 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|
So consistently updating this is hard... Oct 3rd, 2011 So I have been reading this book called “Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World” by Jane McGonigal. I am not even halfway through it but I just read about two concepts that I want to share. The first is a public charter school in New York called Quest to Learn. What they have done is make school a game. And not a game like soccer or football with winners and losers and competition, but rather more like an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). The main way they got me is by how they do evaluation. Rather than paraphrase, let me just quote from page 130 of the book. “Leveling up is a much more egalitarian model of success than a traditional letter grading system based on the bell curve. Everyone can level up, as long as they keep working hard. Leveling up can replace or compliment traditional letter grades that students have just one shot at earning. And if you fail a quest, there’s no permanent damage done to your report card. You just have to try more quests to earn enough points to get the score you want. This system of ‘grading’ replaces negative stress with positive stress, helping students focus more on learning and less on performing” I realized as I was typing this that you guys don’t have the benefit of the previous 129 pages, but essentially she posits that stress can be good. She says that the things we do for “fun” aren’t that fun. That “relaxing” fun activities such as: sitting in front of the tv, eating chocolate or whatever doesn’t do anything to make us feel better. Again, let me quote the book, this time from pages 32. “Hard fun is what happens when we experience positive stress or eustress (a combination of the Greek eu, for “well-being,” and stress). From a physiological and a neurological standpoint, eustress is virtually identical to negative stress: we produce adrenaline, our reward circuitry is activated, and blood flow increases to the attention control centers of the brain. What’s fundamentally different is our frame of mind.” I tend to agree. Stress can be good if it is good stress and not bad stress and I am sure we can all think of examples of both. So that was the first point that got me: the (in my opinion) brilliant change of grading. I have seen too many children discouraged by their grades. I despise how we take averages the way we do. If I don’t get a concept throughout the year, but then master it in June, my average will be relatively low. If I have it mastered from day 1, my average will be relatively high. But in both cases I have mastered the concept. Who cares how I got there and how long it took me? I would say that in both cases I am equally knowledgeable, but we discriminate against the former by taking an average. That’s why I love this concept of levelling up. Rather than say I got a 78 in Math 9, an 82 in math 10, etc. You can just say I am a level 5 mathematician etc. It encourages mastery before moving on to the next “quest”. The next thing that got me was their boss levels. “As the Quest website explains, boss levels are “two-week ‘intensive’ [units] where students apply knowledge and skills to date to propose solutions to complex problems.” “Boss level” is a term taken directly from video games. In a boss level, you face a boss monster (or some equivalent thereof) – a monster so intimidating it requires you to draw on everything you’ve learned and mastered in the game so far. It’s the equivalent of a midterm or final exam. Boss levels are notoriously hard but immensely satisfying to beat. Quest schedules boss levels at various points in the school year, in order to fire students up about putting their lessons into action. Students get to tackle an epic challenge and there’s no shame in failing. It’s a boss level, and so, just like any good game, it’s meant to whet your appetite to try harder and practice more.” (page 131) I don’t game that much, but I am familiar with how intense and exhilarating boss levels can be. This strategy looks to me like a great way to combat exam anxiety. In all my gaming, I have never come across a situation where if you fail a boss level, your comrades in arms will belittle or make fun of you. Either way, the main reason I wrote this entry was to talk about a website that she mentions at the beginning of chapter 8. She relates a story about how she was at a conference and bemoaning the fact that games are way better at giving feedback. The example she gave was that if you compared her Undead Priest’s intelligence stat in World of Warcraft to the number of positive marks she got in school, the Undead Priest would win hands down. We don’t get any Experience Points or positive reinforcement after school. She said that giving talks like what she was doing was hard and that it would be nice to see a +1 intellect or +1 Public Speaking pop up by her PowerPoint would be motivating. A few days later she got an email from ratings@plusoneme.com with the subject of “Clay has acknowledged your strengths”. She had no idea who Clay was but opened it anyway and the body said “A friend of yours, Clay Johnson, +1d you to acknowledge some of your strengths. Specifically they’re acknowledging these attributes Shortly after she got an email from Clay Johnson himself that said “Your +1 in public speaking as you requested at SXSW! It should have arrived in your inbox a little while ago. When you said that during your speech, I thought ‘Why shouldn’t she be able to get a +1 in public speaking?!” and built plusoneme.com. Great talk. Check out what you inspired.” So I have checked it out and I love it and think that it could be a brilliant way to get the kids more motivated. You send a +1 to anyone via email, and if they want they can start an account and stack their +1s and keep a record. They let you +1 quite a number of characteristics such as (but not limited to): Leadership, Romantic, Punctual, Dependable, Inspiring, Public Speaking, Humor, Listening, Wisdom, Intelligence, Artistry, Technical, Kindness, Generosity, Compassion, Creativity, Honesty, Innovation, Adventurous, Passion, Enthusiasm, Humility, Curiosity, Groundedness, Backbone, Agility, Speed, Coordination, Balance, Grace, Strength, Beauty, Attraction, Fashion, Endurance, Toughness and Cuteness. The best part is that you can email them an idea for another attribute and they’ll give you a +1 creativity. I am just so jazzed about this!
Many months since I was here. On the street, I was passing the time away. May 21st, 2010 To try and bring my blog back I was going to fill this with quotes of the goings on in my Science 9 classroom. However, I have decided to complain about the Star Wars Prequels and how they suck. FIRST – It retroactively makes the Original Trilogy (OT) so much worse. In A New Hope, Obi-Wan, Han, Luke, R2-D2, C-3P0, and Chewbacca are hidden in the Millenium Falcon on the Death Star and Darth Vader says that he feels “a familiar presence”. Really? Really?! That’s all you got? A familiar presence? Your son, your mentor, a droid that saw you through the Clone Wars and a Droid you built as your only childhood friend and you get a familiar presence? Also in A New Hope, Admiral Motti says “Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerous ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the rebels' hidden fortress...” Dude then gets choked by Vader. Now without having seen the Prequels, this is badass. But of course, the prequels totally ruin this. Revenge of the Sith (RotS) takes place at 19 BBY (Before Battle of Yavin) and since A New Hope IS the Battle of Yavin, that means that the events of RotS are not even 20 years before. And during RotS the Jedi are THE shit. They are the guardians of the galaxy. Almost all the Generals of the Old Republic are Jedi Masters. Then 19 years later dude talks about the Jedi as if it is all sorcery? Dude was an Admiral and looked about 50, was he in a coma for the Clone Wars? Did he not see the shit that was going down? Even post Order 66, this guy was likely in the service during the clone wars. He would have seen what the Jedi could do. This would be the equivalent of a Vietnam War vet not believing in the USSR. Speaking of the Clone Wars and shit going down, in RotS we see Chewy chatting it up with Yoda. Chewy is apparently way up there in the Kashyyyk army and buddies with Yoda, but when Luke mentions him in Empire, Chewy doesn’t mention it? He doesn’t tell Luke to say hi to him? So either Chewy is just being a total dick to Yoda, or a total dick to Luke. While we are still talking about RotS and A New Hope, let me mention how much of an idiot Ben Kenobi is. So to hide Luke and Leia from Darth Vader he gets other people to adopt them. He gives Leia to a Senator and she is raised as royalty with a totally different name. Luke, on the other hand, goes to live with Darth Vader’s step-brother on his home planet (where his mother died) and he still has the Skywalker name? What was Obi Wan’s thought process? There wasn’t an orphanage on Coruscant? No other Senators? There were like a half dozen people in the room when Senator Organa took Leia, where the eff were they when Luke needed a home 30 seconds later? And in A New Hope, Obi-Wan decides to train Luke in the Jedi Arts. Now he does this despite the fact that he is emotional, rebellious against authority (ignores Yoda to go after his friends), and is much older than the regular age (which was determined to be like 6 in Phantom Menace). Sound like any other Skywalker we know of? Well there is no way that such a plan could fail twice. And it’s not like the last failure literally caused the downfall of everything that Obi-Wan believed in and a complete overhaul of the Universe. No, not at all. Now that we’ve dabbled in a bit of the Phantom Menace, let’s delve a bit deeper into this. There are 3 main complaints that I have about the Phantom Menace. Firstly, in the final climactic battle Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan have to double team Darth Maul. Sadly, they are separated due to some weird shield or something and Obi-Wan can’t close the gap in time. He’s just too slow. But at the very start of the movie, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are in the Trade Federation ship and they send some Destroyer Droids after them. The Jedi get away thanks to “Force Speed”. It is a quick burst of speed that Jedi’s can summon only once apparently. It is never mentioned or seen again in the entire series. Even in the movie. Apparently they thought that we wouldn’t remember what happened 2 hours earlier when Obi-Wan ran faster than an effing spherical droid could roll. While we are talking about things that are never mentioned again, let’s talk about the LAMEST thing the prequels did. In the OT, the Jedi were a mystical people who were in touch with the Force. The Force has been compared to Duct Tape: it has a light side and a dark side and it keeps the whole universe together. But now, instead of it being a universality and the Jedi are simply beings that have learned to communicate with it and be at one with the Force, what the Phantom Menace did was introduce the Midi-chlorian. Midi-Chlorians are defined as “intelligent microscopic life forms that lived symbiotically inside the cells of all living things. When present in sufficient numbers, they could allow their symbiont to detect the pervasive energy field known as the Force.” Whereas before everyone had the potential to be a Jedi, now it was determined by genetics. This is just all sorts of terribleness. Midichlorians are so terrible, even George Lucas knew they were terrible. How do we know, because they are NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN. Think about it. This is a guy who absolutely had to tie everything together. There is a joke about Jango Fett bumping his head to explain a gaff caught on film in A New Hope. And he NEVER MENTIONS MIDICHLORIANS AGAIN. On to my second point (yes the previous was strictly proving how the prequels made the OT worse). The prequels are terrible movies unto themselves. The Phantom Menace, I think everyone agrees, is the worst. Who is the main character? Anakin? He’s not introduced till part way through. The only thing he adds to the plot is that he is discovered. The next likely suspect is Obi-Wan. But the problem is that what does he really add to the plot? His role can be summarized as “Follows around Qui-Gon”. He literally waits in a ship for Qui Gon for half the movie. . Is Qui Gon the main character? He doesn’t really have an arc. He starts stubborn, stays stubborn and then dies. The only character who is involved with the story from start to finish, is present during all major events and actually has an arc is Queen Amidala. The protagonist of the prequels is an elected 14 year old queen. So really, there is no character development at all in the Phantom Menace. I s’pose you could say that it should be seen as the first act of play, and that it is a trilogy and such, but really, this shit should be able to stand on its own. It’s not the first act of a play, it’s a movie. A New Hope served the same purpose to its trilogy,but has a three act structure. It stands on its own as a classic that doesn’t need two other middling movies to tell a story. Luke went from Farm boy to Saviour of the Rebellion. He discovers the Force within himself. Not to mention what the prequels did to the Jedi. In the original, they were a mysterious, mythologized group that no one believed were real. They were wandering warrior monks, who lived by a code and used the power of the universe for good. Think of how cool Obi Wan was. A desert hermit who would lop your arm off if you caused trouble and could cloud weak minds with the wave of a hand. The prequels, on the other hand, made them ineffectual, know it all bureaucrats who watched as the universe was snatched out from under them. They became the goddamn Star Wars UN, writing “strongly worded” resolutions against the Sith while holding meeting after meeting without doing anything. They were an exclusive club based on blood type and did whatever the hell they pleased. Also, Anakin was like 8 and “too old” for training. What the hell? So they just go to hospitals, test babies’ blood and steal them if they test positive? They just indoctrinate these kids in their beliefs, forcing them to make commitments about relationships, severing them from their families? That’s creepy cult shit. Also, there is the horror that is Jar Jar Binks. Jar Jar Binks is so ridiculous that a parody explaining Gungans as the fantasy of a little girl’s first adventure in roleplaying (here, here and here) makes more sense than anything else in the Prequels. The one good thing that I can say about Jar Jar Binks is that he represents a milestone in CGI. Of all the complaints of Jar Jar, not one is about the fact that he is a total CGI character. It is obvious that he is CGI as nothing God thought up is that hideous (including the turnip), but no one thought that it was a bad effect. He interacts quite seamlessly with the human characters. But that still doesn’t excuse him from literally giving Palpatine absolute power. Attack of the Clones does better, but there are still some problems. I think the whole thing can be summed up to a couple quotes that George Lucas himself said right after RotJ “One of the fatal mistakes that almost every science fiction film makes is that they spend so much time on the settings, creating the environment… What they’re doing is showing off the amount of work that they generated and it slows the pace of the film down” and “Special effects are just a tool: a means of telling a story. People have a tendency to confuse them as an ends unto themselves. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.” I think the problem is that the prequels could have made a decent 2 movies, but they had to be another Trilogy. If you were to condense Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones to one movie, it would have been about on par with RotS, and overall made a not too made series. But because that had to have an epic trilogy with 7 hours of screen time, they had to add in so much shit that it weakens the mixture all too much. Was there a point to having Darth Maul, other than to introduce the Sith? Could they not have just had Dooku and had him get away? And what the eff was with Grevious? Was there any point to him other than to show that nameless, faceless Jedi have died? Truly, what did he accomplish? I know the best thing to do after introducing a menacing four armed cyborg who kills Jedi is to have him constantly running away. All he allowed was for Obi-Wan to follow him and kill him. Did he really add anything to the film other arguably the worst light saber duel? The only positive I can think of is “Modern Major General Grevious” on youtube. Which is fantastic. With the OT, you had Vader and to a lesser extent Palpatine that when he showed up, you knew shit was going down. Is there anyone like that in the Prequels? Dooku could’ve been bad ass, but instead he was an old man in a velvet cape who died when he fell down. Maul wasn’t around long enough, and Palpatine wasn’t yet in power. No one commanded fear like Vader did. For a final comparison, just imagine explaining them to a friend. Which sounds more appealing? A young boy, his ghostly warrior monk mentor, a devilish rogue and his beastly sidekick save a princess and join the rebellion and destroy the galactic empire or a warrior monk and his ghostly mentor try to settle a trade dispute which is actually the front for senatorial action plan to instill a non-confidence vote to install a corrupt leader and they end up training a whiny, angry kid with lots of force bugs in his blood? Now I would like to thank my brother for his input in this post. It couldn't have happened without our nerdy phone calls and his knowing that Kashyyyk has three Ys without having to look it up. Another equinox, another bitching Saskatchewanian... Left in the dark Steve Jones According to the mass media, today is the fall equinox. According to wordnik.com (Which is the best dictionary in the world. If you dare question me on this, you are banned from my blog) the equinox can be defined as: either of two times of the year when the sun crosses the plane of the earth's equator and day and night are of equal length. A quick Google search confirms that this is more or less the case today. The search still yields some interesting data. According to virtually all sites, the sun rose in Saskatoon somewhere around the 6:55 am mark and will set around the 7:00 pm mark with the solar noon being round 12:59 pm. Noon can be defined as “Twelve o'clock in the daytime; midday.” Looking at the data we have at hand, it would seem that SASKATCHEWAN IS ON DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME! One can then conclude that the province choosing to switch its clocks back and forth would result in us not getting any extra minutes of sunlight in the evening as we are already on mountain DAYLIGHT time. All that would happen would be that we would switch our clocks back come November 30th, the sun would rise at 7:52 and set at 3:58 instead of rising at 8:52 and setting at 4:58. Either way you look at it, no one is not at work/school when the sun is up in winter so who cares! In fact, I would much rather get up when it’s dark and leave right when the sun is starting to set. The sun setting at 3:58 is one of the most depressing things I’ve heard. That’s got to be the period of time when, if someone asked the sun “What’s going on these days?”, the sun would reply “Well right now...” Leave the clocks the way they are in winter and since we are already moved ahead for summer, stop bitching! September 19th, 2009 Kanye Unless you have been living under a rock, you have heard of Kanye at the MTV Video Music Awards. A lot of people have been saying how much of a jackass Kanye is. Some have been going so far as to say that he should be banned from the industry and some such. I find this suggestion appauling. No one, and I mean NO ONE, should have been surprised by Kanye doing this. It is what he does. He has freaked out at award shows before and displayed his narcissism countless times. In the days after Michael Jackson died, he held a press conference to say "I am the new king of pop, deal with it." He has declared himself to be the voice of our generation. The man clearly has no idea about the world around him. But what really gets me about people saying he should be banned from show business is that all he did was say that Beyonce had a great video, which she did. I have heard no calls for Chris Brown to be banned from show business and he brutally beat Rihanna. Maybe Kanye should've just gone on stage and decked Taylor Swift. How is Kanye voicing his opinion about the travesty that is "Single Ladies" not getting proper recognition any different then the throngs of people denouncing Kanye on any public forum that they can find? Plus, it has now given us a great meme. http://kanyelicious.appspot.com/http://www.sherar.com/mitch And now I can make the following hilarious references in my facebook notes:
Kanye is legendary. We need to make sure he has an outlet at all times so he can keep giving us these gems. September 6th, 2009 Comments Back at the start of May, my vagabond brother, Michael, went on various blogs and touted my blog as the best Mitchel blog on the internet and would post the URL. This lead to me getting thousands upon thousands of unwanted comments on my blog posts. Following are the funny ones that I kept in my email: From "Stella" - Hi there I don't think any of us will forget that day stop mastiff from chasing cat So it goes. limping mice pets wall, toco tico dog table, kataan dog, Thank! Cool Site! The Best! From "Honoratus" - All greetings! I am sure you will have heard this sentiment a thousand times before so my apologies for that dog wheelchairs needed yes pet mouse webpages say, puppies for adoption in ut stood, harling pets meat, pet urine sanitizer enzymes, Many thanks! From "Miecislaus" - well, Caron is just as excited about getting her MSA registration & doing her first training days evander holyfield boxer house ma be heaven scent miniature dachshund listen, dog ate desitin animal, wheatland terrier modern, st francis terrier, Big thanx to webmaster! And of course each of the posts had a link to God knows what. Well, I eventually just disabled comments on my WordPress blog after I got literally thousands in a 12 hour period. With my relaunch of my blog, I think that I should perhaps reinstate the comments section to its former glory. In other news, it's the Labour Day Classic today. I am going down to the practice field at noon to get ready for the Green and White to destroy the BlueBombers! Until next time: Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus September 4th, 2009 It is time that I restart my blog. I was working 50-60 hour weeks over the summer, so I didn’t update my blog at all since about April. I also lost everything on my computer thanks to a series of unfortunate events, so I have to redownload dreamweaver in a completely legal fashion so that I can keep the format of my blog. Then, the domain name lapsed and www.sherar.com became an ad for some sort of compression software or something. But now everything seems to be running smoothly. I am now in Saskatoon doing my Internship. It is the Friday before the long weekend and I am glad for the rest. Even though I am only teaching one class (Math A30F), and sort of helping with Français 9, and coaching junior football for an hour to an hour and a half every night, I come home exhausted. Last night I was falling asleep at 9. And I am only going to get busier and more tired, but I will still try to update my blog on a semi regular basis. For my first post, I thought I would include a funny story that happened in the past week. The story that comes to mind happened on the first day when students were back. My co-op teacher taught a student’s brother in previous years and asked how he was doing. The student then regaled us with a story of how he was hesitant to go on to post-secondary education and how he would prefer to go back and do another year of High School. When questioned about his motives, this chap says “How am I supposed to meet High School girls in college?” I think that should do it for now. Hopefully my next posts will be more frequent. April 5th, 2009 English is a tough language to master. I saw an email taped to my ministers door once. He had all sorts of email forwards but this one stuck out to me: 1. The bandage was wound around the wound. 2. The farm was used to produce produce. 3. The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse. 4. We must polish the Polish furniture. 5. He could lead if he would get the lead out. 6. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert. 7. Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present. 8. A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum. 9. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes. 10. I did not object to the object. 11. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests. 12. The insurance was invalid for the invalid. 13. How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend? 14. There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row. 15. They were too close to the door to close it. 16. The buck does funny things when the does are present. 17. A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line. 18. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow. 19. The wind was too strong to wind the sail. 20. After a number of injections my jaw got number. 21. Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear. For those that speak french, I am sure we can all relate to hearing when we were growing up that "If it ends with an e, then it is feminin". We find out as we grow that this is so utterly and completely wrong. When I am teaching kids about what words are masculine and which words are feminine, I now avoid the whole letter e thing. There are some patterns and such and I try and find them and teach those to my students, but I always have to say "There is no exact way, there is no absolute pattern, there are always exceptions, it is just a memorization game". Now, I have found a great english analogue. Consider the following words: 1) though 2) through 3) cough 4) rough 5) plough 6) ought 7) borough and for some traditionalists 8) hiccough. What is the common link? CORRECT! They all contain the letter combination -ough. But none of them are pronounced the same way. But how do we, as anglophones, know which is which? We just know. Also we must consider than all of these are not borrowed from other languages and with the exception of hiccough, I don't think that any of those stand alone in their pronunciation of -ough. But the point is that the "We just know" is the same answer I get from most, if not ALL, francophones when I ask about le genre du nom. That does it for me when it comes to musings today. I wouldn't expect any more updates for a couple of days. Damn end of semester and all these stupid papers. Also note that I updated the pictures page. |
|
| ©2009 Mitchel Sherar - March 10, 2009 | Blog • Links • Pictures • Contact • Made Possible by: |
