I like what McGonigal has to say about failure. I agree that failing a number of times makes success that much sweeter. I definitely think that needs to be incorporated into the game. In fact I like the idea of making that the point. I’ve always been interested in scientific studies where volunteers believe they’re being tested for one thing when in fact, some completely different behavior is being observed. For example: We could have the students attempt a task that they will fall short of because we set it up that way. And once they’ve failed 5 times or tried 5 different approaches to it they will defeat the task. They won’t even realize the game they are playing until after they’ve won.
I also think a few of the tasks should be hard enough that you can’t get them the first time around except by complete luck. Learning to try different approaches when your initial attempt fails is vital to succeeding in college.
I am Jedidiah. I was born in Iowa and moved to CA by myself when I was 19. I lived in my car for a couple weeks until I found a job, then one thing lead to another and –BOOM!- 13 years later I wandered into this class. I have done a lot of interesting things in those 13 years -mostly stories best told after a couple drinks- but just to wet your palate, here are a couple tidbits. I once wrecked Reese Witherspoon’s Vespa and sat on a curb bleeding and crying until she found me told me not to worry because she could afford it. I once convinced Kiefer Sutherland that we’d met before and he politely pretended to remember me before spending the rest of the night getting us very drunk, hugging me a lot, and repeatedly telling me to “Fuck ’em and treat ’em with the contempt they deserve.” -I never have concretely concluded who “they” were. I bummed my first menthol cigarette from Joe Pesci at a Scientology party that I had no business being at and I once met “the most interesting man in the world” at a party in Malibu thrown by Wesley Snipes’ tax lawyers who, incidentally, are also from Iowa.
I am now married. I have a 5 year old boy named Jonah and a 2 year old daughter named Isla. I have worked as a copy-writer for the last 4 years mostly writing movie and television trailers. I have written movie trailers you have likely seen, including The Great Gatsby, Snow White and the Huntsman, Evil Dead, and many others. I worked for Sony directly for a year and I, and many others had information hacked. -Thank God we managed to salvage ‘The Interview” though, otherwise none of this would have been worth it.
Enough bio- let’s get to the reading. I think one sentence in the forward threads the needle pretty well…
“Quite simply, if learning is about increased access to performance, then the way to maximize learning is to perform, not to talk about it.” – pg.22
There was a lot of fancy talk in the reading that could basically be brought back to this fundamental statement. There is a reason you spend 20 minutes trying to explain a new board game to a guest but inevitably end up resorting to playing a “practice round.” People learn best by “doing.” (That said- someone should have explained to me how to drive a Vespa before handing me the keys and making it seem self-evident.)
The reading talks about many ways of going about performance and many influences and variables. It discusses community and mentorship/apprenticeship and learning as a social construct and at points treats learning as if it is organic or alive. I liked that idea: that learning is something we need to interact with so it can grow and thrive. If that is true then the converse is unfortunately also true: if we do not protect it, then it can die, or at least fail to flourish. Stagnant water breeds all sorts of foul things. I suppose that means learning needs to be an ever-flowing, interactive, and organic process. …Err something.
On another note, I liked all the influences and variables we listed in class on Monday. We covered a lot of things that I wasn’t necessarily conscious of until they were said aloud. It helped me have a more dynamic understanding of learning and the things that are vital to it. That said, I think there was one glaring omission. We listed many ways to learn and many influencers but no one, and I hate having to include myself in this guilty party, but no one mentioned MONTAGES! It’s proven to be the most exciting, thorough, inspiring, and well… economical way to learn anything. Follow the link for irrefutable proof:
We’ll use Perusall to annotate and read together. 