Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Cheat This Book- Gadgets, Games & Gizmos
I'm barely in "Gen-X." I'm about 12 years too young to truly appreciate the Abbie Hoffman reference I just made. I'm about 12 years too old to be a real "gamer." Nonetheless, here I am in my 40's staying up late to write a book report on Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning by Karl Kapp. Sorry Mom.
I apologize to my mother, my beloved late-night term-paper typist, but NOT to you dear reader. This book is pretty good. I am going to apply a little gamer style that I learned from the book and mix it up with a little of my own Yuppie Yippie geezer pre-gamer culture jamming of my own. (Whew, too much social anthropology to parse there, no wonder one of the reviewers/contributors has a background in Anthropology.)
Learning Designer/Developer Cheating Tips for Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning: Tools and Techniques for Transferring Know-How from Boomers to Gamers
- Use the Corporate Card to buy it. It's expensive, but you'll come-off like a super-genius. Plus you'll want to share this book with co-workers and clients. Boomers will be able to throw down some gaming terms, and understand what makes gamers tick. Gamers will even gain some insight into Boomers.
Bonus tip: Independent consultant like me? Buy it anyway and "Stick it to the man." It's fun, even if you are "the man." - Read Chapter 1 first, and read it all. Well, duh. It's like doing the tutorial at the start of a game, you'll get further faster. This chapter has a lot of the background and research references that helped shape the book.
- Jump to Chapter 5, it's about cheats Why? 'Cause one man's cheats is another man's job-aid (or performance support tool). Besides this whole post is a cheat, right. Don't hate the playa, learn to game the gamers.
- Now skip to Chapter to Chapter 10, it's about the coin You're going to need budget or at least time to do some interesting games, get some gizmos, design networked social learning and generally do other cool stuff. Chapter 10 gets right to the new math of explaining that not just playing, but designing games is critical and worthwhile. You'll need to justify this stuff.
Bonus tip: Now go back and read the "Workplace Implications" from Chapters 2-4 and 6-8-- they'll have some good fodder for the Exec Summary of that budgeting proposal. - Refine and Polish Go back and skip around, read more in any order... don't be so linear dude. Refresh some basic ISD in Chapters 2-3 and re-orient it to games and gamers. Think about recruiting them in Chapter 9. Think about how you obtain, train and retain across the board for boomer and gamers alike.
Not exactly a book report, but hopefully an interesting stop on this virtual book tour. I like the book for the anecdotes, data and scenarios. Those are things that resonate with me and I find memorable, repeatable and applicable. Right there at the front (p. 16-17), Karl pulled together a nice chart of the attributes of the games and gamers across 4 "generations" of gamers from Gen I Pong and Odyssey to Gen 4.0 Halo, The Sims and GTA3. I'm starting to use bits from this table like a mini Meyers-Briggs assessment for quickly sizing up and adjusting to gamers. Check out the book on Amazon, or do a little more recon and learn more about it via the current virtual book tour that is underway.
Labels: blogs, gaming, learning, simulation, technology
Your recommended strategy for reading the book is a great approach, because the book is rather large (400 pages) I always tell folks, "you don't have to read it in one sitting." Breaking it and skipping around as you indicated is a good way to go...Another approach would be to form corporate "book clubs" and have different employees read different chapters and then get together over a brown bag lunch and discuss the issues within the chapter. A great way to get dialogue going about the issue of knowledge transfer across the generations.
This type of organizational discussion is really needed, just the other day someone told me their boss thinks games are a "fad." I think the boss is way off and has a dangerous attitude toward the future of learning (not all learning should be games but it shouldn't all be lecture either...different tools for different types of learning)
Thanks for being a "stop" on the blog book tour.
Would you recommend the same "cheats" for people in an academic environment as in a corporate one? I think the concept of cheats is perhaps even harder for people to grasp in an academic area than in a corporate one, so Chapter 5 is probably still critical. Is there anything you'd adjust in your recommendations?
Personally, I'd be interested in your take on Chapters 2-3, but there's plenty of book to go around.
You might try an early reading of Chapter 12, more of a wrap-up with some conclusions. It has illustrated examples and long bulleted lists of gamer strengths, boomer strengths and means to bridge their differences. It might spark some interesting thoughts as you read other Chapters.
And I didn't even mention the Chapter 7 with the provocative title, 'Replace Education with Automation.' Seems like THAT might be VERY interesting to those in an academic environment. My advice in old game syntax might be:
GO FORWARD.
LOOK AT CHAPTER.
GET IDEAS.
PUT BABELFISH IN EAR.
{oops that last one slipped-in from my foray into Infocom 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'game in '84}
WRITE BOOK TOUR POST.
Thanks Tom. I actually do tend to read books in order; I admit to being fairly linear at least in that respect. But if I end up short on time I may skip to the "juicy parts."
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