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NASAGA '06 conference, day 4 of 4

Kat described aspects of improv, and how it can be used to create an environment where brilliance emerges.

The first rule - celebrating failure. "Exercise the courage muscle - our willingness to be creative and take risks. We don't do it by creating a safe environment, we do it by creating an incredibly risky environment." "Celebrate failure and realize it's ok. Think of mistakes as gifts." "Creativity is by definition an act of courage." That allows us to tap into our spontaneity.

We did a rapid word association exercise. "This activity outs the judge in our head. We may need to judge sometimes, but that censor already gets a lot of practice and support." People described a variety of rules they made up for themselves, and that got in the way. "We evaluate things that don't need to be evaluated."

A second rule - "Trust your impulses." One activity is "brain fries," that overload the system so hard you can't judge. Spontaneity is a muscle too. Give offers - make stuff up. "Most of creativity is not making up things inside ourselves - it's responding to input". "Yes, And is the fundamental improviser's mantra." "All we have is the offers our partners make."

In brainstorming, you accept and build, saying "yes, and" as well. But improvisers mean something more profound. "There are offers out in the world - anything that's present." Some offers are more open to interpretation. "How can I use these offers?" vs. brainstorming. For the improv offer, you don't have to like it, the offer just is. Ignore offers at your own peril.

"Yes, And" doesn't imply agreement with a situation. Sometimes you can just name a situation - "I see you're rolling your eyes." "It's harder than you think - and it's easier than you think."

It can be rough to create in a team - we have shared responsibility and shared control. "The clearer I am on my idea, the harder it is to collaborate."

Another secret of improv is "Be obvious - dare to be boring." Kat worked with Performance of a Lifetime, which isn't afraid to back up and untangle blocking or poor listening.

What happens when we're under stress? Some people become drivers, trying to take charge; others are wimps, giving up and failing to continue making offers.

Summary: Be aware of the rules you make in your head. Use offers to engage. Note that there are many ways to say "no" without using the word "no". The "and" is as important as the "yes."

Look at our lives as improv scenes. We can see and accept more offers. We can get better at recognizing the huge range of choices we have. "We can create wonderful plays with each other."

(I loved this talk - and I'd love to hear Kat at the Agile software conference.)

This session used a number of physical "tricks" applied in the hope of improving the functioning of your brain. (Do they work? I don't have enough experience to say.)

Example: keep moving your foot clockwise, then write a 6 in the air with your hand.

The pain/pleasure principle - we move away from pain, and toward pleasure. "A decision to move toward something is more powerful than a decision to move away from something."

Enriched learning has multiple related topics: water, multiple intelligences, music, NLP, kinesiology, memory, the brain, total physical response, accelerated learning. (He made a concept map to show this.) Claim: "pictures are three times as good as repetition."

We have control of 70% of the effects of age on the brain - through physical exercise, learning, water, food, sleep, etc. we can help that part.

Brain Gym (tm) - kinesiology and whole-brain together. Example: Cross crawl - touch left knee with right hand, then right knee with left hand, repeat a few minutes. This is designed to help integrate the left and right parts of the brain. Example: "Brain buttons", "K27" in acupuncture - two spots located 1" below and to the right of the collarbone: rub these spots to get more oxygen.

The reward center lights up stronger for unexpected rewards.

Neuro-linguistic programming talks about the three modalities: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.

Exercise - eye dominance. Hold hands at arm's length with a small triangle gap, then close each eye separately. The image will jump for the non-dominant eye. We have dominant ears and dominant feet too. When do these factors count? When we're under stress, and when we're learning new material.

Exercise - earlobe roll. Exercise - jaw massage.

Exercise - hold hands at arm's length with thumb up. Move thumb in an "infinity" (sideways 8) pattern. Make the eyes follow the thumb, but don't move your head. This is to activate different parts of the brain. Ex: NLP believes we habitually access imagination when we look at one quadrant, and memory in another.

Presenter's trick - move to the opposite side of the room from the questioner during question time. This helps that person project their voice further, and helps keep the rest of the room engaged.

Presenter's trick: wear at least a little red.

Multiple intelligences - Howard Gardner. Gardner thinks of schools as traditionally focusing on math/logic and linguistic intelligence. But there are others: interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, music, spatial, kinesthetic, etc.

Memories are fragmented and stored in multiple places. Memory can't be trusted. Involving lots of senses gives us a better chance of recall.

Basic Rest Activity Cycle - every 90 to 120 minutes, the dominance of left and right brains moves back and forth. The left brain corresponds to activity, the right to rest. During sleep, we get a sine wave at a deeper level. Take advantage of the troughs; try to go to bed and wake up at the same time each day, try to come out of sleep when you're nearer the "top" anyway.

Application: proofread an important email ~40 minutes after writing it, in case it was written while the left brain was inactive.

Key points: Water, breathing, and the comfort zone. Physical activities. Moving away, moving towards. Seeing the big picture creates file folders in your brain. The Basic Rest Activity Cycle.

Session: Captivating Your Audiences through Storytelling, by Carla Rieger.

We worked through an exercise exploring what makes stories work or not work, and our strengths and weaknesses as storytellers.

In using stories, there are several challenges. Keep the story short (possibly 5 minutes, not longer than 10 normally). Make it personal, not the "starfish story." Choose a topic demonstrating challenges, discoveries, or decisions.

Carla adapted the Satir change model as the model of the story: old status quo (setting the old platform), tilting the platform, consequences, transforming idea, getting back to stability, new platform.

As an exercise, we identified a number of possible stories, then told one to each other and identified the various parts according to the model. (It's a lot easier for someone else to identify parts in your story than to do it yourself.) We turned it into 5 sentences, and then made tableaus demonstrating the sentences.

I talked to the instructor at break, as I felt like a lot of my story ideas just reflected a situation that "corrected itself" and to some extent I was floating along in that situation. It seemed like a story with no real point.

For my story in the exercise, I used a personal situation that felt like it resolved itself with a boring non-event. My revelation in this was that what I thought was the transforming event ("the problem went away on its own") was not - what counted was my reaction to a troublesome situation where I decided to let it work itself out as much as possible. Understanding this left me with unexpected tears.

In the followup discussion, several things came out. A key one is that many times, you need to figure out the point of the story to know how to structure it. Having someone reflect the story back can help with this. Another easy-to-fix problem is the tendency to jump into the story and ignore the context. Carla called her story model "story paint by numbers", but pointed out that many movies and stories fit the pattern, and that you can play with the pattern once you understand it.

Finally, Carla suggested some next steps to really make story skill-building happen:

• Put each sentence (of the 5 keys points) at the top of a page, and flesh it out (written or oral).
• Practice saying the story aloud, and rewrite it as you go.
• Try it with colleagues/video/audio. Fix what's missing, and what needs to be cut. Figure out what the story is really about. Do "act outs".
• Rehearse 20 times.
• Send Carla the result by next Friday.

I really appreciated this session. Stories are important, and I'm working on being better at telling them. This session will definitely help.

Good-bye 2006, Hello 2007

The next conference is October 10-13, 2007, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. I'll definitely be there.

NASAGA '06 conference, day 3 of 4

There's a rule-making round, where the top group gets to create rules. Our top group said, "You can talk before trading," "Players in the top group start with an extra chip," and "You must trade with a top if they ask you to," but also "Someone in the top group will try to accommodate any trade request made by the lower groups."

A couple things struck me: one is that the bottom group had the easiest time making decisions, the middle had the middle, and the top had the toughest. This was true for every decision and discussion. During the debrief, someone said that the lower two groups were discussing trade strategies, but the top group was about power.

We discussed how much the system enforced the lack of mobility. Someone in the top group said they did add a rule that would help the lower groups. That was true, but I think the rule came across as "charity" or a "tip of the hat" toward equality, without the real thing. (Note that two of the new rules further reinforced the position of the tops, even disregarding their other current and past advantages.)

It was an interesting simulation. The game's structure certainly enforced the system it wanted to. It effectively points out how a society, consciously or not, creates rules that reinforce the powerful.

SAGE is an academic initiative, supported by the Canadian government. It focuses on, "How do people learn through SAGEs?" They're using a multi-phase approach, to first review and translate existing literature, to do development research, and to do evaluative research in live settings.

They've focused on healthcare as their initial domain. One of their ideas is to use a patient-focused rather than a biomedical-focused approach. By generating emotion, they hope to generate memorability.

The group uses a couple other distinctions. One is the "foundation" - conceptual foundations, methods and tools, and technology. Another distinction is games vs. simulations vs. simulation games.

Some things they've developed: a repository of articles, prototypes, a generic game shell and a supporting site where people can share content, some multimediat simulations, and a Contagion simulation. They're also exploring ways to wrap a virtual usability lab around the games, to help with evaluation.

David pointed out that there's often a debate about games - are they something kids need to be weaned off of, or do they promote concentration and skills we can use? Their group believes games both have motivational power and the ability to be a powerful learning tool.

They've been using a framegame approach, where there's a structure with rules and challenges ready to go, and content (information and objectives) that you "pour in."

A simulation game is a simulation that has game-like elements such as goals and scoring. They introduced this distinction because they were seeing mixed results when people considered, "Do games work in education?" Their hypothesis is that simulation games are generally effective.

In the future, David sees them going forward with completing prototypes, doing controlled studies, and continuing knowledge dissemination. He invited others (large or small) to partner with them.

Two related web sites: http://www.sageforlearning.ca and http://egc.savie.ca. For further reading, he recommended Simulations and the Future of Learning by Clark Aldritch, and Digital Game-Based Learning by Marc Prensky.

Joey demonstrated several games that she uses in virtual classrooms. One was a hidden word match, where you connect matching answers and find a secret word. (In their environment, people can used shared drawing tools to create the connecting lines.)

Another game was "Who wants to be a virtual contestant?" Someone is a contestant, and the audience helps. We did a "fill in the blanks".

To help get people to read material in advance, Joey uses pre-session brainteasers. People get to show off their knowledge a little.

Joey had developed a couple branching-based tools, similar to "Choose your own adventure." This seemed to require a lot of work (both in terms of working out the whole branch structure and applying it). A related technique was the use of multimedia simulations.

An issue in virtual classrooms is how people pay attention. Her group's goal is to make the content so compelling people won't multi-task around it. They use a variety of interactions and techniques to make that happen. For example, they shift modes at least a little every 7-8 minutes, they poll people several times per hour, and they limit sessions to 120 minutes (though they believe 90 minutes might be better).

In the future, Joey sees more sophistication (e.g., 3D), multi-player online capabilities, and the use of simulation for assessment.

For further research, Joey recommends Games magazine, The Imagineering Way, and http://sesameworkshop.org.

David Blum has one of the coolest jobs I know: he travels all over and creates team-building treasure hunts. He gave us a taste of his skill. He found 6 interesting landmarks within a several-block radius of the hotel. He gave us 6 clues (e.g., realizing something was morse code and translating it). The clues led us to the landmark, where we had to note a name or word. Our group was the only one to solve the bonus clue, so that made up for me messing up Friday's sudoku:) Vancouver has had such great weather this week; it was nice to get outside even just for a little bit.

After dinner, we had a brief talent show. It included an improv scene, a story, and a poem. But the highlight was hilarious: a cow in a dress, singing a sort of torch song and playing a musical saw. I'm done crying now. The auction was fun, and raised more than $3500 for scholarships.

NASAGA '06 conference, day 1 of 4

A lot of the fun at a conference is reviving old friendships and making new ones, but it's hard to capture all that. Instead, I'll focus on the sessions I attended.

Pre-conference workshop: Dramaturgy of Games, by Bernie DeKoven.

Childrens' games can contain deeper messages, when looked at through the lens of "theater."

For example, in DUCK DUCK GOOSE, you have to act certain ways if you want to be picked or don't want to be picked. You can use status clues to say "don't pick me." There's a drama in who you pick - the slowest kid? the fastest kid? your best friend? the kid you wish were your best friend?

Another game is HOT BREAD AND BUTTER. The kids all stand together at "Home". One child hides a belt. (And it must be a belt - Bernie described trying unsuccessfully to get the kids to use a rolled up newspaper.) He calls out, "Hot bread and butter, come and get your supper." Everybody runs away from home base, trying to find the belt. When someone finds the belt, he hits the other kids with it until they get home. (It was described as tapping a "coup" hit, not a beating.)

Bernie interpreted this as a play about the need to grow up. The kids who played were about 11 years old, and they were realizing there is such a thing as adulthood. You aren't granted adult-ness, you seize it. Now, if you stay home (as the home base was literally called), you won't have to deal with the consequences of adulthood (here, getting hit). But if you stay home, you can never become an adult.

We spent a fair bit of time playing, WHO STOLE THE COOKIE FROM THE COOKIE JAR? ("Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar? Number 7 stole the cookie from the cookie jar. Who me? Yes you! Couldn't be! Then who? Number 5 stole the cookie from the cookie jar.")

We talked about fun. "Having fun in public is almost a political statement." "We package fun [movies, sports, etc.] but it doesn't touch our core. And we've lost our ability to create our own fun."

Bernie described Csikszentmihalyi's flow model; with challenge and ability on two axes - too challenging, we're anxious; too simple, it's boring; right on the edge - we may get flow. Flow is characterized by a sense of timelessness, focus, stillness, vividness, oneness.

Bernie has another model to go with it: "we" is on one axis, "me" on another. With way too much "we" or too much "me", we have alienation. More "we" than "me" leads to problems like co-dependence and mob rule. More "me" than "we" leads to self-absorption. In the middle channel, we have "co-liberation". When both are together at high levels, this co-liberation is confluence.

We played a few more games, PRUI, I DOUBT IT, BATTLESHIP(tm), and we tried an exercise from Agusto Boal's "Theatre of the Oppressed." We discussed a high-jump bar like this: |\| that lets everybody choose their own level (rather than a constantly raising high bar that makes everybody a loser).

Although we talked some about application, I really liked the general enthusiasm of just enjoying play as fun. And the theater notion yields some insights.

Origins '06

I pulled down the spreadsheet schedule and it had something like 3600 events on it. There's a huge vendor area as well.

It's a bargain - only $50 for pre-registration, $60 at the door. I think some events have extra charges but it adds up to a reasonable cost. (Plus what you spend on food, lodging, and games:)

NASAGA 2005 conference trip report

It's always nice to start by running into old friends & making some new ones. Then I get into my fundamental problem I - there's so much going on, it's hard to choose what to do.

Wednesday

The workshops were followed by a reception. Brian Remer (our host) had arranged for some wonderful musicians to help us learn contra dancing, which is sort of like square dancing. It was fun, but exhausting. I had thought I'd be playing games afterwards, turns out I was just going to go fall into bed.

Thursday

I followed this with a much milder session, "Can P-conferences teach e-conferences?" Chris Saeger created a simulation of an online conference where we used sticky notes to communicate in simulated chat rooms and work areas.

Then Matthew Richter helped us explore "Incorporating Motivation Theory into Games". He uses a model from amotivation (apathy) through extrinisic motivation of various types (doing it because of outside incentives), to intrinsic motivation (doing it because you want to). We had good discussion around the demotivating aspects of extrinsic rewards.

Dr. Clue (David Blum) gave us a taste of using and building treasure hunts. We ended by designing our own clues, and having other teams try them out. They were pretty tough to solve, but very fun to create.

After dinner, Ron Roberts, Clark Quinn, and Charles Phillips had a panel discussion, hosted by Les Lauber, where they discussed game design and marketing.

The evening ended (late) with a group of us playing a number of games. Somehow they tended toward a grisly theme: Give me the Brain, Guillotine, and Middle Management. Guillotine in particular was very fun.

Friday

We started Friday with a talk by Clark Quinn on "Designing E-Learning Games". He comes from a cognitive design background, and has the goal of "using technology to make people wise." His brief demo showed a couple games, one a simulation of a hospital, the other of project management. Both used a cartoon style; the interaction reminded me of "Monkey Island" (if you're old enough to remember that), but it's built around a particular model and rules engine.

He pointed out that, "Learning is difficult; engagement is difficult. Doing both together is doubly hard - but more than doubly valuable."

The programs rely on "one of the robust results of cognitive science": people don't make mistakes randomly - there's usually a logical, sensible reason that is both wrong and hard to extinguish. People tend to patch their model rather than adjust it substantially. By focusing on where decisions lead, we can get to the crux of them in the games.

Quinn has a number of tools to help in the design and development of his games (such as storyboards and concept documents), but points out that tuning can be a large and tricky part of the process. He also pointed out that we can build in metrics to assess how well usability, education, and engagement goals are being met.

To close out the morning, I went to Kat Koppet's session on "Improv Designs for Inspired Teaching." We tried (and debriefed) several games. My favorite was a "word toss" where we tried to keep two sets of words passing around a circle. We also saw an example of "telephone" - where a story gets passed along by people who try to imitate the content, tone, and gestures. We ended by creating a few stories using a "story spine", by going around the table and having each person add a sentence.

The afternoon was "lazy" - a leisurely lunch followed by game time. (Some other folks decided to try the low ropes / high ropes course, which also sounded like fun.)

During the evening, there were some simulations being run, but Raja Thiagarajan and I used that time to do a little programming on a small game project.

We joined back in on the evening games. My two favorites were "Guillotine" and "Tutankhamen"; a couple people said they had enjoyed the "Bux" game even more (whose inventor was at the conference). Gaming wimps like me only made it a bit past midnight. The hard-core ones were at it till 2:30 AM:)

Saturday

NASAGA conference - North American Simulation and Games Association

This group is mostly made up of people who use simulations and games as instructional tools. This is one of my favorite conferences.

Disclaimer: I'm a board member, and I'll be co-leading a pre-conference workshop ("Rapid Game Remodeling", with Les Lauber). But those are true because I find this organization so fun:)

National Games Week

One-button games

Just think of the possibilites if you have two buttons! :)

Kent Beck's "Programming Intensive" Workshop

We used "games" as the vehicle. That worked well enough - you can get the feel of a game without having to develop it all the way out. In the evenings, we were on our own to do some writing and exercises in thinking about software.

The first couple days, we focused on creating a crossword puzzle helper. The idea is that you'd populate some parts of a grid, and then the tool would fill in the remaining words. We got far enough into it to show it worked on moderate-sized examples, and to start optimizing.

The next program we worked on was a partially developed tic-tac-toe program. We completed some screen hookup and looked at improving the code. We spent a good bit of time contemplating a couple approaches to part of the problem, and how you'd choose between them.

Finally, we took a stab at something closer in spirit to an arcade game; a relative of the commercial games Pong or Breakout. We got as far as having a paddle and a ball bouncing around. We gave it a twist - you controlled the velocity of the paddle, not its direct position. As primitive as it was, Kent's children gave it a thumbs up.

The week was good for me. I got to learn some things about Eclipse, I got to learn some things about design. We had a couple stretches where we had the "flow" feeling of losing time in the zone. One of the puzzles I've been working through is how to take a thin slice of a system; I had some time to think about that.

Would I recommend it? Yes: I learned a lot, and found it great to spend some "renewal time" with others who just wanted to program.

Kent Beck's "Programming Intensive" Workshop

We used "games" as the vehicle. That worked well enough - you can get the feel of a game without having to develop it all the way out. In the evenings, we were on our own to do some writing and exercises in thinking about software.

The first couple days, we focused on creating a crossword puzzle helper. The idea is that you'd populate some parts of a grid, and then the tool would fill in the remaining words. We got far enough into it to show it worked on moderate-sized examples, and to start optimizing.

The next program we worked on was a partially developed tic-tac-toe program. We completed some screen hookup and looked at improving the code. We spent a good bit of time contemplating a couple approaches to part of the problem, and how you'd choose between them.

Finally, we took a stab at something closer in spirit to an arcade game; a relative of the commercial games Pong or Breakout. We got as far as having a paddle and a ball bouncing around. We gave it a twist - you controlled the velocity of the paddle, not its direct position. As primitive as it was, Kent's children gave it a thumbs up.

The week was good for me. I got to learn some things about Eclipse, I got to learn some things about design. We had a couple stretches where we had the "flow" feeling of losing time in the zone. One of the puzzles I've been working through is how to take a thin slice of a system; I had some time to think about that.

Would I recommend it? Yes: I learned a lot, and found it great to spend some "renewal time" with others who just wanted to program.

Origins '05

I went last year and had a great time. (Not sure if I'll make this year or not.) The place is huge (several large gaming rooms that seemed 100 yards long), with just about every type of game you can think of. (There's not a whole lot of electronic stuff; more board/card games, wargames, role-playing, etc.)

If you're used to software conferences, you'll find it a bargain. I've never seen a conference with so many simultaneous sessions (>100 at some hours).

Highly recommended:)

Design of Cranium

NASAGA '04 - North American Sim. & Games Assoc.

Nov. 3

"High Performance Teamwork," by Thiagi et al. This session used the commercial game Break the Safe (TM Mattel) as a vehicle for looking at a team's ability to work together. "Break the Safe" is a cooperative game - the team wins or loses as a whole. Thiagi made the point that high-ropes courses etc. can be too exciting - the teamwork they engender doesn't necessarily transfer back to day-to-day experience.

What makes a team? Having one (clear) goal, and more than one member. Ideally, these people are interdependent, and have diverse skills.

Thiagi reported a modest experiment around anonymous vs. identified feedback; they found anonymous feedback was better. But feedback that's a laundry list is too much - better to give people one actionable item.

"High performance teamwork depends on individual skill."

Nov. 4 "99 Seconds". This session gives each presenter 99 seconds to make their point.

Judee Blohm showed how to fold a piece of paper in half and make a book, "My story" in 10 minutes: a cover, 2 pages of content, and a back page "About the author."

Thiagi described a good 99-second session:

• It's auditory, not visual
• It's a blended medium - should provide both entertainment value and educational value.
• No bait and switch - be self-contained.

"Play Their Games Your Way" - Les Lauber and Bill Wake. We provided a boatload of games, brought from yard sales, and encouraged people to study how they worked, and to take inspiration to make their own games.

"Six Keys to Making Learning Active", Mel Silberman. "People have to go through a learning experience to have a change experience."

1. Hearing: Clear overview, catchy headlines, vivid examples, creative comparisons and analogies.
2. Seeing: flipcharts/whiteboards, overheads, handouts, live demo, video, props, posters, dramatization, cartoons.
3. Questioning: pair questions, written questions, highlighting, planted questions, question selection. "Asking learners questions is 1/10 as effective as letting them create their own."
4. Discussing: don't use open discussion. Use subgroup discussion, partners, go-around, next speaker, panel and fishbowl. Discuss in groups of four.
5. Doing: test, experiency, practice, perform without prompts.
6. Teaching: jigsaw teaching, peer lessons, peer tutoring.

"Cracker Barrel". This session gave people ~20 minutes to make their presentation, with a bunch of people presenting simultaneously at different tables (with 5-10 participants at each for each 20-minute session).

Sonia Ribaux showed off easy board games. One example was tic-tac-toe made with post-its - answer the question and acquire the square. She also had some generic board templates. Another group showed off a board game they'd had a graphic artist design, and Kinko's put on vinyl; that looked very nice. Another table had Thiagi present magic tracks. Another table had Leslie Brunker demonstrate a number of interesting (if obscure:) skills.

"Classic Games Night" - I went to Chris Saeger's demonstration of the classic Beer game. His version used a smaller board that a pair could manage, but demonstrated the same systems issues.

Nov. 5

"Junkyard Sports" challenged people to use found materials to create a golf course.

"Sharpen Your Thinking Skills", by Brian Remer and Bill Wake. We developed a session to compare intuition/flow, deduction, and induction.

"Dancing with Garbage: The Art and Science of Putting Stories to Work", by Jo Tyler. This keynote led with a touching story about a garbage man who dances.

The speaker works with teams to help a company hear its own stories. This helps with both explicit and tacit knowledge, and lets people mentally rehearse a situation without consequences. She helps find stories by asking and listening, by using stringers, by soliciting stories from outside, and by web sites and so on.

There are shadow stories as well: the dark side. They take longer to tell and are harder to stop. You need to be careful with them.

In telling stories, space matters: line of sight, acoustics, lighting, chairs, airflow.

Tellable stories that listeners like: authentic, relevant, structured, audience awareness, engagement, theatrical devices.

"Training Games for Two", Thiagi et al. They used traditional card games, modified to work with custom cards.

"Free Cell": this was free time for game-playing. I spent most of my time on Vanished Planet, another collaborative game.

"Ten Secrets that I Learned in the Last Ten Years", Thiagi.
1. Profound truths. Bohr said, "The opposite of every profound truth is also a profound truth." Ex. "Look before you leap" vs. "He who hesitates is lost."
4. Diversity. He took an exam and was found to be "naive and racist". "Treat humans as humans, and don't patronize."
3. Perseverance. Do something a little each day and keep doing it - for years!
7. Game design. Three approaches: realistic model (takes too long - by the time you're ready, the world has moved on); "build an airplane while you're flying it - design a game while you deliver" (using improv and situated cognition); framegames (content and process separately).
8. Goals. "Focusing on goals is the most dysfunctional behavior you can have." "If you have objectives, you cannot be objective." Consider Open Space approaches; most conferences are BLM - Be Like Me. Don't have SMART goals - if they're achievable, what's the point?
5. Facing reality. "Reality is an illusion."
6. Training. Individualized.
2. Fun. "Immersion and engagement are what matter, not fun." People learn when they're in an emotional state, happy or sad. Fun is a byproduct of learning.
9. Problem Solving: managing polarities is what's important.

"The Wonderful World of Words", Sonia Ribaux and Kevin Eikenberry. "Fractured Proverbs" had us fill in creative answers to half-proverbs. "Quote and Questions" had people find the person holding the card matching the other half of a quotation. "Speak One Word at a Time" is an improv exercise.

"Demagnetic poetry" has a set of words printed on half a file card, and teams could create their own poems.

"The Wizardry of Accessing Your Mental Potential", by Sandy Lieberson and Sandy Dignes. They used "Serious Play" tools from Lego (TM) to have people create art demonstrating a challenge.

Greetings, and NASAGA

This is my first blog post, so let me start with a brief introduction.

I teach and coach in agile software methods. My use of Java in the last couple years has mostly been as a tool for teaching and learning about refactoring. Before that, I was mostly doing web and server-side Java work.

Last week, I was lucky to be able to attend the NASAGA conference; NASAGA is the North American Simulation and Games Association. The attendees are a mix of teachers, game designers, instructional designers, and others. Not everyone teaches, but there's a lot of interest in creating experiential learning opportunities.

One theme at NASAGA is the use of improv comedy techniques to improve the way we create experiences. One of the tenets of improv is that you say, "Yes, and." In improv, you're trying to create a new thing out of nothing. The "Yes, and" rule has you validate the situation someone is offering, and then build upon it.

Another theme is the use of framegames that provide a pre-defined learning structure into which you plug your own content. For example, one team used the structure of the child's game Snakes & Ladders to provide a learning experience about coaching. When you landed on a square, you were given a coaching situation which you would play-act, and the other players would score it, determining whether you moved forward or backward.

I went to a couple sessions on using computers for simulations. People are using world editors like Unreal's to create an office environment rather than a dungeon. I don't think this has reached a usable level yet, but it's something to watch.

I came out with some new game ideas, though nothing particular to Java. The best quick lesson I got was in the importance of getting a game going quickly: don't spend a lot of time explaining rules in advance if you can avoid it. For example, enough people know how to play Snakes & Ladders that it's a waste of time to cover those mechanics. Instead, do "just-in-time" explanations of the parts that are unique.

The next NASAGA conference will be in Washington DC, in October, 2004.

--Bill

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