I had a number of ideas about how we might be able to develop an interface to help them, as did my fellow teaching assistant Scott Tsuchiyama. We approached Dr. Fishman with a plan to develop a tool to do  just that, and spent all of last fall discussing how we would go about building this interface. In January I dove into learning Ruby on Rails, and by mid-February we had the first version of our grade visualizer and predictor tool up and running for the class.

At launch, students could login to their dashboard, see feedback, badges earned, and their total points for each assignment. They could also get a sense for how far through the class they were, and what else they needed to do to earn the grade they wanted.

But the visualizer itself wasn’t enough – it is primarily a feedback system, not a way for students to interact with and plan their course involvement. So we built a grade predictor tool that would take into account the grades a student had already earned, and help them determine where else in the course they could earn points to achieve the grade they wanted.

We broke the assignments down into the categories defined in the syllabus (Attendance, Reading Reactions, Boss Battles, Learning from Playing a Game, and Team Points), allowed students to mark which classes they would attend, which reading reactions they would do, and what grade they planned to earn on larger projects. They could feel the effect that earning an extra grade higher on their paper would have on their final course grade. They could realize that they had missed more points on their poster presentation than expected, and decide to do extra blog posts to make up for it. They could decide to fight harder to earn the 100,000 points awarded to the winning team. They could take control.

We also allowed students to revise almost every assignment in order to learn more from the exercise, and improve their grade. But there were exceptions – there is no way to make up attendance points (you are there, or you are not – no excuses!), and reading reactions had a fixed weekly deadline. I love the parallels that assignment revision has to gameplay – if someone is willing to take the time to ‘play’ something repeatedly, to learn it backwards and forwards, to go beyond where they might have even imagined themselves to end up at the beginning of their adventure, I find that remarkable. Gamers do this constantly, and it is a technique I really want to see applied to education.

We made it through the semester with only a few glitches. The feedback we are getting is really exciting – the interface made the grading scheme much clearer, and appears to have had a positive effect on motivation. In addition to the many features we planned to add from the beginning, we now have feedback from students regarding what worked and what did not. For instance, we know that our implementation of badges was superficial and we are trying to figure out how we can make them more meaningful. My gut instinct is that badges are only going to be worthwhile if you really have to earn them — if they represent something very specific, and it is clear that earning that marker is a sign of skill and excellence. How are we going to create that framework? We have a lot of brainstorming ahead!

The first big thing to tackle on the development side is abstracting our system so that any course can use it. To do this, we are looking at a variety of other courses to see how their assignments are structured and graded. After that we will be building a learning analytics tool that will allow instructors to see and interact with their course’s data. And then, I want to start considering the opportunities for nudges – how can we better recognize students in different situations (falling behind? not challenged enough? missing out on a particular element?) and provide tailored support to each and every one? It’s going to be a busy summer!

We don’t learn very well in a vacuum. I’ve done the first part – the podcasts are all there, subscribed to, ready to be absorbed. I just never seem to get around to it. Why? As with every exercise program, every diet change, every thing I want to learn independently, every musical instrument I’ve declared I’m going to learn, it’s hard to do something without support. It’s hard to devote the time without a social structure (“CLASS from 2PM to 4PM”) that protects that activity. If I can move an activity around in my schedule easily, then it becomes very easy to nix it altogether – I’ll do it tomorrow! Or the day after that! No big deal. And then suddenly, having started with the best of intentions, I’m not doing it at all. The rigidity of formal learning schedules is really, really important.

The other crucial element is people, people who expect you to be somewhere, who are working on the same task as you, who can sympathize when you hit a difficult problem or a stubborn plateau, who can really enjoy the great moments with you because they’re aiming for the same high point. A friend telling me that he runs about the same amount that I do and really respected the work I was doing meant so much more to me than another friend who runs marathons telling me I did a good job. Why? Because I felt like the first friend was truly a peer and he understood how difficult it was. I find the things on my to do list that involve other people to be the highest items on my list – I’m doing them for someone, I’m responsible for something, I have a job.

Independent learning is important, and we need to figure out how to motivate people to do it more and to do it better. I personally am really excited to build remote learning technology that will do exactly that, not because I want to replace the classroom and the teacher, but because I’m all too aware of situations where we don’t have enough good teachers to populate those classrooms. This is the driving need behind remote learning – giving people who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity (financially, physically, emotionally, and even time-wise) the access to these resources. This is what I’m excited about. The teacher and the classroom are here to stay for a very long time, but let’s see what we can do to help share the excitement we discover in the best classrooms with a much larger audience, shall we?

Starting at the beginning of graduate school I noticed an interesting habit in myself – I didn’t have time to procrastinate, but that didn’t mean I didn’t do it. I just did it a little more creatively! That is, I became a productive procrastinator – whatever assignment or project I was most intimidated by got delayed, but absolutely everything else on my plate got done. Once I made myself sit down and begin the Big Scary Assignment, I loved it, and I always wished I had more time to complete it in exactly the perfectionist manner that I wanted. Which I could have done – if I’d started it early enough. The Starting is such an issue – I circle around a project for so long, doing bits of research, discovering different avenues of approach, all of which is very, very helpful, but could be done in a much more condensed manner if only I would Start.

Then, the second issue – The Staying. Once in the middle of a project, particularly if it’s one that draws out over time, involves group work, or involves sub-projects that offer the same issues Starting as the larger project, it becomes incredibly difficult to Stay On Task. Facebook! Twitter! Every feed I’ve ever subscribed to in Google Reader! A desperate need to clean up my iTunes library just so. All of these and more are calling my name and must be addressed immediately. I catch myself, I return to the original task, and twenty minutes late I find myself distracted by New York Times editorials which are mostly related to what I’m working on, but the article that I read from there is increasingly less so. Single-focus. Pulling myself away from the distractions to return to the work that I really do want to be doing.

Much is getting written/said/researched about the value of single-focus vs. multi-tasking. Regardless of it’s effects on the brain, or it’s efficiency, on a personal level I’m going to declare I simply find multi-tasking infinitely less satisfying. I may have gotten many things done in this manner, but I feel like I’ve achieved very little, and that feeling of accomplishment is part of what I think leads to Starting being a tiny bit easier. So I’m single-tasking, and I’m working hard at it. I’ve quit all my favorite news sites and social media between the hours of midnight and 6PM. I’m reducing the number of things that can distract me, and the Starting and the Staying are both easier. The Starting is especially difficult for me – I need more techniques to get me involved in a project early so that I can put in the type of work I really want to.

Months ago, Noah and realized we both has a love of musical theater and joked that we ought to write a musical about the — or at least a pop song! The joke become a dare, and the dare has become a reality. OMG He Friended Me will hopefully be premiering at the SI Revue this year.

I started voice lessons last week, and I am so incredibly excited about them. I’ve been writing songs for years, and its really fun to think about finally getting to actually share them with friends.

I got an electric ukulele for Christmas, and am challenging myself to really focus on learning to play that and the guitar this year. I mean to, I say I will, but it always gets put on the back-burner. No more. Just the hour spent singing last week made me so happy, music needs to be a regular part of my day. Ambitious, you say? I hope so. It’s the only way to get anywhere at all ;)

I wish you a learning-filled, pleasantly frustrated 2011.

Saveur’s Paella was an amazing way to celebrate Dad’s birthday. Garth and I did all the prep about an hour before Mom, Dad, and Beth got home from the airport. The recipe itself was stellar – the flavors are amazing, and the cooking is easy. Garth suggested infusing the oil with the spices from the beginning – the result was amazing. Two things I would do differently: the Paella pan was great but needed to be a couple of inches deeper, and we increased the recipe by about a third – next time I’d decrease it by the same amount because we had waaaaaay too much food!

My room – an old haven, but now under someone else’s art direction. My belongings (my home?) are in another state. This is just a room to sleep in. And make a mess of, because life out of a suitcase means belongings scattered across the room.

The return is chock-full of encounters with things I hadn’t thought about, and am now finding myself sharply, retroactively, missing. I miss not having missed them. I miss that I didn’t think about them, and they are everyday steps here. The insignificant things that become big parts of your day when you do them every single day for three years, but when absent are truly gone – and not remembered.

First full day home, and a mid-morning drive to Pica brought the thought that I hadn’t thought about how to get there in a year. The streets in the midcoast area easy, the route almost a straight shot but I hadn’t considered it even once in the last year. And perhaps more surprising than that was the realizing that I could still drive it on autopilot, my hands making the turns faster than my brain could recall. Muscle memory is so comforting in daily processes, but absolutely startling when it takes over in what are now uncommon activities.

Small things laced with surprise: knowing the faces of every checkout clerk at the Co-op; Chase’s serving the same tomato-gruyere tarts as always; chocolate-chunk cherry cookies that taste exactly the same; automatically veering around the (still there) pothole that shakes my (very little) car on the road home; the comfort of being right back in a creative concept development meeting, discussing ideas and debating merits. The feeling of being around these amazing, creative, brilliant people sinks into my heart – muscle memory of a different kind.

I love this place. It’s not home. It probably won’t be again. But I love it all the same.

I fell in love with her work on Etsy, without knowing a single thing about her. I saw the porcupine first. I’ve been tracking her website and her personal (animal) work for over two years at this point, and catching this piece on Etsy definitely made my night.

All of those things are skills, and practicing when you’re a kid makes them second nature later on. I missed out on that, and I’ve been aware especially aware of it recently because I live with Emilie and Angelina who are both amazing at such things (well, they practiced!). So last night, as Emilie went to curl her hair before going out, I said that at some point, I needed to get someone to teach me how to do that. She said to come on down and watch, so I grabbed my camera (and our respective glasses of wine), and did exactly that.

Emilie started the process, and I began to photograph. Emilie’s pretty used to me photographing her, but I haven’t been shooting in a while, so it took both of us a while to get back into the pattern of ignoring-but-paying-attention that produces the best images. At one point, clips sectioning out her hair, curler in action, arms up above her head trying to manage it all, she saw the camera, became aware of her position, and said, “You are lucky I trust you this much.”

And I thought – yeah, yeah I am. I am so incredibly lucky you trust me this much, and that is exactly the kind of relationship I want with the people I photograph. I want them to always know that it’s important to me that they like the photographs I create of them. Photographs are my way of sharing with people what I see, and what I love, in them. Her trusting me, her knowing that I will create and share images that she will be pleased with – that’s such an honor, and something I never want to lose sight of. Building those relationships is something I work at, something I practice, and I literally get chills when product is something other people find value in. So it may take a little longer to figure out how to curl my hair, but I did grow up practicing something–and I’m awfully glad I did.