To enter my apartment, through its “front” door, I currently have to walk up some rickety steps to an old deck that’s floating on a rubber roof on top of a 7′ by 11′ first floor bathroom addition. Though it’s old, the deck overlooks Olbrich Park, and Garver Mill, which foregrounds beautiful sunrises and glows warmly in the sunset. In other words, the deck sucks but the view is very nice. Unfortunately, it’s too hot in the summer sun, and too cold in the winter wind, and on too many of the days between, it’s too wet in the Spring/Fall rains.

And it’s an ugly “front” door to my home.

So, I’m starting to investigate what it would cost to add a second story addition onto the bathroom, and replace the open deck with an enclosed 3-season porch that shades the summer sun, opens up to summer breezes, and soaks up winter sun — while keeping the weather off the steps. And providing a beautiful, but modest entry room with a sunny breakfast space and wood-heated coziness.

This image is how I imagine it might look if viewed from inside the current front door to the apartment. In other words, to get to where the viewer is, you would have walked up the steps behind the gray walls behind the wood stove, and walked past the big windows, then turned around to this perspective. Maybe there’d be a couch on the left wall from which to watch the fire on a cool night. And on the right (SE side of house), the sun would rise every morning through the windows, and when it set, Garver would be the last thing glowing — besides the fire.

The GLS Conference is the premier event in the field of videogames and learning. Now in its eighth year, this grassroots “indie” event is evolving to include more innovative content formats and new programming. The GLS Conference is one of the few destinations where the people who create high- quality digital learning media can gather for serious discussion about what is happening in the field and how the field can serve the public interest. Our event is well known for its exceptionally high quality of content yet “community event” feel. Each year, we foster in-depth conversation and social networking across diverse disciplines including game studies, education research, learning sciences, industry, government, educational practice, media design, and business. Our continued commitment is to reinvent learning both in and out of formal school environments through the promise of games and simulations.

Conference highlights include: keynotes by leaders in both academics and industry; interactive workshops on game research and game design; both individual and symposia presentation sessions; big debates about critical aspects of gaming and game design; hands‐on game play in the arcade; the “hall of failure”; a massively multi-player evening poster session over cocktails & hors d’oeuvres; fireside chats that enable cozy conversations among speakers and attendees; and the GLS Games and Art Exhibition. A new session type offered this year will be the Educational Game Arcade, which will offer a space for conference attendees to play the games created by members of our community.

Confirmed speakers include:

• COLLEEN MACKLIN
• REED STEVENS
• SEBASTIAN DETERDING

We offer a variety of session formats, encouraging submissions from traditional paper presentations to innovative formats focusing on game play. All submissions are due online by January 31, 2012. Complete submission guidelines can be found on the submissions site at http://glsconference.org as well as more information about the GLS Educators Symposium and the GLS Doctoral Consortium.

I’ve grabbed some excerpts from the lavishly titled The Genius and Beauty Found Within The Clifton StrengthsFinder Themes of Talent (PDF), by Edward “Chip” Anderson, Ph.D. Professor, Doctoral Studies in Educational Leadership, Azusa Pacific University. I’ve neither read any of his other articles or research, nor any rebuttals to this one, so I won’t even venture into critique suffice to say that much what he says about the 5 top Strengths GSF attributes to me rings true. So I include it below, with the parts that ring most true highlighted. I still need to graph it out, and compare to the MBTI, which I know and trust more. (In another post, perhaps).

My GSF-alleged top 5 Strengths, as interpreted by “Chip” Anderson:

1. IDEATION

The genius of your Ideation talent begins with your love of ideas and the way you so quickly learn new ideas, concepts and principles. But you are not passive. It is as if you take ideas and then begin spinning them around in your mind. With each new idea you learn, you tend to think about it over and over — spinning it around with the many other ideas you already have. The result of this thinking, turning, and spinning around of new ideas with what you already know does two things. First, you generate new connections and insights about ideas and their implications. Second, the spinning of your ideas often results in new ideas. Therefore, the genius of the Ideation talent is the creativity of generating new ideas and insights as a result of contemplating and reviewing the ideas you have learned.

2. STRATEGIC

The genius of your Strategic talent involves the way you think and generate alternatives. When faced with a problem or a dilemma you can quickly generate multiple alternatives to circumvent obstacles that prevent your progress. Sometimes you think in a backwards manner by first visualizing the outcome you want to produce and then generating multiple alternative paths to get to that objective. But your genius of Strategic doesn’t simply begin and end with generating alternatives. The real genius of this strength is found in the way that you can quickly sort through the various alternative paths and determine the one that will work best and most efficiently.

3. ADAPTABILITY

The genius of your Adaptability talent begins with where you “live” in terms of your mind. You live in the present — even the present moment. Whereas others live their lives in their “rear-view mirror”, always looking to the past and being tied to the past, you are a right here – right now person. The genius of this perspective means that you can change and change quickly. Rather than being rigid, you are flexible; and rather than being tied to some pre-set plan, you can quickly change to meet immediate demands and circumstances that require attention. But the real genius of your adaptability is seen in circumstances that make others scramble and cower into some safety zone for security. Your genius talent of Adaptability comes to light in chaos. In fact, you not only deal with chaos, you get energized, come alive and get a thrill out of chaos as you “ride the wave” and quickly make the changes that chaos requires. This then points to another genius aspect of your Adaptability talent. You can learn and change so quickly.

4. INPUT

The genius of your Input talent is based on your curiosity. It is as if your curiosity knows no limits. You want to know about everything. Question after question propels you to learn more and more. You want facts, information, concepts and principles. You become excited by your own questions and even more excited when you find answers to your questions. Sometimes you turn your curiosity to people and want to learn as much as possible about them, but for the most part you are driven to learn in general and in specialized areas of knowledge. As you learn, you try to keep your acquired facts organized, but this is a challenge since you continue to collect more and more information, and there is simply much to learn. Finally, the genius of your Input talent wants to share what you have learned. You can be a great communicator of what you have learned, and you get really excited about telling others about the latest thing you have learned. 

5. FUTURISTIC

The genius of your Futuristic talent begins with your incredible ability to see the future. Your ability to envision the future provides an unusual and creative way of planning and problem solving. When confronted by a problem, you will envision where you are heading and then structure your problem solving so that each solution provides a stepping-stone into the future. Likewise, all planning is done in light of the visions you have about the future. Of course your futuristic talent genius gives you a powerful basis for leadership. As Robert Greenleaf noted long ago, the great leader has a ready answer to the profound question: “What are you trying to do?” You know what you are trying to do because your futuristic talent gives you clear pictures of the future you want to build. Never forget that your visions of the future will excite the imagination of others and they will be inspired because of what your genius of Futuristic can help them see. Make your visions known to everyone because they give others hope and optimism.

The University of Wisconsin–Madison is excited to announce the Games+Learning+Society (GLS) Conference 7.0 to be held June 15–17, 2011 at the Memorial Union on campus.

Session Submissions are due by Monday, 7 March 2011.

The GLS Conference is the premier event in the field of videogames and learning. Now in its seventh year, this grass roots “indie” event is evolving to include innovative content formats and new programming. And after waiting lists for registration in past years, we’re now finally expanding our registration to reach an even larger and more diverse audience. The GLS conference is one of the few destinations where the people who create high-quality digital learning media can gather for a serious think about what is happening in the field and how the field can serve the public interest. Our event is well known for its exceptionally high quality of content yet “community event” feel. Each year, we foster in-depth conversation and social networking across diverse disciplines including game studies, education research, learning sciences, industry, government, educational practice, media design, and business. Our continued commitment is to reinvent learning both in and out of formal schools through the promise of games and simulations. And this year’s conference promises to be the most diverse, dynamic and biggest GLS event yet.

This year we are pleased to partner with the New Media Consortium [NMC] Conference to be held concurrently in Madison in June 2011.

Poop on that! I’ve got a doctorate in Learning and Stuff! That made this a two-part question.

1. how to set up discussion moderation so students can’t see each others’ responses.
2. why the instructor should let the students “cheat” by seeing each others’ responses.

Here was my response:

The line to check when setting up the forum is “[X] Messages must be approved before being displayed” I was hoping there was also an option for setting up the Discussion Forums ahead of time, and not “releasing” them to the students until a certain time and date, but that means that the students wouldn’t be able to post anything to them until then.

Pushing back a bit on the cheating concern, why not make it a practice/rule that students can’t contribute any comments that others have already posted (first come, first serve) unless they take the comment 1-2 levels deeper. This allows students who are passionate about a specific topic be able to address it even if someone beat them to it, but at the cost of getting to dig deeper — it might include requiring academic citations. It also encourages students to have a dialog outside of class, riff off each other, and take the discussion deeper than is likely if they don’t have any responses to their responses. You could go even further and encourage them to rate each others’ comments with the rating feature, which will help them learn good argumentation, good forum citizenship (no trolling!), and how to shape their message effectively. I’d go so far as to take peer comment rating as a small part of the grade (if everyone is always rated well; it would warrant a class discussion about what critique means). With this practice, instead of being “cheating” (and bad), looking at and critiquing each others’ comments serves as peer scaffolding, and peer review.

I don’t know whether that response will convince the instructor, but it nicely encapsulated what I dislike about my job, and what I absolutely love about it. The technical answer that made me dig into Desire2Learn and find what buttons to push to restrict the options for students to learn from each other? Sharing that sucked. I really wanted to say “Sorry! It can’t be done!” But that would have, of course, been dishonest. Instead, it opened up an opportunity for me to use some of the stuff I learned about sociocultural learning over the course of my doctoral program, and apply it in a manner where I don’t think anyone would feel affronted, and may improve the learning environments they design.

It’s this type of situation that explains why, given the opportunity to put anything I wanted f0r my business card title, I put Learning Consultant on it instead of Instructional Technology Consultant. I love these kinds of consultations!

To celebrate making the front page of the Bangor Daily News, I’m publishing the first chapter of A Bad Case of Moosepox. Of course, if you’d like to get your own full copy of the book, Chris may still have a few that he might be able to sell.

Chapter 01- The Diagnosis

I suffer from a debilitating and incurable disease. No research foundation or national charity is dedicated to its eradication; and the disease has left me, and over a thousand other victims, facing increasing pain and suffering as the years progress. However, before I enlarge farther on the agonies that befall our small group, let me assure you that we collectively enjoy every moment of our affliction. This has become part of our lives, and it gives us strength as we face many of our problems.

We have not been attacked by an ordinary virus, but by a very special virulent type, which we have picked up over a long period of years as a result of our association with a small camp for boys in Maine. The disease is lingering, and in my case has done much to limit, and at the same time, expand my life over a period of some 60 years, with no end in sight. I refer, of course, to the scourge of Moosepox.

I can explain my exposure to this rare disease in one short sentence, but I will need the rest of this book to explain that sentence. The sentence is: “When I was eleven years old I was sent away to summer camp.” The explanation and results are more complicated.

The camp had the improbable name of Flying Moose Lodge, and almost the moment I set foot on its turf, I was hooked. Three years as a small camper infected me with a serious case of Moosepox, which can only be described as a growing infatuation with the camp and the way of life it engendered. Seven years after my camper days, I attempted to find relief from the pangs, which increased with each succeeding year, by returning in the role of a counselor. Things only got worse. They got so bad that in 1940, when the camp came up for sale, I bought it. For me to take this step with our country facing world war, and myself just out of college, may sound foolish, indeed; but we sufferers are prone to make rash decisions. Be that as it may, that was one of the best decisions I ever made.

Directing the camp since that moment has eased some of the discomforts of Moosepox, but others have developed. The continuing desire to maintain the camp’s original philosophy, and at the same time provide for an extension of opportunities for future generations, developed into a time consuming job. Don’t mistake what I am saying, I loved every minute of it, Moosepox and all. I am sure that the family has felt from time to time that the camp was consuming all of us, for Alice and the children were developing the disease at various levels as we spent our summers in that magical environment. Now grandchildren share with us, each infected in his or her own way by the pox which is upon us.

It is a rare month that doesn’t bring a letter from a distant camper or counselor, which, when you read between the lines, indicates that others suffer as well. Occasionally, I will receive packages of old camp mementos, which were probably sent on at the insistence of a long-suffering wife who was finally determined to clean out that closet or desk once and for all. I have been sent old camp newspapers, yellowed with age, which have been saved for all these years. They send me old photographs, and even old camp awards which go back to the 1920s. I often wonder how many times those pieces of Flying Moose have crossed and re-crossed the country, and have been packed and unpacked, just to preserve a small piece of a wonderful past.

I suppose that it is inevitable that anyone who works at one thing for some 50 years, will have stashed away many memories of those days so well spent. Personal and interesting as all those memories may be, it is too much to expect that any one other person will have exactly the same collection, even one as close to all of this as one’s wife. However, there should be a considerable number of people who can remember along with me at least some of what follows; and having once lived in the intimate circle in which all of this took place, can well imagine how the rest could have happened. Those who have never heard of Flying Moose Lodge can, perhaps, find amusement as these recollections touch on parallel situations at other places and in other times. If you have never been to Maine, and if you have never been associated with a boys’ camp, some of this may seem strange, and at times childish. Rather than feel sorry for you, I would like to share this different world, and show you what you have missed.

I certainly never realized during my camper days that I would some day own and operate Flying Moose. The idea never occurred to me; but if it had, I am sure that I would have relished it. Good things evolve slowly, and so did my association with the camp. When I decided that I wanted to become a teacher, the possibility of becoming involved in summer camp during vacations seemed only natural. What started out as summer employment, soon began to fill the days between vacations as well, and my case of Moosepox became more acute.

Directing a camp for two months, and teaching school for the remainder of the year, may at first seem like an effective way to split the year into two completely separate parts. I was soon to learn that the two were intricately entwined. In the summer I found myself away from the classroom, yet constantly discovering new approaches to old problems, approaches that could make me more effective in the academic world. Even more so, I found that although I might be in Pennsylvania or New Jersey with the family between summers, that I was never very far from Flying Moose, and consequently not very far from Moosepox. There was plenty of time for brainstorming. There was plenty of time to think through difficult situations. There was also time to work out carefully the design and detail of new projects as they came along. On top of all that there was the challenge to present our program to a growing audience, in hopes that enough campers would enroll so that the summer would pay for itself with, perhaps, something left over for mortgage payments, and for four struggling college nest eggs.

What follows is not arranged chronologically, for chronology has very little to do with Flying Moose. That is why campers from the distant past can return in the 1980s and feel very much at home with the same buildings, the same attitudes, and the same philosophical outlook. That is why old campers can enjoy current copies of the camp newspaper; and present day campers can derive an equal amount of interest from the old copies in the files. That is exactly as it should be. Very little changes at Flying Moose except the length of boys’ hair.

The summers I spent in Maine as a camper, a counselor, and as a camp director, have meant much to me personally. They have given me golden opportunities to make my own decisions, some of which were good, and some of which were not quite so good. I feel strongly that the events of those years, as well as the people involved in those events, should be recorded in some fashion, in hopes that they may bring even a fraction of the enjoyment that is mine, to all those who have shared those great years at Flying Moose. My children seem to think that I am approaching the age when I will forget all that has happened, or what is perhaps worse, lose all sense of proportion. Now is the time.

Place yourself in the role of a fly on the wall, or if you prefer, of a mosquito in the tent, and see if you can understand a little about Moosepox. See if you can understand how the interactions of hundreds of people at this small camp have meant so much to so many. Yes, Flying Moose has touched the lives of scores of men and boys; or more appropriately, scores of men and boys have touched Flying Moose. Each has left his mark, some more indelibly than others, but nonetheless marks. In what follows some names will appear again and again. The story can be told no other way, for some contributions were so uniquely personal, that to mention them anonymously would do them an injustice. Of course there is much that I have left out, for not every moment can fit conveniently into 22 limited chapters. Above all, remember that the camp itself had a strong personality of its own. It almost seemed that it recognized how important that personality was to so many of us; and it worked tirelessly to keep it so. I have felt during many trying moments that the camp took over and kept things on an even keel while I fumbled and bumbled in the wings.