website I created over the holidays (Planetarium.Net) using the "2-dot-0" moniker (but I should have called it "4-dot-0" to get ahead of the hype).
David has a short but interesting post about what is really the next pragmatic step in the use of RSS feeds, perhaps as soon as Firefox 3, which will do more to personalize information. The key idea to me is that we are beginning to view information as more than just potential knowledge to be disseminated in various formats. Microformats begin to parse content as a means to accomplishing things other than providing a fire hose of continuous information to be consumed by a human brain.
The articles listed in David's original post are good places to start and I also found these sources helpful:
Microformats Primer
Where Microformats will Take Us
Microformats Wiki
It is hard to believe that it is a new year already (and that I have to return to work tomorrow). While I did have some great family-and-friends-time, I also spent quite a bit of free time trying out and updating my technology.
For the first time, I have departed from Movable Type as a platform and started playing around with WordPress. Not on this blog, but on another site I run for planetarium educators called Planetarium.Net. I have neglected the site itself for a couple of years but there is a vibrant email list that I have moderated for 8 years now that has carried most of the community activity for planetarium and astronomy educators all over the world. I have wanted to play with WordPress and updating this site was the perfect opportunity. So far, I am very impressed. I am not quite ready to give up on MT, I still like it quite a bit for this site and need some shake-down time to see how WP differs.
I am way too late to take advantage of the "2-dot-0" hype but I still temporarily changed the name of the site to Planetarium.Net 2.0 just for kicks. Since it is 2007, perhaps I should have changed it to 4.0...? As this little experiment unfolds, I will document my experience with WP here.
I also upgraded my browsers to the latest versions: IE Version 7.0.5730.11, and Firefox 2.0.0.1. And installed Pinnacle Video Studio 10.7 (which was a very nice gift!).
Thoughts on these and other upgrades later this year.