2007-01-29
- Good Learning
- active learning
- want to invite people with the understanding that it's worth their attention
- constructed on pre-existing knowledge
- define the relevancy to yourself
- Deep Learning
- conceptual frameworks for how the facts realte to each other
- understood within the framework
- towards expertise
- have a conceptual framework of their own knowledge
- you have control over the info you know
- expertise is a gradient
- you can be a little bit of an expert
- domain-specific
- and you can decide what that domain is
- The Flow State
- Skill x Challenge
- too much skill x not enough challenge = boredom
- not enough skill x too much challenge = anxiety
- right balance = flow state
- The pleasure portion connect to the flow state
- pleasurable to meet challenges
- Play
- Play article
- working backwards from playing games
- at a point, there may be a breakthrough --> flow
- you can invite someone into a process in which they may achieve flow
- Good learning and play are equal?
- sort of depends on def of play
- play as outside of everyday life?
- used to be the definition, up to 10 yrs ago
- a ritual undertaking for entertainment purposes
- more like play, as in freedom of movement or exploration
- play like "play on a steering wheel"
- the play within a system, be it mechanical or social
- seeing where the boundaries are
- hence the pleasure portion of where the skill and challenge balance
- Do animals play?
- They learn about their environment and their species
- Play at hunting behaviors, dominance, etc.
- Pleasure
- produced by self-driven exploration
- Setting up boundary exploration situations for themselves
- Even as adults
- We are constantly pushing boundaries in a world of blurred domain edges
- Examples of playful learning
- Biochemical evidence?
- the loss of self-consciousness measured in MRIs during flow state
- Chomsky
- Can we even get at the deep structure of play in the same way as language?
- Or are both just beyond our reach of understanding
- Virtuoso Devices
- Stick the processor into something that does one thing well?
- and yet, they were using playful, multifunction devices that allowed them to do stuff
- There's a sweet spot in all three of these
- Flow v. Play
- A fireman might be in a state of flow
- but not necessarily in a state of play
- How much does the outcome matter?
- play allows experiencing safely
- role-playing experience without consequences
- People want to feel that what they're doing relates to life in some way
- Visions of themselves as experts
- Literacy
- Literacy is the ability to decode language in a domain and encode new statements within it
- Any domain may have its own:
- And you'd need to construct new ideas using these
- Still there are gradations here
- May not be a complete expert, but there is a threshold
- TEaching a literacy
- One at which you are already adept
- Games
- Highly-defined artifacts that invite play
- Losing of self
- therefore difficult to watch yourself at play
- tough to make yourself the first model
- Prompts, etc.
- Civilopedia
- Going back and forth within play states
- Don't need to play all the time
- Okay to prompt, scaffold, help, etc.
- Doesn't need to be play from start to finish
- Transfer and Learning
- Helping people see the potential transfer implications of what they are learning
- measuring effective learning
- At the beginning of experience
- you may have existing cultural knowledge
- upon which learning is constructed
- transfer of existing knowledge into new learning
- Language learning
- knowing one language helps learning another
- Learning grammar
- insulting in English, because you speak it
- But required in French
- in which case you might learn English grammar
- taking control of your learning process
- and making it clear why you may need to know
- Assessment
- Boundaries of transfer are porous
- the way in which something is useful is not what you may assume and know
- therefore assessment is tricky
- Looking at how quickly new learning is accomplished
- Need the cooperation of the learner
- finding eval and assess at smaller intervals and lower levels
- Feedback loops the help evaluate the degree to which transfer is occuring
- transfering one learned skill in the game to another case in the game
- Motivation
- How do you get someone to do something?
- Or get them to WANT to do something?
- Goals
- Intrinsic
- envisioning yourself as an expert
- are there not many opportunities to feel like an expert
- how they view themselves may affect motivation
- framework of doing for real
- self-esteem
- satisfaction of being expert
- video game master is the first feeling of expertise
- not only am I great at this
- but my parents and teacher suck at it
- Attention
- How do you get someone who is doing seomthing to KEEP doing it?
- Design
- Start thinking about how we teach and get taught with Design
- Founding A School
- One home-schooled student at a time
- At this school, they work on one particular subject over a year
- Educational groupware project
- Your portfolio is accessible to other students
- Buying the Bettman archive!
- Better to focus on a few photographs that people could contrast with each other
- And then they could teach each other
- had potential for originality
- working within contraints
- makes the system knowable
- and can form boundaries that are interesting to explore
- students informing each others work
- in a limited system, more able to critique each other
- Pleasure in constraint
- know where challenge is coming from
- infinite potentialities make the game unplayable
- knowing how things can be
- Homework
- Norman
- Design as conversation/communication
- Examples of Playful Learning
- Look at the design cycle page