Kevin Ryan in Tokyo

Kevin putting it out there

  • Games in Class

    I have two games lined up for classes when they begin next month. I have been reading and exploring on ways to up the experiential level in a boring class setting.

    Classcraft looked cool at first. Making classroom behavior into a group-based RPG fit right into my small group structure for teaching and interaction.  I considered my audience of college women and started to doubt whether they were familiar with MMORPGs. They could always ask their brothers, or even fathers. I asked in my class and happily about 25% (6/24) had played a similar type game on their Playstation or phone before. I was also wary about the thing being just a juiced up behaviorist trick, with the gold stars wrapped up in a pretty package. Not after the research. It is used in 20,000 schools. Granted, most of those are Jr. hi and HS, but close enough. The features lead to team-building and if my students can do that in English, perfect. I can build in using English as part of the settings as well. There are random events which spice up things, and make them more real. The only thing that still worries me is the reliance on competition, of which my students don’t have much of. Yet. Good for my first-year speaking and listening class.

    Fantasy Geopolitics is a game to stimulate conversation about the world, about geography, and mostly about the news. I know my students are not familiar with Fantasy Football, but the concept I think they will latch onto quite easily. Instead of making up a team of football players at the beginning of the season, students choose a “team” or collection of countries (for my class, each student can pick 6). Then each class thereafter they can trade countries instead of players during the weekly “draft” at the beginning of class. The neat thing is that the countries are all rated by how much they appear in the New York Times. So instead of getting a hot running back for your team, you will be looking to see which countries have wars, revolutions, economic upheavals or other reasons to get in the news. After the first 3 weeks or so, goes the research, students start looking for signs that a country is ready to burst onto the newsfront, an embroiling scandal or whatnot. Each week, students are then rated on how much their exposure goes up or down. This means students need to keep reading each week. We use Newsela for graded reading access to news, but students can also look at authentic headlines in the NYTimes. The developer started with a Kickstarter campaign, but now the game resides at FANschool.org. They have other version of politics in general, and one for elections, but my students need geopolitics more.

    Both of these games were featured in one of the best games for education books I have read in years. The Game Believes in You by Greg Toppo has a dozen chapters, each using an exemplary software to show how games belong in and improve education. I will show my colleague who teaches English Literature the endless runner game Stride and Prejudice. Still in development is Eoghan (pronounced owen) Kidney’s VR (virtual reality) adaptation of Jame’s Joyce’s Ulysses. This has been in development for 3 years since getting money on FundIt, similar to Kickstarter, and it looks like a group at Boston U is starting up something similar called Joycestick (get it?). We can learn empathy and great storytelling through Inanimate Alice. Another way to center your thinking and do literature at the time is the game Walden, a game, now out in Apha ($18). We live in Thoreau’s world and learn to become more self-reliant and negotiate society on our own terms. Finally, we learn how to throw trucks and run like a chicken using our brains and an EEG collar as the only interface. What this really does is work like Ritalin or Adderall (the games are still in trial) to focus attention.

    Each of these games is an example of a different kind of software, each addressing a different kind of learning. The book is highly recommended. As soon as I finish reading the book, off I am to develop the first two to fit into my class, and have fun with the others.

  • Homework Exchange

    I am at a tech conference for teachers (Japan Moodle Moot) and over lunch I was throwing out ideas to see if they resonated with others who use Moodle for teaching. Gordon Bateson was answering follow-up questions about his morning presentation on Badges.

    This conference follows a week where the faculty admin from our Boston campus came to explain how the accreditation process goes on in the US. They use SMART (Business guru Peter Drucker’s 5 criteria for setting goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound (with a time frame). The course content is broken down into tiny bits, each with its own set of standards (actually, there are 4 sets, as Boston breaks the students into 4 levels). This requires a lot of work, but does force people (teachers and admin) to clearly define what they want to go on in class.

    One of the interesting admonitions from the consultants in Boston was to make sure that time was not the determining factor, only one of 5 parts. Also not about how much work is done, but how much learning gets done. I applaud this.

    It is looking like this kind of goal-setting (curricula and syllabi) are coming to Japan. Word around the Ministry of Education is that it is the next big thing after “active learning” runs its course.

    I was put in charge of our sadly neglected self-study center, repurposed as an unofficial event room called the English Room. We need regular activities next year (starting in April).

    With all these ideas, and Blockchain (technology behind BitCoin) applied to Education, I came up with an idea. Homework Exchange.

    It seems with our students doing so much of the same kind of homework, it gets less efficient. It also adds to the teacher load. An Exchange among department members (espcially in our language learning skills courses) would give students an opportunity to do things with other students outside their groups with teachers doing stuff they are good it. Here is how it works.

    I like playing board games. I set up Monday lunch as Gamer’s Lunch. Any student who comes can get recorded. If a teacher assigns that as a kind of speaking homework for their speaking class, she gets credited. But, for a teacher to assign an activity, they in turn have to offer an activity of their own. Say, watching a 10 minute video and leading a discussion. You build a series of activities, students get a lot more practice and teachers share the load.

    There are a lot of logistics to work out, but it does satisfy the Ministry’s current guidelines for homework, 45 minutes a week per credit hour. (Unrealistic in itself, with students carrying a load of 24 90-minute classes, plus the homework, that makes for a 54 hour work week.) But hey, they might have some fun for at least part of it instead of doing fill in the blanks.

    I see this starting as a face-to-face thing, then moving from a small group of volunteers to the faculty in the department, then across departments, at which time it will need to go online. Fortunately, tomorrow has a presentation on sharing activities in Moodle, at 9 AM. Takes an hour to get to the conference. Time for bed.

  • Ballot sent

    largeAlthough I had some reservations, I now see that Hillary Clinton may be our best President ever. She is certainly the most capable administrator ever elected to the highest office. Unfortunately, she needs work as a candidate. But she has come a long way through her three debates, and is likely to triumph. Key, though, is the ability to take the win downballot, to the Senate and House, and make gains (or better, a majority) there, to punish the Republicans for 20 years of racism and inaction.

    I could go on here, but find this guy, a leftist, outlines my position better than I could.

    Colorado had a three interesting initiatives on the ballot, all of which I voted for. Single Payer healthcare, no slavery for prison labor, and making initiatives on the ballot more difficult to create. Will let you know the total results after the election.

  • Moving to Medium

    mediumlogoThere is a new blogging platform, one that I think is better than WordPress, and I am moving there for future posts. I will add pointers here, but the content will be there.

    Why am I releasing total control over my feed here, with my own domain name and wordpress installation? Two factors, curation and convenience.

    Medium was developed by one of the co-founders of Twitter. Understanding social media and applying it to content, Evan Williams put together a platform that allows any user to blog, limits the format options to make the content the draw, and allows for readers to decide easily what should be highlighted and promoted each day. Add to that paid authors of note, like Steven Levy on Crypto War Redux, to draw the public.

    There are other alternatives to Medium, outlined at Lifehacker, but they don’t put the author at the center, supported by the readers, in a symbiotic relationship that is an evolution from what publishers used to do. Medium acts as a medium, but is, in its current state, almost invisible. Something I like.

    As an occasional blogger in the days of fading RSS use, I cannot expect people to come to my domain to read what I have to say; it gets lost in the shuffle of a million other blogs. With Medium, I have a chance that they may get linked or looked at more often. As well as the convenience of web-based posting. Find me at https://www.medium.com/@tokyokevin

    UPDATE: about a year later. Medium is going through some changes. I am back here. Sorry about the leave.

  • Voting on Convictions

    the-strategy-1080536_640I am usually a strategic voter. I sometimes switch to the Republican party so I can vote against the wingnuts in the primaries, as the chance a local Democrat getting elected are pretty close to nil (in Loveland, Colorado). I have been political since helping Dad deliver Kennedy brochures as a tiny kid to the ward where he was the Democratic precinct captain. Seeing Hubert Humphrey lose to Richard Nixon was an eye-opener. Watching McGovern go down in flames consolidated a real fear of voting with too much conviction and not enough strategy. Worst was to see Al Gore lose the squeaker to G.W., and I do blame the 3% that Nader garnered.

    Sure there was Jimmy Carter, one of the best presidents and probably the best person to ever hold the office. Read some of his books. But you know how that ended. When Reagan waltzed into office, I was already overseas in Barcelona. I returned for a graduate degree but did not stay. I have watched the decline of America from afar, in Tokyo. Sure, I contributed, many times to the Obama campaign. Worked as much as I could to get the word out. He has done as much as possible in a system that has become dysfunctional.

    hillary-41775_640Hillary has always seemed the logical extension of this run. She has balls. She is a scrapper. She is smart, and resilient. She knows the ins-and-outs of the system. She will get things done. And she will make history as the first woman president.

    I agree with Bernie Sanders on almost every point in his platform. He is a good thinker, and presents his ideas well. I am worried, though, that he would be another Carter. And the right is more aligned than in the late 70’s. It is a different ballgame. When the rubber meets the road, I am not so sure he would be able to deliver. He expects a revolution, with a surge of young liberals voting their conscious. But if it were a true revolution, why is he wasting his time on a nomination? He doesn’t play well with others, is a real independent and not really a Democrat. Sure, the 2-party system is another thing that needs drastic overhaul, superdelegates and about 30 other quirks that help inside-the-beltway candidates. But this is the system we have to work with.

    But for the first time in a long time, I understand why people vote on their convictions, even without a real chance of electing a winner. Those that vote against their own economic self-interest because they believe in something one candidate has done or said. A moral stand. Pure and simple.

    When I found out Bernie Sanders was a Conscientious Objector to the Vietnam war, my opinion of him jumped a couple of notches. I have done the same thing, albeit during the last year of the draft (thank you, Jimmy Carter, for canceling that.) CIMG2923But it was the latest exchange in the debate between Sanders and Clinton that has swayed me completely. It involves Henry Kissinger, who I have long considered a war criminal. This has only grown stronger over the years, this feeling that a corrupt man in a corrupt administration has been let off in the eyes of history. My visit to the killing fields in Cambodia last year sharpened this feeling as I learned the role the US had in the catastrophe.

    So when Hillary embraced Kissinger and Bernie clearly rejected him, it left me with no choice. I am a pacifist. It is one of the reasons I came to Japan to live. I can no longer support Hillary Clinton for President. Looking back after my decision, I now see how many other areas Hillary has compromised on so much that she reminds me of a character out of Macbeth.

    Now comes the hard part. How to ensure that Mr. Sanders becomes Mr. President. He is not very electable. He doesn’t compromise. Sometimes that strength can become a weakness. But I am now looking for the best way to contribute to the campaign.

    bernie-sandersIn the last couple of days, I have discovered that there are signs Bernie could get nominated (the most difficult step), and then go on to get elected (easier, considering the field he is running against). Most promising is the amount of funds from small donors. Beating Obama’s record. Most difficult for him is getting the media onboard. You need a dirty fight for that.

    But here’s to hoping that conscience and strategy can work together. Feel the Bern.