Generally I don't much like most "family" boardgames. People fetch them out as a social activity, but then arguments and bitterness erupt when one player is more knowledgeable/devious than the others. What starts as a way of bringing people together ends as a wedge spolitting them apart.

My preference is for collaborative games where everyone helps the team to do well against an imaginary or automated third party. Many people seem unfamiliar or uncomfortable with this, though. Games such as "cranium" with a clear aim of making winning "softer" and celebrating everyone's abilities may just be the solution.

There's an interesting article about the development of cranium and some other similar games at the New York Times. May need free registration.

From The Experience Designer Network, probably the longest and wordiest way of saying "travel broadens the mind" that I have ever encountered!

Via Open Artifact, the tale of of a self-confessed "50 year old, gray haired, college professor", puzzled by a greeting of "How’s it goin’, man?" from an unknown Sears cashier.

The author's later ruminations on informality, habits and learning-as-change are interesting, but I am a little worried by the inferences he draws from these few words. In particular:

I suppose I should be encouraged that a 19-year old thinks I’m cool enought o call me "man," but, actually, I imagine this fellow had no clue what he was actually saying.

On the contrary, I imagine this fellow knew exactly what he was saying. The problem was that he did not necessarily consider what these words might mean to a "50 year old, gray haired, college professor". I suggest that this speaking style may not be deliberate or even unconscious informality, merely the speech patterns of his peer group. Calling you "man" probably says nothing about whether he considers you to be "cool", merely that he acknowledges you as a human being worthy of interaction.

Imagine the young cashier had said "bonjour" instead. Should we infer formality or informality, or merely that he might be French?

In my classes I have students who refer to me as "Sir" or "Mr Carver". I also have some who are more likely to refer to me as "Oy!" or "Franky-boy". The challenge is to maintain effective communication so that learning can take place. As teacher this is largely my responsibility, and in practice this means tuning my responses and communication styles to suit the situation. Students have the luxury of being themselves; I must adapt to be what they need.

Lasse writes about voting and consensus:

At first, it may seem like a good idea to follow the democratic vote -- after all, democracy is a Good Thing™, right? However, thinking about it further, going with the majority vote might not be the best way to go. Next time when you're voting on something among your team, spare a moment to think about whether a majority vote decision is your best option.

I agree. It's vital not to confuse democracy with voting. Voting is often hugely divisive - a close vote can destroy any sense of community or shared goals, splitting teams into cliques, replacing harmony with a "them and us" culture.

From Webster's Dictionary:

Democracy

1. Government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is retained and directly exercised by the people.
2. Government by popular representation; a form of government in which the supreme power is retained by the people, but is indirectly exercised through a system of representation and delegated authority periodically renewed; a constitutional representative government; a republic.
3. Collectively, the people, regarded as the source of government.

No mention of voting there. Admittedly, (and for balance) there are some definitions that include mention of majority rule (e.g. meaning 4 in the American Heritage Dictionary), but they are usually relatively minor and idiomatic.

Democracy as government retained by the people is a fine thing. Government by popular representation is probably a workable compromise, but open to abuse. Note, however, that these definitions imply that democracy is about who has a say in decisions, not about how decisions are made. A democracy can work using simple majority voting on issues. It can work using threshold voting (e.g. at leat 75% must be in favor). It can work using limited veto (e.g. each participant can say "no" to at most three propositions, but must agree or abstain on others). It can work using 100% consensus (discussion continues until all participants agree). There are undoubtedly many more possibilities. All of them are clearly still democracy.

So the bottom line is to think hard before you call a simple majority vote on a strongly-held issue. Often the main reason there are such differing opinions is that the problems and solutions have not been fully explored and communicated. Share and understand before you vote.

I've been readinlg a lot of articles about "rich web applications" recently. (for example, here ). I can't help worrying that knee-jerk adoption of such things could greatly reduce the usability of the web, though.

I think it's fair to say that a great majority of computer users know how to use a web browser. It's certainly the most used piece of software on my computers, and those at the college where I work. Following on from that, it seems reasonable to assume that the conventions of the web browser user interface are the most familiar conventions in software usability. It's easy to spot the impact of web idioms on other software if you look - Microsoft added a "back button" to their desktop file management tools "Windows Explorer" and "My Computer", for example.

There are many other aspects of the web user experience that are less obvious, though. The little "throbber" in the corner of the window that shows when slow activity is taking place, a big button to stop things that you no longer want to continue or that are just taking too long. User control of whether to open a new window or reuse an existing one. The ability to resize windows to personal taste. The ability to save a whole page or any part of it to local storage for viewing offline later, print any page ... I'm sure you can think of more.

These are the kind of things that I miss when I use a "desktop" application these days. At least nine times out of ten I just want to read a Word document, so why does Microsoft Word always open it for edit? And what changes has it made, that it needs to ask me whether to save changes when I exit. Why do so many "desktop" applications lock up (with no "stop" button) if a resource such as a removable disk is unavailable? Why can't I just stretch a window to see more at once?

So, back to my worries. All around the web you can now find demonstrations of so-called "rich" web applications written using plug-ins such as Flash or Java, browser scripting such as JavaScript or DHTML, or browser extensions like XUL. What a great many of these seem to have in common is that they start from the assumption that they can ignore or disable all the things I find most usable about the web. Flash applications with no "back" or "undo". Applets that lock up if a resource is unavailable. JavaScript software that pops up sub windows without my control. Long operations with no indication of movement or ability to stop them. No control of window size, fonts, colours, or images. Forms you can't print. No way to copy text or save to disk, text that can't be found by search engines ...

I know I'm just one quiet voice in a storm, but if you are thinking of developing any kind of "rich" web application, please, please, embrace all the aspects of the web experience we all love so much rather than rejecting them for your own preferences and assumptions. Don't make your application an irritating, restricted and unfamiliar alternative to the web browser experience, make it a comfortable extension to the web browser experience. If you don't allow your customers the control they are used to on the web, you will alienate your users and risk being out-evolved by a more compatible product.

While I was at GenCon UK a few weeks ago I met an old friend from a games club I used to attend, and we spent some time reminiscing about games we'd played. For some reason today, I suddenly remembered one of the many single-session off-the-cuff games I'd run which made a large impact at the time, but has since been almost forgotten.

It's wierd how the mind works, but in an attempt to capture the feel of the game without getting in to tedious details, here's a short poem:

However finely you slice the moments,
between each instant waits eternity,
where shadows glide. We are the denizens, 
changeless voices in a scene of stillness.

This one's for you, Mark - I wonder if you'll ever read it?

Dennis Jerz wrote an interesting piece based on David MacKay's essay "Everyone Should Get an A". One significant part for me is where MacKay states:

Does a bus-driver-training school rank its graduating drivers? No, it ensures that all attain the standard required of a bus-driver. Would you like to be treated by a C-grade doctor? No, everyone wants an A-grade doctor! So doctors and drivers are (I hope!) trained and trained and not let out until they are A-grade in standard. Why should other professions be treated differently?

This passage is picked up by Jerz, too, but I don't think I really agree with the conclusions drawn by either of the two authors.

MacKay makes much use of phrases such as how should we organize courses so that everyone reaches 100% mastery?, and illustrates his essay with many graphs that conveniently show different curves, lines and steps that all eventually reach a dotted horizontal labelled "100%". I would like to suggest that the idea of "100% mastery" is an unachievable and imaginary target. Plato separated the ideal from the real into a theoretical "world of the forms", thousands of years ago. Choosing an arbitrary skill level and labelling it "100% mastery" is nonsense both from philosophical and practical points of view. MacKay's "100%" is just a level, no more or less significant than any other.

Take another look at MacKay's graphs, with those lovely lines that start at zero, progress to this arbitrary "100" and then stop. Does this seem likely? What do those students do after they have reached MacKay's "100%"? Do they stop learning? Does their field of study stop changing and growing? Do they achieve enlightenment and disappear in a puff of logic? I doubt it. In the real world, there's always more to learn, but if one of MacKay's students learns even one thing after being awarded "100% mastery", then the "100%" was a sham.

Worst of all (to me at least), MacKay skirts the issue of what this "100%" might mean. He lumps it in with the idea of an "A" grade, a notion of competence, and the idea of "the best". Some reflection would seem to indicate that there are several ways of approaching and grading learned skills and abilities:

• Competence. This sort of ability is a simple choice between "can" and "can't" (or equally well, between "can" and "can't yet"). Typical textbook examples include things like riding a unicycle or filling in a tax form. This sort of ability is useful where people are required to do a particular job at a certain level, and extra skill or other abilities are unimportant. It's particularly important where many people are required to perform interchangeably.
• Relative grades. This sort of ability is judged by whether one practitioner is better or worse than another. There's no "can" and "can't" in olympic sporting events, there are only winners and losers. This sort of ability is useful where it's important to choose "the best" (or at least, "the best you can get" or "the best you can afford"). It's particularly important where there is a large pool of people and only a single (or very small group of) requirements for the ability.
• Absolute grades. This sort of ability is graded, but on an (ideally) absolute scale. Some abilities are relatively easy to grade like this: How much weight can you lift? How many words can you spell? Others are more difficult. The great majority of educational assessment seems to be aimed at treating all abilities in this manner. This sort of grading of abilities is very useful in situations where the tradeoff between costs and benefits is important. Is it worth an extra $100, or an extra hour's drive, to get an "A" grade haircut rather than a "B" grade one? Only the client can decide that.
• Breadth grades. This sort of ability is one where a broad selection of skills at a reasoneble level is more valuable than a narrow selection at a high level. This sort of grading is very useful in small organizations or isolated contexts where people need to take a range of roles and do a range of jobs. This form of grading is often not handled well by traditional centres of higher education, which have developed to achieve high skill levels in narrow areas. On the other hand, breadth and flexibility are often valued very highly outside academic circles.

So, back to that original quote from MacKay

Would you like to be treated by a C-grade doctor? No, everyone wants an A-grade doctor!

Sure, everyone would prefer the "A-grade doctor", but let's rephrase the question:

Would you prefer to be treated by a "C-grade" doctor (now, when you actually need the treatment), or not be treated at all, because that doctor is still at medical college working his way toward an "A" grade.

MacKay also writes:

future employers love the University's policy of assigning grades - the University acts as a helpful sorting service, ranking some students above others, which saves companies the bother of assessing job applicants themselves. But is that what a University is for?

If such "ranking" is not the job of the universities, then who should do it? I think its fair to say that a potential employer or client is rarely the best person to judge skill levels. Almost by definition the employer or client lacks those skills - that's why they are looking to hire a skilled practitioner in the first place! Asking a practitioner to self-certify is both open to deliberate abuse by people fraudulently claiming abilities they do not have, and subject to inadvertent over- or underestimation based on a lack of external comparisons. Introducing a third party organization purely for certification adds complexity and expense, and raises questions about the validity of an assessment done by someone who has not been involved in the teaching and learning process and has not observed the student "in action" first-hand.

One of the major points that Jerz adds to this discussion is the question

What about the student who simply chooses to get a B, because he or she has other priorities (such as taking care of a family, or acting in a theatre production, or preparing for the big game)?

MacKay's proposed education system can only offer an "A" grade. I'm assuming that anything less counts as a "drop-out" ("you are the weakest link, you leave with nothing.") This seems entirely inappropriate for people to whom this particular course is not the sole aim of their lives. Given the value placed on breadth of abilities, and the inability of people to definitively know what abilities they will need in the future, such a system would likely be completely unworkable. Even after spending several years at such an establishment, a large number of students would still need to attend something more like a traditional college or university to obtain qualifications usable by potential employers and clients.

As a final point to think on. Imagine we replaced MacKay's idea of a university, where you study whatever interests you for as long as you like, with a repository of publicly available knowledge and a collection of community and discussion tools (library, internet,etc.), where you study whatever interests you for as long as you like. Now imagine again that you need the services of a skilled practitioner. Ssomeone comes to you offering their services based purely on a claim that they have spent several years reading and blogging about the subject. Would you hire them? Or would you prefer some sort of verified qualification in the service you need to hire them for?

I recently found The Squizlog which has promptly been added to my Bloglines list. The author covers Java and teaching, both topics close to my own heart.

This post, for example, reminds me that teaching is a very powerful way of learning. The pressure of having to explain to others, and field their questions, is a huge incentive. Certainly helped me learn Excel and Access (and now QBasic!) in a hurry.

Note to self. Try and use this technique more to help my students to learn.

A fasinating article from Pedablogue highlights the problems that can occur when large organizations like universities and colleges take sweeping moral/ethical/political stands.

At first blush, making a ruling agains "human research" seems a laudable idea. After all, who really likes the idea of those "cold cure" or sleep deprivation trials which exploit penniless students, or testing the effect of nuclear fallout on prisoners and the like. But what constitutes human research?

As a trainee teacher, I'm frequently encouraged to probe my students with learning-style question sheets, course feedback forms and many other such written instruments. Every day I study my students with the aim of understanding them better to improve my teaching. Sometimes, I even plan a new teaching approach for a lesson, try it out, and evaluate the results to determine under what conditions it might be an effective teaching strategy. Worst of all, I encourage my students to produce questions of their own to ask each other and people wider afield. Then they return to the class and produce a report summarizing their findings, which might even be peer reviewed or published on a course web site.

All of these things might be counted as human research. It may be absurd, but it does show that a blanket ban on "human research" might need a little more thought.

I am full of admiration for the Bristish Broadcasting Corporation. Unswayed by advertisers with a narrow view of a segmented market, they continue to push the limits of what their charter should mean in the 21st century. This time they are testing RSS delivery of MP3 content, also known as "podcasting".

Via "Auricle", I read that the BBC has made a trial feed for Melvyn Bragg's "In Our Time" history/philosophy radio series. This is such an excellent idea - a proper, useful, implementation of "TIVO for the radio".

Every now and then I notice something on BBC radio that I'd probably like to listen to. But radio recievers aren't like VCRs, with "video plus" or "electronic program guide" buttons so you can time-shift listening. I don't want to have to organize my life around the radio schedules ("sorry boss, can't work for half an hour, there's a radio program I like"). With RSS/MP3 I can get my regular aggregator to fetch the stuff I'm interested in, ready when I want to listen to it.

Further out, couple this with the rumblings of releasing archives of BBC-owned material under a "Creative Commons" licence, and we have the makings of an incredible academic community, able to research, excerpt, criticise and reconstruct this material. Add in a load-sharing P2P or BitTorrent delivery mechanism to reduce the load on providers, and we could have a new "golden age of radio".

I don't listen to music much. P2P/BitTorrent delivery of pop songs has never got me interested. Delivering good quality, in depth, radio education, entertainment and information on the other hand seems really appealing.

Via Bruce Landon and Online Learning Update, an impact of on-line learning I hadn't thought of. Online learning used to prevent infection!

Everyone knows that when your kids go to school they share germs with the other kids. In most cases that just means a few colds and sniffles, but with a major infection such as SARS that risk is too much to take. So, on-line learning fills the gap when the schools are closed.

All the arguments about whether classroom instruction is more or less efective fade away if going into the classroom might mean death for the students.

I spotted (via KairosNews) that Wired magazine has put together a CD of music with a Creative Commons Licence (see the details on Wired's web site.)

In general, I think this is a pretty neat idea, and I will certainly look hard at using this music for some of my own audio and video projects. For the moment, though, it seems much more of a publicity stunt by Wired than a really useful attempt at sharing. Let's look at a few reasons why:

• The music is apparently free to share, but there are no links to download it from the Wired web site (not even via BitTorrent, which would seem ideally suited to this sort of thing.) In the end I found the tracks on a P2P service, so I'm downloading them as we speak, but I don't know a way to provide you with a Gnutella or eDonkey URL...
• The article vaguely mentions that some of the tracks are licenced for commercial use, but others are non-commercial only, but they don't say which. This leaves me unsure what I can legally do with these tracks. There is probably more licencing "small print" on the physical CD, but I don't have access to that.
• As far as I can tell, the CD simply contains raw audio tracks, with no associated metadata. The tracks will most naturally be shared in a format such as MP3. But, MP3s formed by "ripping" the audio from the CD rarely have any sensible metadata. I've just checked one that has completed downloading from the P2P system, and it has the bare minimum of track name and a combioned artist/album field. No licence terms, let alone more useful information such as search/classification keywords or author and version information.

It seems to me that for "Creative Commons" licencing to work, the licence needs to accompany the item being shared. In the world of software we are all used to finding some sort of README file bundled in with the distribution, or a "click-through" licence agreement on installation. Without an accompanying licence, though, legal sharing quickly decays into "but I thought I could use it..." which benefits nobody.

So the bottom line is a good publicity catch by Wired and the savvy artists who participated, but not quite a serious attempt at sharing.

Anyone got the CD and wants to put proper MP3s with sensibly populated metadata on a BitTorrent URL so we can all link to it?