Following on from my previous blog post about language learning, I want to mention lingt. This is a site for learning vocabulary, specifically at the moment Chinese vocabulary although I believeI remember reading that they are planning to expand to other languages.

I'm very much liking the site at the moment. I know it's not very sexy to talk about things like rote learning but for me earning vocabulary was the part I found difficult when I was studying Chinese, and I really wish this site had existed then. I'm doing a five minute stint on the site over breakfast in the mornings and seem to be keeping it up. It doesn't tell me how many days I have logged on in total, but I managed 13 consecutive days in one stretch at one point. I am also level 8 whatever that means. It's interesting because it very much addresses the long-term nature of learning rather than just the short-term, figuring out when you are most likely to have forgotten a word in order to test you on it again. I have never properly looked at the Supermemo software but I'd be curious how much they have in common.

I am of course a games player and have to admit that the aspects of the site that attempt to be game-like don't really work for. It's certainly really interesting to think about how one might improve that part of the site. If you were going to make a site like this into a game, how would you do it?

Nonetheless the actual testing has been executed very well avoiding the classic pitfalls I talked about in my previous blog post, and I think it's one of the most interesting learning-related sites that I have seen in maybe the last year.



I have been reading The Fat Duck Cookbook. It's not really a recipe book: there's obviously no way you are ever going to attempt any of the recipes within given in meticulous detail that you can't help appreciating even though you are never going to make them.  However instead, it's totally absorbing and inspiring. As an extra bonus, it's illustrated by the wonderful Dave McKean.

At points during reading it, I couldn't help hearing echoes of lots of the debates on technology in teaching. At the end of the first section Heston Blumenthal includes his Statement on the 'New Cookery'. Here is part of it:

We embrace innovation - new ingredients, techniques, appliances, information, and ideas - whenever it can make a real contribution to our cooking.

We do not pursue novelty for its own sake. We may use modern thickeners, sugar substitutes, enzymes, liquid nitrogen, sous-vide, dehydration, and other nontraditional means, but these do not define our cooking. They are a few of the many tools that we are fortunate to have available as we strive to make delicious and stimulating dishes.

Similarly, the disciplines of food chemistry and food technology are valuable sources of information and ideas for all cooks. Even the most straightforward traditional preparation can be strengthened by an understanding of its ingredients and methods, and chemists have been helping cooks for hundreds of years. The fashionable term "molecular gastronomy" was introduced relatively recently, in 1992, to name a particular academic workshop for scientists and chefs on the basic food chemistry of traditional dishes. That workshop did not influence our approach, and the term "molecular gastronomy" does not describe our cooking, or indeed any style of cooking.

You can read the full statement here.

To wrap up the year, here are some recommendations of books that I'd read in 2009.

First of all, I really loved The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell. As well as being a super summary about what is known about game design, I think almost every chapter either taught me something knew or made me look at something in a new way. It's a very readable book and there's a lot in there that applies to the design of learning experiences. I also enjoyed Challenges for game designers by Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber at least as far through as I got! It consists of a series of exercises in game design and is a very different book from The Art of Game Design, complementing it very nicely. Somebody should write a similiar book for photography if they haven't already. The other game-related book I read this year was This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities by Jim Rossignol an intelligent and autobiographical look at video games. You can't go far wrong with a book that ends with a playlist of games you should play if you want to learn more about games.

A book that I urge anybody interested in education at any level to read is The Big Picture: Education is Everyone's Business by Dennis Littky. It talks about the principle behind 'The Big Picture' schools which are run in what I think is a unique way. Instead of being subject-based, their 'curriculum' resolves around the five learning goals of empirical reasoning, quantitative reasoning, communication, social reasoning and personal qualities. Once you've read about personalisation in their context, half the references you see to personalisation in the education world will appear feeble and missing the point. Inspiring stuff.

Another book that I'm really glad that I bought was A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander. I've dipped in and out of it rather than reading it straight through and it's surpisingly fascinating, more so than I expected it to be after having read a few of the patterns on the web. His ideas on archictecture are often radical and always holistic. To give you an idea of his outlook, he quotes Ivan Illich is his section on education. There is something rather beautiful about his writing and I love the way he backs up lots of his ideas with data. He is very interested in the optimal sizes for things and optimal distances and patterns. It's allowed me too to pinpoint exactly is wrong with the development plans for the town where I live, rather than having to just say that they feel wrong. 

Clueless in Academe by Gerald Graff is a book that I'm glad has been written and ought to be wider known. It's an 'attempt to look at academia from the perspective of those who don't get it', and as such is an astute analysis of academia and the academic approach and includes some advice for teachers.

I have already written about My Freshman Year on this blog. In my head I associate that book with This Book is Not Required by Inge Bell and Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom because I borrowed them all from the library on the same day without having planned to do so. This Book is Not Required is a slightly odd book for me to read because it is aimed at students and large parts felt irrelevant to me - I'm happily married and I certainly don't have trouble with my parents! However it a guide to student life unlike no other and it's about a whole approach to the world as much as just studying. The part on craftmanship particularly resonated with me. Its philosophy is fairly similar to that of Tuesday with Morrie so they made a good pair to read one after another.

Another trio of books that fit nicely together are Mindset by Carol Dweck, A Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor and Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn. Ignore the horrible 'self-help' covers of the first and last of these - they are 'popular' books so you have to brace yourself for that (there were one or two places where Kohn's book made me want to scream!), but have got lots of references to research in them rather than being just mumbo-jumbo. I think there's important stuff in all of these that hasn't really made it to the mainstream education world yet. Chances are you'll learn more by reading these than a dozen academic papers about education and the neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor's story of recovering from a stroke is definitely worth reading - you can watch her TED talk if you want a taster.

Of the fiction I read this year, my favourites were House of the Suns by Alastair Reynolds, A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson and Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman.  I think I like novels that are cleverly constructed, somewhat like a puzzle. I also read Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers which was longer and more detailed than I really needed but really interesting nonetheless in terms of the structure of stories. I wish they'd taught us about that sort of thing in English Literature at school.

I wanted to include some tech books, but looking down the list those that I've read, I'm sure anybody who wants books about Python can find them for themselves, which is mostly what I've been reading. I need to branch out a bit more in my tech reading next year - suggestions welcome!

What motivates you to exercise? I think this is an interesting question because there's lots in common with this and motivation in relation to learning. In lots of ways, it's easier to investigate and analyse than the motivation of learning. There's less of the philosophical baggage for a start. It's very difficult to know if somebody else has truly learned something or not, whereas you are in less murky waters when it comes to physical behaviour. As well as that, it's accepted that exercise may be worth doing even if it isn't enjoyable, whereas the waters get muddied much more in that respect with learning.

I've been trying to compile a list of techniques that I've spotted. Here are the ones that I've noticed. Any that I've missed?

1) Really really care

I guess this is just deciding that exercise is top priority or near top priority in your life. If you can make yourself care enough, then you'll forego other enjoyable things to exercise.

2) Really really care about something which requires you to be fit

If you decide that you really care that, say, you want to be a fantastic tennis player, you'll probaby be motivated enough to exercise to be fit enough to achieve that and forego other things in that aim.

3) Find a way to make exercise enjoyable

People will have personal preferences for some forms of exercise over others. I only discovered relatively recently that I actually really enjoy swimming, something of a surprise to me given that I hated it when I was younger. Other people enjoy being outside. For a lot of people making exercise social is a very important way of making it enjoyable. However, not everybody is extrovert of course, something also often forgotten when discussing social dimensions of learning. 

4) Make exercise into a game

It's quite interesting to read the Amazon reviews for the Wii Fit - it really works for some people and not for others. I'm a definite fan myself, even though it's hard a perfect game. This is also the technique used by WeightWatchers and #GameDevDiet. See also the Gamification of Bookification, Chore Wars and SuperBetter.

5) Trick yourself into making it a habit

I guess this is a case of figuring out a way to maximise the chances that exercise could possibly become a habit, probably by fitting it around other habits, and then generating the will power to manage the three weeks you are supposed to keep something up for to generate the momentum for it to become a permanent habit. 

6) Find a way to cause yourself pain if you don't exercise

This might be letting down a sports team, having to admit to your friends who sponsored you that you didn't complete what you aimed to, causing yourself financial pain when you see your gym membership wasted or similiar. Looking at the educational parallel of this, I think one of the chief reasons people sign up for formal education courses is this one, and I don't think it should be underestimated. There's an article about such commitment devices in business here that's a quick read.

I have had a Flickr account for nearly four years, but it has only been the last month that I feel that I have begun to get a real feel for the site beyond basic sharing and tagging photographs. Flickr is one of the archetypal examples of a site based around social objects and I have probably used it as an example dozens of times. Nonetheless, it's come as somewhat of a surprise to me how little I actually knew about the site before and no doubt I still have lots to learn about the ecosystem of photographers that it supports.

The catalyst for this has been a short course in digital photography that I am currently taking. Despite having always had an above-average interest in photography, this course has been the first time I've actually made any sort of concerted effort to try to become better at taking photographs. I have come to realise quite how divided the world is into people who are obsessed by photography and people who are not and I have a feeling that I am much nearer the first category than I was before.

I have discovered that the main activity on Flickr, at least amongst people who use it as more than just somewhere to dump their photos, seems to be indicating which photographs you like. This is something that you can do either through comments or favourites, both of which contribute in some way to the 'interestingness' of a photograph, although exactly how Flickr determines this score for a photograph is secret. The badge of honour for a photograph is getting selected for the 'Explore' section of Flickr, something based at least in a large part on the interestingness of the photo. It is common for good photographers to have sets of their photos that have achieved this accolade.

The other activity seems to revolve around groups. Each group has a pool of photographs and a primitive discussion forum. There seem to be two main types of group.

The first type is that based on something like a photographic subject, type of camera, a type of photography or a particular demographic such as geography. Most of these groups seem to be mostly ways of collating photographing particular types of photograph and as a way for people to get a larger audience for their photographs. On the whole, these groups don't tend to have that much discussion in the forums for the groups, although I am sure there are exceptions. The geographical groups tend to organise meet-ups.

The other type of group is those based around contests or games. For example, you might have to pick your favourite photo from the stream of the person who commented before you, or post a photo of something beginning with the next letter of the alphabet. There are also lots of contests where people submit photos on a specified theme which usually changes each week or month and then everyone votes on their favourite photo submitted. In fact, such contests seem so common that I'm surprised that Flickr hasn't put in more support for them.

Much of the activity on the site seems very hidden beneath the surface. There appear to be only really two ways to find groups - either via a search or you see a photo that belongs to the pool for that group, so it's slightly haphazard what groups you manage to come across. As a result, I'm not quite sure to what extent 'community' exists on the site as I'm not sure quite where to look. I suspect it does, but it's hard for a new person to find. I also suspect there are ways I can use the site to help improve my photography beyond just taking photographs and looking at other people's, but I don't quite know yet what they are.

I am also still a little bit unsure about etiquette on the site - most groups are quite good at telling you what the rules for the group are e.g. how many photos it is ok to add to the group pool and what their criteria are for photographs. However, I still don't know for example whether adding somebody as a contact is like following somebody on twitter or whether it's more akin to adding them as a friend on Facebook.

I'm very aware that me trying to write about Flickr is probably like somebody writing about World of Warcraft having only played it for a month. If you are familiar with Flickr, I'd be interested to know how accurate my perceptions are so far? Any recommendations for groups that I should know about are also very welcome.