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[emsariel]

Some recent readings, because ... well, why not, really?  I feel like I might have blogged these already, but ... they're still cool.

• www.gelaskins.com/ - Pretty laptop/device covers.
• The Nerd Handbook! How to care for a nerd.  I'm sure that everyone else has seen this but me already. 
• HiveMedia on twitter keeps sending me to cool optical illusions,

Comments

[emsariel]

The Nerd Handbook article is neat. As with almost any of those articles, I think he generalizes in some ways that are frustrating. He says "nerd", but he means, specifically, computer/tech/hardware geeks. He says "nerd" but means anyone with the tendency to fixate on something, or with a disregard for other people's needs.

Fortunately, better than most of those articles (and I have seen a lot), he acknowledges that the clueless behavior isn't appropriate. He doesn't make (as many) excuses.

I'm interested in experience points not as a reward system, but as an assessment system, and in that regard, I'm not sureprised to see it any level above middle school. It could be done very simply (and badly from my view) -- as an extra credit system where levelling up gets you a simple, non-course-related reward. Used as an assessment system, as the article implies in some of its details, though, it's a much more nuanced system that can result in better pedagogy than the ABCDF system.

The default with ABCDF tends to be to set a rubric for performance; excellent performance gets you an A, expected performance a B or C, and real failure an F. An experience point system acknowledges that the learner is starting from 0 and building up to knowledge, rather than being a vessel that will probably get a C unless it really doesn't try. An experience point system can be more granular and direct by a rubric, as well.

There's also the potential, though it doesn't sound like they're doing this in the article, that a whole set of classes or subjects could work together to consider the relative levels of students. D&D and WoW have a singular experience system, and branching skill systems-- you only level up in what your character *is*, and you can't generally switch that. For this guy's singular class, that's a fine model.

But those skill trees in D&D and WoW offer another possibility. You might be a fighter, but you can have multiple ranks in social skills, and none in defensive combat skills, making you a leader/fighter rather than the stolid unshakeable defensive pillar in battle. Multiple classes could use what the teacher in the article has done to go to the next step, and to start to think about students as being Level 3 in Math, but only Level 1 in English so far.

That's probably much more than you meant to ask-- it's what I meant about "not the best, but the most obvious system". Really all I should say is that there's XP for rewards and XP for assessment, and they can work pretty differently.