Note-taking for Principles of Empirical Research with Catherine Voulgarides
The Craft of Research by Wayne Booth, Gregory Colomb and Joseph Williams is a sober and traditional guide to humanities scholarship.
Introduction to Research on Games and Simulations
Note-taking for Research on Games and Simulations with Jan Plass
In this post I’m summarizing some writing about the foundations of research on games for learning. It’s a dry topic, so to enliven it I’ve included a bunch of screencaps from Mega Man 2. They have nothing to do with anything, but they look cool.
Plass, J.L., Homer, B.D., & Kinzer, C. (2015). Foundations of Game-based Learning. Special Issue on Game-based Learning, Educational Psychologist, 50(4), 258–283.
What is a game exactly? One definition: “a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome” (Salen & Zimmerman 2004, 80). Gamification is the grafting of points and stars onto existing tasks, like completing your boring homework. By contrast, game-based learning is more like Logical Journey of the Zoombinis – organically placing learning activities into a conflict structure to make them interesting and engaging.
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Affordances and Constraints
Note-taking for User Experience Design with June Ahn
Don Norman discusses affordances and constraints in The Design of Everyday Things, Chapter Four: Knowing What To Do.
User experience design is easy in situations where there’s only one thing that the user can possibly do. But as the possibilities multiply, so do the challenges. We can deal with new things using information from our prior experiences, or by being instructed. The best-designed things include the instructions for their own use, like video games whose first level act as tutorials, or doors with handles that communicate how you should operate them by their shape and placement.
Chance the Rapper’s verse on “Ultralight Beam”
One of my favorite guest verses in all of hip-hop is the one that Chance The Rapper does on Kanye West’s beautiful “Ultralight Beam.”
The song is built around an eight bar loop. (See this post for an analysis of the chord progression.) Chance’s verse goes through the loop five times, for a total of forty bars. It’s not at all typical for a rap song to include a one and a half minute guest verse–it’s almost enough material to make a whole separate song. By ceding so much space in his album opener, Kanye has given Chance the strongest endorsement possible, and Chance makes the most of his moment.
Continue reading “Chance the Rapper’s verse on “Ultralight Beam””
Freedom ’90
Since George Michael died, I’ve been enjoying all of his hits, but none of them more than this one. Listening to it now, it’s painfully obvious how much it’s about George Michael’s struggles with his sexual orientation. I wonder whether he was being deliberately coy in the lyrics, or if he just wasn’t yet fully in touch with his identity. Being gay in the eighties must have been a nightmare.
This is the funkiest song that George Michael ever wrote, which is saying something. Was he the funkiest white British guy in history? Quite possibly. Continue reading “Freedom ’90”
Careless Whisper
The infamous saxophone riff in “Careless Whisper” is one of the most infectious earworms in musical history. Love it or hate it, there is no getting it out of your head. In honor of the late George Michael, let’s take a look at what makes it work.
Cultural hegemony in music education
Music education in American colleges and universities focuses almost entirely on the traditions of Western European aristocrats during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, known conventionally as “common practice music.” This focus implies that upper-class European-descended musical tastes are a fundamental truth rather than a set of arbitrary and contingent preferences, and that white cultural dominance is normative. In this paper, I discuss theoretical notions of pedagogical authority as a form of power. I then examine a music textbook catalog from a prestigious academic press in order to gain insight into the hegemonic culture of classical music, as well as the emerging challenges to that culture.
American musical culture is a riotous blend of styles and genres. However, there is a unifying core to nearly all of our popular music, and much “art” music as well: the loop-centric, improvisational, dance-oriented traditions of the African diaspora. Mcclary (2000) argues that the “various trickles” of the past hundred years of American music collect into “a mighty river” following a channel cut by the blues (32). Yet it is possible to complete a music degree at most American universities without ever coming into contact with the blues, or anything related to it. The music academy’s near-exclusive focus on Western classical tradition places it strikingly at odds with the broader culture. We need to ask what might be the ideological motivation for perpetuating the divide.
Despite the Best Intentions
Note-taking for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg
The final reading for Learning of Culture is Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools by Amanda Lewis and John Diamond.
Design Process For Learning book review
Focus project for Design Process For Learning
For my focus project, I’m reviewing Clark Quinn’s 2014 book, Revolutionize Learning & Development: Performance and Innovation Strategy for the Information Age.
Making better citizens through dance
Public-facing note-taking for Philosophy of Music Education with David Elliott
This week, I’m taking a look at two chapters from a new book on the red-hot topic of artistic citizenship, the social responsibility of artists and arts educators.
