Crowbeak

It's a really fascinating week and I definitely urge you to watch the videos anyway, just in case you weren't planning to. That said, I have access to things again, so here's my answer for Assignment 2: I wanted to add more but ran out of space. QQ

It was fantastic! She's pretty smart, but if she doesn't want to try then she just doesn't.

What if they want to spoon feed you a delicious and healthy smoothie?

Congrats!

TL;DR Version I finally got a positive response from a student who hasn't been having much fun or getting much out of my classes this past year! Full Story I teach English in Japan as a JET Program participant. The JET Program doesn't require applicants to have any teaching experience or training; theoretically the ALTs are Assistant Language Teachers, so it shouldn't be a problem, but that's not always the case in a practical sense. This is especially true at elementary schools, where English education is required but the teachers aren't required to be able to speak English. They teach English as best they can with the help of (arguably) pretty well-developed materials, but the presence of an ALT gives them a huge break. In my case, I'm in a small town with a small number of schools and I am present for all the classes, so I'm the main teacher. I, however, am one of the JET ALTs who had no teaching experience or training before coming here, so I've been learning on the fly. I've gotten way better, but up until recently anything I tried was hit or miss. (It doesn't help that the previous ALT left me no indicators of what she taught the students, so I occasionally find myself trying to "teach" them something they know.) Some classes have gotten more misses than hits. One class that was a solid streak of misses all last year includes a student (let's call her Velma) who will just give up on trying to learn/do something if she decides it's too hard. Since I did so poorly with the class last year, she wasn't really into anything I'd done. Today, however, I actually had two classes with this group (the 4th graders), both of which went really well. First period was music, with which I helped because they're learning to play taiko. I've been doing taiko pretty much the whole time I've been here, so I can add a lot to what's in their textbook. The class went great, even though I was teaching them a difficult and showy kind of rhythm. Velma had a lot of trouble with it and was ready to do her "screw this" thing, but I worked with her and got her doing it. After class, the teacher told me that this was the first time she's said she enjoyed playing taiko. Win! And then during our regularly scheduled English class, I picked an awesomely fun blackboard game for practicing vocab. The class in general needs lots of repetition to gain confidence with the vocabulary, and this was a game that is nothing but vocab repetition but which everyone loves playing. I hadn't done it with the 4th graders before, but once they got the hang of it, they really got into it. xD And Velma was one of the kids most into it, yelling the words as loud as she could and fighting to make it across the blackboard to the goal. At one point, when it wasn't her turn, she came up behind me and patted me on the back and backside, which is a Japanese kid's way of showing adults affection, and then hung on to my arm for a second before getting back into the game. It may not sound like much, but that's really a huge sign that she's opened up to me in general. It's pretty much the best thing that's happened to me since Saturday, when a couple of my junior high school students came over to my house to hang out and play video games. (There's no pedophiliac teacher paranoia here! I can have students come over to my house and hang out, playing video games and chowing down on junk food. ) Anyway, it's been a great student interaction week in general. Yay!

That's so much insane the membrane frikkin' exploded. Color me impressed.

Congratulations!!! Maybe instead of "most interested in empowering" you could use something like "strives to empower". Or something. "...most interested in" just doesn't have punch to me.

You might also consider yoga (slash pilates). Yoga was developed by monks who wanted to be able to meditate without their bodies wasting away. It helps develop strength, joint health, and flexibility, and you can meditate while you do it. You do want to take deep breaths, but you can concentrate more on form and still get your meditate on.

Check out Convict Conditioning. It's a book on body weight exercise progressions, and one of the progressions is a handstand progression. The author actually has you start with a headstand, if I recall correctly, and work up from there.

I was so excited when I got that email. I can't wait to see what music classes they offer. I've been interested in studying up on music theory again to start trying to compose ditties in my spare time, and basic music theory and composition is about the best thing I can think of for the platform. xD With nutrition classes... I'd be worried about them spoon-feeding us the food pyramid. The only way to find out is to try it, though.

That's a pretty good entry for missing some of the videos leading up to it. xD I'm having trouble loading the assignment 2 stuff at the moment (thank goodness I already completed my assessments), so I can't currently speak to exactly what grade I would have given you but I think it would have been an 8 or a 10. It's better than most of the ones I did review. In terms of the assignment, I think you could improve by connecting extrinsic and intrinsic motivation to specific elements of the gamified system. I probably would also have docked you a point for not really addressing the gamified system as internal, since you just kinda restated things at the top and never mentioned it as an internal thing again. That said, your gamified system looks good to me. I see nothing to complain about in your proposed implementation. I like you you slipped in the body fat percentage thing. I had enough trouble fitting mine into 500 words that I couldn't have spared room for something like that.

Touche. I misread you. Being disappointed with the trend towards war based FPS games and thinking they suck are two different things, though. I just don't find them fun, but that doesn't make them bad games. I never said today's games suck. I think I'm not the only one misreading things, here.

Well, duh. What made you think I was trying to argue they've gotten worse? Well, yeah. But things I've read about the industry indicate that the publishers for the really big-budget games want a game to be good-but-not-risky, which means cloning and not trying new things. By contrast, if you look at some of the indie stuff that comes out, you get some very interesting games built around sometimes crazy gameplay ideas. Granted, not all of those would work in a big game, but I've definitely read stories about publishers nixing game developers' ideas or -- worse yet -- trying to get them to add things a game doesn't need just because it's a hot feature in some other game.

I would argue that the games have changed, but in a way that makes them more specialized. Borderlands is a first person shooter, but is entirely story-focused instead of being about PVP. The straight up PVP ones have tended to take a turn for the plain old war-based, which disappoints me, as well, because I enjoyed the frivolity of the original Unreal Tournament. However, part of the reason they do that is because it provides a framework for having team-based gameplay; another reason may be because many younger gamers won't play games unless they're trying to be photorealistic, and the context of war provides a good outlet for that. There are still games like Quake Live, though, which do the free for all fragfest thing. Game developers are constantly trying to switch things up, to mix game elements in new ways, and because of that the landscape is always changing. In conflice with that, as development costs rise (and they are rising quickly for the graphics heavy games), developers rely on outside sources for funding, and those outside sources care about making a profit over anything else. So I would say that yes, FPS games have definitely changed over time. But they always have been. The first FPS game I played with a deep story was Strife, and no one even remembers that game anymore. The questions about what you consider good, however, still stand. There are so many flavors of FPS that you really need to decide what you like about FPS games and look for games with those qualities.

I, too, have signed up for this. I've only watched the first few videos, but it looks like it's going to be great. In the professor's office, I can see Reality is Broken by Jane McGonagal as well as a couple of other books I have heard of but haven't read yet. He points out that the course is tailored towards the theory behind it and business/behavior applications, not to game design. I didn't expect it to be about game design myself, but I'm already familiar with the concept.

I was looking around the Couchsurfing web site, since I joined the site recently but haven't had a chance to do much with it because I was organizing a summer camp. I discovered that Couch Surfing is hiring more programmers, and it looks like their benefits are pretty frikkin' sweet. They offer a month of internet telecommuting and travel expenses to go couchsurfing yourself. This looks like a great company to work for. They're looking for an iPhone/Android programmer and an "Operations Engineer", whatever that means. Another programming position, but I'm not sure what exactly it entails. Like to their hiring page is here: http://www.couchsurfing.org/jobs Edit: Trying to think of a way to prove I'm not a spammer who hacked my account (though really, couchsurfing is too awesome to spam like that, I think). Maybe I can mention that I met some of the most amazing kids these past few days at camp? One of them is a 17 year old Japanese young man whose goal is to be a CEO, and to achieve that end he plans to go to college in California. His English is already so good that he can have conversations about literacy and false information distributed through the media entirely in English. Complicated conversations. He was asking us for advice about writing a 5-paragraph essay (which he did not learn in his Japanese classes) on the topic. Also, the game I've played most often recently is League of Legends.

I have a serious problem with making it all the way through a challenge without falling off the bandwagon. I think my real problem is that I am not consistent in reporting things. Fitocracy makes it so easy to just track your workout, so I've been doing a pretty good job of that (except last week, dealing with a cold). Japanese studying though? Next challenge, proper tracking will be my life goal.

I came down with a cold. Been down and out the last few days. Feeling better today, but it's not even lunch time, so we'll see how I feel when I get home.

How many reps and sets you want to do really depends on what your goal is. For endurance, you want to do low weight at high reps, and for strength you want to lift heavy and do low reps. That's why a lot of us do 3x5 or 5x5... we're trying to up our weight numbers. xD

I've updated my blog with info on the last three days. http://nerdfitness.com/community/entry.php?6086-March-Stages-3-4-through-3-6 This week has been total fail mode in studying for the JLPT every day, but it's been an interesting week and I've had lots of opportunities to use Japanese in ways I don't usually need... so I feel like the lack of workbook-based study has been balanced out. I didn't get a workout in yesterday, but I plan to work on deadlifts and barbell rows sometime later today. I'll do planks and push-ups then, too.

I'm not truly inactive. I got tired of checking for a squads thread and missed it. Though for the past several days I've been lax on posting updates to my blog. >_> So, about me. 27, female (don't let the Beard Head fool you), and interested in bench pressing bears. I am, however, lazy, and am just reposting my goals as stated in my blog. This is my first challenge this year, so I'm starting with my goals for the end of the year. Goals for the End of the World. Er, the End of 2012 Non-Fitness goal: Obtain Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) N2 certification. I have two chances, July and December. It wil require studying grammar, kanji, and vocabulary. There are reading comprehension and listening sections, too, but I don't have problems with those if I know the grammar, kanji (for reading), and vocabulary I'm working with. Fitness goals: - Fit into that NF T-shirt shirt I bought when they came out. I bought it too small on purpose. Then stuff happened and I maintained size instead of dropping fat. YAR! - Eat Paleo all the time, unless it would be rude to do otherwise. The Japanese don't understand the concept of a restricted diet for anything but allergies, and it's too late to tell them I'm allergic to grains... so I'm subject to customs that mean eating sweets and grain products sometimes. - Be able to do push ups. Off the floor. With straight knees. Goals for This Challenge Which blings me to the goals for this challenge! - Study 2 pages of my spiffy JLPT N2 vocab study book every day. The thing is designed to be used that way, even. How convenient! Exercise at least three times a week. I have weights nao. I are be using them. - No ice cream! I've let myself fall into the habit of eating lots of it. - Make sure to work on strengthening push uppity muscles in every work out. Combination of whatever easified push ups I can do and bench pressing.

I love Sapporo! I live in Nakagawa, which is about an hour south of Wakkanai. When I need to go to a big city, Sapporo is the place. I've loved it since I was on exchange in Kushiro, though it's even better now that I have spending money. xDI've been happy with the doctor's advice so far. He seems to know what he's doing. I've got two days off next month because I went on a business trip over the weekend this month, and I'm going to use on of those to go see him. Best of luck to you. Let us know when you've got your certifications and everything so we can start going to you. xD