The greatest challenges facing parents stem from their own school experiences. Every adult has been educated in some way, and the methods their teachers used usually shape the values they carry with them and color their perceptions of how education “should be.” These learned values are very powerful and can be seen in…
A gamespace is a uniquely coded and constructed place where players are expected to act before being any good at what they’re doing; they’re spaces inherently founded on the notion of risk taking. The process of building a classroom that functions as a gamespace should start with the teacher being committed to…
As one gamer has said, “In a game, you want to learn because you’re playing it, and if you didn’t want to learn, why would you be playing it?” (Selfe & Hawisher, 2007, p. 1). For this very reason, games are uniquely powerful tools that help teachers understand how to build empowering lessons and shape how students…
What also went unremarked was how much I was learning by playing these games: basic ideas such as taking turns and developing patience while others completed their turns, the strengthening of simple memory, improved physical coordination, an ability to recognize and act on patterns, the capacity to see what might…
The first of these was the abolition of respirator. Advanced thinkers, like Vashti, had always held it foolish to visit the surface of the earth. Air-ships might be necessary, but what was the good of going out for mere curiosity and crawling along for a mile or two in a terrestrial motor? The habit was vulgar and…
There is one person whose wants and needs you routinely ignore, opting instead to tend to your own immediate desires, and that person is future you. When it comes to making decisions that will have some effect on your long-term health or happiness — for example, whether or not to go to the gym today, in keeping with…
In extreme cases, to use such an interface is to enter a new world, containing objects and actions unlike any you've previously seen. At first these elements seem strange. But as they become familiar, you internalize the elements of this world. Eventually, you become fluent, discovering powerful and surprising idioms…
Magnus turned from Mortarion and walked to the centre of the amphitheatre, lifting his hands out to his sides and slowly turning on the spot as he spoke. “Imagine the Imperium of the future, a golden Utopia of enlightenment and progress, where the scientist and the philosopher are equal partners with the warrior in…
We are as gods and might as well get good at it. So far, remotely done power and glory—as via government, big business, formal education, church—has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing—power of…
In today’s global society, we need games that introduce young people to their international peers and their peers’ lives all around the world. We should have games that fully represent the current scope of humanity around the globe. Let inter-ed games help liven up the history or sociology lesson and motivate players…
In psychological research on problem-solving, sometimes the game of Tic-Tac-Toe is employed, which, though very simple to learn and play, still offers sufficient problems to the investigator in that it is not at all clear what heuristics are used by the subjects, except avoiding the winning move of the opponent. The…
Physicists love to think about systems that take only a little information to describe. So when they get a system that takes a lot of information to describe, they use a trick called 'statistical mechanics', where you try to ignore most of this information and focus on a few especially important variables. For…
11. The Paradox Why is the universe? To shape God. Why is God? To shape the universe. ∞ = Δ 12. A Tree A tree Cannot grow In its parentsʼ shadows. ∞ = Δ 13. The Destiny of Earthseed Destiny of Earthseed Is to take root among the stars. ∞ = Δ 14. Consequences To get along with God, Consider the consequences of your…
Healthy aging can lead to impairments in learning that affect many laboratory and real-life tasks. These tasks often involve the acquisition of dynamic contingencies, which requires adjusting the rate of learning to environmental statistics. For example, learning rate should increase when expectations are uncertain…
"The reason kids go through this is probably because it's a Moebius strip," he said, referring to the sort of looped one-surface shapes Escher was fond of drawing. "It can't be drawn continuously, but it does have a perpetual flow." I think he was on to something. Most nine-year-olds can't draw, so when someone hands…
A schema is a concept typically associated with cognitive psychology. Arguably it has some roots in (or at least is similar to) the work of Piaget. Piaget (1971) makes a distinction between two types of knowledge development: assimilation and accommodation. He describes the process of assimilation as that of gradually…
In Rationalia, the Constitution stipulates that a body of convincing evidence needs to exist in support of an idea before any Policy can established based on it. In such a country, data gathering, careful observations, and experimentation would be happening all the time, influencing practically every aspect of our…
Ugh. In actual outcomes, voting isn't an expression of your heart, your soul, or even your emotion. The result of a vote isn't "the right thing" or "the thing I love" or "the cure for social ills" or "the perfect solution." It's not a mechanism of protest or a chance to be dramatic, and it's not a "gesture" or a stand…
Social behaviors are often contagious, spreading through a population as individuals imitate the decisions and choices of others. A variety of global phenomena, from innovation adoption to the emergence of social norms and political movements, arise as a result of people following a simple local rule, such as copy…
Step 1: Empathy = Really get to know your user Use human-centered design process, which puts the user squarely at the center of the process. When designing, you start with identifying who you want to design for (your user) and really get to know them. 3 ways to get to know our user: Observation (what we observe them…