I've just finished listening to Debrayh and Mary's wonderful conversation about the Flow book. One of the things they mentioned early in the conversation was about families and flow. They didn't go into this point in detail, but the passing comment reminded me of another conversation I heard on Charlie Rose earlier this year.
On June 16, 2008 Charlie Rose conducted an interview with three Emanuels: Ezekiel, Ari, and Rahm. The last brother should be familiar to you as Rahm has just accepted the position of Chief of Staff within Barack Obama's cabinet. Rahm is currently a congressman from the Chicago area. (By the way, he's a great selection for Chief of Staff: intelligent, straightforward, committed.) It turns out that all three of the Emanuel brothers have been very successful in life, but have all ended up doing very different things. The conversation covers several topics, but the most central and interesting is the discussion about how the family dynamics worked when they were growing up. In turn this conversation provides some important insights into how parents can create a flow structure within the household.
I'm providing the link to the Charlie Rose video of this conversation. It's 25 minutes long and is optional viewing. Some of you may find it very useful.
Showing posts with label 6 flow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 6 flow. Show all posts
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Monday, November 3, 2008
getting writey, getting motivated
Steven Colbert isn't the only one who can make up words! Writey is when you get into that smooth flow of writing and brainstorming: at that point you feel writey instead of blocky. Okay, work with me on this.
Seriously, the writing retreat I just went on was wonderful. Fourteen faculty from the School of Education and Nursing staying up in a retreat area on the north coast. It was beautiful, even with the rain. More importantly it was inspiring to be with a group of people who were all working on refining their research writing, or on developing new research projects.
The new study I brainstormed and fleshed out combines audiobooks, cognitive load (extraneous, intrinsic, and germane), and statistics (standard deviation) to create an experimental design for testing out an emerging theory of audiobook learning packages that Dr. Prion and I have been working on. So between the great colleagues, the scenery, the deer, and the seagulls, the design of the new study took shape. A visual hint of what it aims at is provided below. For those of you whose hearts flutter at the sight of a 2x2 ANOVA, you'll especially appreciate the design.
Images and flippancy aside, being able to have quality time to work on a central aspect of your job (writing) is a great gift. Of course, it wasn't just time: it was also the ideas and camaraderie of colleagues.
This semester we started this course with the theory of self-determination. The theory posited that there are three essential needs: competence, autonomy, and relatedness. All three were met in spades at this retreat. Faculty certainly need to find ways to better motivate student learning. But institutions also need to find ways to support and enhance the intrinsic motivation of their educators. In this way institutions can renew the natural enthusiasm and commitment for education that their faculty always had, but sometimes gets lost, in the ebb and flow of managing our daily lives.
Seriously, the writing retreat I just went on was wonderful. Fourteen faculty from the School of Education and Nursing staying up in a retreat area on the north coast. It was beautiful, even with the rain. More importantly it was inspiring to be with a group of people who were all working on refining their research writing, or on developing new research projects.
The new study I brainstormed and fleshed out combines audiobooks, cognitive load (extraneous, intrinsic, and germane), and statistics (standard deviation) to create an experimental design for testing out an emerging theory of audiobook learning packages that Dr. Prion and I have been working on. So between the great colleagues, the scenery, the deer, and the seagulls, the design of the new study took shape. A visual hint of what it aims at is provided below. For those of you whose hearts flutter at the sight of a 2x2 ANOVA, you'll especially appreciate the design.
Images and flippancy aside, being able to have quality time to work on a central aspect of your job (writing) is a great gift. Of course, it wasn't just time: it was also the ideas and camaraderie of colleagues.
This semester we started this course with the theory of self-determination. The theory posited that there are three essential needs: competence, autonomy, and relatedness. All three were met in spades at this retreat. Faculty certainly need to find ways to better motivate student learning. But institutions also need to find ways to support and enhance the intrinsic motivation of their educators. In this way institutions can renew the natural enthusiasm and commitment for education that their faculty always had, but sometimes gets lost, in the ebb and flow of managing our daily lives.
Monday, October 27, 2008
shigeru miyamoto
Serendipity or cause and effect? Any way you look at it, today's San Francisco Chronicle features an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto. As stated in the article:
The interview is interesting, and provides some additional information on the evolving nature of gaming, links to flow, and potential (down the line) impacts for education.
Shigeru Miyamoto, 55, has often been described as the Walt Disney of video games. Formerly Nintendo's first staff artist, now its senior managing director, Miyamoto has been responsible for some of the most beloved games in history, including Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros. and the Legend of Zelda series.
More recently, he has helped return Nintendo to the top through the development of the best-selling Nintendo DS and Wii systems, which have outsold their competition, redefined the industry and ushered in a new era of gaming. His latest act was creating a wave of casual and family games like Wii Sports, Wii Fit and his latest title, Wii Music, all of which encourage people to use their whole bodies to play.
The interview is interesting, and provides some additional information on the evolving nature of gaming, links to flow, and potential (down the line) impacts for education.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
flow class updates
I have posted two additional items to the Flow page within the Learn section. Here's what I've posted:
- Alicia & Gwen's multimedia presentation on flow (plus a PDF providing references)
- A video of the presentation by Csikszentmihalyi himself at the TED Conference given in 2004.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
article switcheroo
Last evening I learned a couple of critical things about some upcoming visiting scholars that changes our reading assignments slightly.
Change 1
The visiting scholar for the Flow Group blog will be using the article currently listed in the Session 6 learning materials. The article is Rathunde, K. & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2005). Don't read this article for our next class, but you will be reading it at a later date.
Change 2
The visiting scholar for the Effort Group blog is Bernard Weiner. Unfortunately Dr. Weiner can't answer all of your questions (he'll tackle 6 questions only). To make the discussion work with him in a timely manner it's necessary that you read Dr. Weiner's article for the Effort Group by October 24th. I'll be creating a page where you can post questions based on your reading of the article. After Oct 24th, the blog group will then select six of the questions to forward to Dr. Weiner. You can download the article at the Effort Group's blog page.
Change 1
The visiting scholar for the Flow Group blog will be using the article currently listed in the Session 6 learning materials. The article is Rathunde, K. & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2005). Don't read this article for our next class, but you will be reading it at a later date.
Change 2
The visiting scholar for the Effort Group blog is Bernard Weiner. Unfortunately Dr. Weiner can't answer all of your questions (he'll tackle 6 questions only). To make the discussion work with him in a timely manner it's necessary that you read Dr. Weiner's article for the Effort Group by October 24th. I'll be creating a page where you can post questions based on your reading of the article. After Oct 24th, the blog group will then select six of the questions to forward to Dr. Weiner. You can download the article at the Effort Group's blog page.
Monday, September 22, 2008
session 6 through 9 materials posted
All the learning materials for all of the rest of the course sessions have been posted this morning. I'm providing these materials early to help some of you organize your time more efficiently in terms of listening to the audio files and reading the articles. On this first day of autumn you now have access to all of the basic preparation materials for all the class sessions.
Sessions 6 through 9 represent the second half of the course. In this portion of the course, you (the students collectively) will be producing most of the learning experiences we have in terms of book conversations and blog posts. Thus, the quantity of materials I'm giving you for these last 4 sessions are relatively lighter compared to the first 5 sessions.
For Flow in Session 6 you'll have an audiobook and one article to read. For Goals in Session 7 you only have an audiobook to listen to (though it is pretty long). For Anxiety and The Self in Sessions 8 and 9 you'll only have two articles to read for each session.
My biggest caveat is that if you use any of these materials way before the actual live class meets, then make sure to jot down notes and questions. You already know what the structure of the Knowledge Digs will look like. If you read/listen ahead, you'll still need to contribute to these knowledge dig discussions when they are posted. So taking notes, or storing key questions/comments you have somewhere, will help you to participate fully in the knowledge dig discussions.
Sessions 6 through 9 represent the second half of the course. In this portion of the course, you (the students collectively) will be producing most of the learning experiences we have in terms of book conversations and blog posts. Thus, the quantity of materials I'm giving you for these last 4 sessions are relatively lighter compared to the first 5 sessions.
For Flow in Session 6 you'll have an audiobook and one article to read. For Goals in Session 7 you only have an audiobook to listen to (though it is pretty long). For Anxiety and The Self in Sessions 8 and 9 you'll only have two articles to read for each session.
My biggest caveat is that if you use any of these materials way before the actual live class meets, then make sure to jot down notes and questions. You already know what the structure of the Knowledge Digs will look like. If you read/listen ahead, you'll still need to contribute to these knowledge dig discussions when they are posted. So taking notes, or storing key questions/comments you have somewhere, will help you to participate fully in the knowledge dig discussions.
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