Pieces of Our Puzzle

How to Green the World's Deserts and Reverse Cimate Change - Allan Savory.

Our Loss of Wisdom by Barry Schwartz

"The good news is you don’t need to be brilliant to be wise. The bad news is that without wisdom, brilliance isn’t enough.”

"We know why these scripts are there. We don't trust the judgement of teachers enough to let them loose on their own. Scripts like these are insurance policies against disaster. And they prevent disaster, but what they asure in it's place is mediocrity."

"Excessive reliance on incentives demoralizes professional activity in two senses of that word. It causes people who engage in that activity to lose morale, and it causes the activity itself to lose morality."

"The truth is that any work that you do that involves interaction with other people is moral work. And any moral work depends upon practical wisdom."

"Perhaps most important, as teachers, we should striver to be the ordinary heroes, the moral exemplars, to the people we mentor... One is that we are always teaching. Someone is always watching... The single most important thing kids need to learn is character... As teachers: the way you teach these things to the kids is by having the teachers and all other staff embody it every minute of every day."

The Call for a Moral Operating System by Damon Horowitz:

The Importance of Induction:

We all know that if you're feeling happy, you smile. Well, more and more research is coming out - and being accepted - that if you smile, you become happier.

A few weeks ago I made a post about a TED Talk by Amy Cuddy on "Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are."

It's all well and good to read the research and listen to a presentation about the effects of your body language/facial expression on your emotions, but over the past few days I have been experiencing it quite extremely myself.

I had a dental procedure done on Thursday and since then I have not been able to smile or laugh. Thursday after the operation, I was significantly woozy and not feeling great - mostly because of the blood loss and pain from the graft in my mouth. I was on painkillers for Thursday evening, but was no longer in pain on Friday so I stopped taking them.

Gaming Can Make a Better World by Jane McGonigal.

After my last post, I decided to do some googling. Jane McGonigal's presentation is quite inspirational! And let me just say, with her scope and enthusiasm - THIS IS MY KINDA WOMAN!

Here are some thoughts that I jotted down while watching the clip:

Can we get some more epic win faces please? In reality. Everywhere. Real world epic wins! 

It sounds to me like Jane was trying to figure out why agency is so high in video games, but much lower in real life. How can this be translated? Why is it lower? Daily physics of living? Meeting physiological and safety needs? Security in possibility in video games because of programs - not so in real life.

Average gamer spends 10,000 hours gaming before the age of 21 = same 10,000 hours as students in school from fifth grade to high school graduation! INSANE! 10,000 = virtuoso! I love this. Virtuosos are popping up everywhere. They virtuosos at... what exactly? Haha!

1) Urgent Optimism (and initiative) 2) Social Fabric (and trust) 3) Blissful Productivity (and hard work) 4) Epic Meaning (and purpose)

= Super-Empowered Hopeful Individuals = individuals who believe they are capable of changing the world! The only problem is the world they think they can change is a virtual one, not the physical one. Ready to fix this everyone? I have a feeling Jane is going to present us with some awesome alternative and more realistic games!

Using games to get away from real world suffering. An escape. Even people who aren't gaming are trying to escape. Shopping. Drinking. Partying. Consumption. Materialism. EVERYONE IS ESCAPING! Can we all do little more fight and a little less flight please and thanks?

We need a reality connection to create these epic game narratives and these epic wins! Virtual immersive narratives like I talked about in my last post! I LOVE IT! The three games Jane has highlighted is amazing. Time to train people to save the world!

Why are we not investing in creating video games that are informative, immersive, realistic, educational, and fun?!?

Take Assassin's Creed 3 for example. The protagonist Connor is directly involved with and experiencing various plot pieces that tie in with the American Revolution! GUARANTEED hundreds of thousands of teenagers will have a better idea (though obviously not perfect) idea of what happened between George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Charles Lee, not to mention what the Boston Massacre, the Battle of Bunker Hill and signing of the Declaration of Independence really entail. 

Assassin's Creed is not the first game to have a relatively high degree in historical accuracy; however, with its recent release and the anticipation surrounding the game it got me thinking.

Is it not a bit ridiculous the way we are still teaching history? We have millions of teachers "teaching" the same material to students all over the world. Immersive video games could be created to teach the students about the various historical times, while also helping them develop problem solving and collaborative skills.

The challenge would be balancing out accuracy with fun. Who would want to play as an Egyptian slave for 2 weeks? Haha. But this would be amazing if done properly! So many opportunities for this to develop. We are getting closer with the electronic and multimedia textbooks (such as the iBooks Textbooks) - but we have a long way to go.