squareONE explorations
resources, discoveries, insights, perplexities

from The Shifted Librarian.

Hot Books is a game designed to bring life back into libraries by forcing players to explore, discover and share the deserted and unexplored spaces that make up a library.

See also:

Jane McGonigal’s Avant-Game
Hot Books at NYPL

Sometime in the next month or so I will summarize the extraordinary seven installments of a workshop given earlier this year at Lakewood Public Library. Also, I will reconfigure the web resource from Lakewood’s web site, and attach it to the squareONE web site.

The series was initiated to prove the concept:

Transformative learning is an aspect of adult education and experiential learning. In the modern library the lack of formality, the encouragement of do-it-yourself investigation, and the breadth of library resources aptly fits with initiatives oriented around informal learning leveraged through active, experiential engagement in and with the library and its resources.

However, when the subject is one’s self, the hallmark of learning is learning through which this “subject” activates a process of discovery and testing and change. Such initiatives are ultimately emancipatory, and expressly the goal of this type of learning is self-knowledge and advances in personal capability.

The concept was proved. (Hat tip to Alana, who attended every session, and also to Fred and Ken.) In fact, the series was a high point of my own game-making career. One of the neat realizations shared with participants, aggrandizing as it may be, was that our collaboration and innovative use of the library, had never happened in this way ever before in any library. We all were groundbreakers in experiential learning in the environs of the great Lakewood Public Library.

Rather than decide between cognitive, somatic and phenomenal modes of experiential learning, the conceptual underpinning of transformative learning utilized for the programs at Lakewood Public Library integrates the three modalities and terms this integration: Integrated Learning.*

Integrated learning joins experience of relatedness to features and phenomena of the world (including other persons,) plus one’s spontaneous perceptions plus reflective conceptualizations about these experiences. It’s aim can be a: test of learning; discovery of further possibilities for investigation; or insights powerful enough to cause transformative effects.

[Lakewood Public Library Transformative Learning Portal]
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(* Integral Learning’s conceptual framework with respect to its cognitive aspect is closely related to the learning models of David A. Kolb, et.al., and Jack Mezirow. With respect to the phenomenal (world-situated) aspect it is indebted to the work of Paulo Freire. Whereas its somatic aspect emerges from a variety of models and theorization in the interdisciplinary realm of embodied learning, etc.)

I’m always on the lookout for stuff that makes the connection between fun, feeling good, and anything that goes better with feeling better. (Of course I do work for a maven (and innovator) of positive psychology in the organizational behavior field but I’ve been tracking this stuff for years previous to making the professional match .)

Via Bruce Eisner’s Vision Thing.

The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun

Took this picture during vacation. Canon Powershot A62; auto-iPhoto sepia.

click for large version

From The Philosopher’s Magazine, by way of Dassh:A Day in the Integral Life

12 surefire techniques – I’ve excerpted the note at the end.

Tips for the Top; How to Be a Philosopher

Note

Naturally, these techniques are not recommended for amateur use and should not be attempted without the supervision of a full professor. These philosophical techniques are for use only by professional philosophers who have had years of specialised training. The author is not responsible for any non-sequiturs, invalid arguments, fallacies, digressions, existential malaise, mid-life crises, or career changes that may result from the use of these techniques. Anyone who feels chest pain, constriction in the throat, reddening of the face, or clenching of the fists upon reading these techniques should be treated immediately for anautoscopsis (an inability to laugh at oneself), a potentially lethal condition.

anautoscopsis…great word!

DailyKos at the moment leads with a commonsense parsing of neocon phantasy about the upcoming surge in mayhem, to be announced in certain terms by King George (of Cheney Inc.) sometime in January. The neocon shamelessly suffering exposure is Fred Kagan. Read the piece and dig underneath it for the soon-to-be very gory details. I’ll do a little background shoveling, but my guess right now is that Kagan is yet another baby booming chickenhawk.

Magical thinking is a folk psychological term that refers to any thinking for which the explanatory reasons are explicitly unreasonable because their underlying rationale is one of the following: a hunch, ordained, tautological, supposed to be so, only a guess, supernatural. Although some might argue that the magical phantasy which held the Coalition would be greeted as liberators is the prime example of magical rationalizing, my own choice scrolls back to the various neocon wankery, (a better term than wonkery,) available in any number of late 20th century papermaking, all of which reduces to the idea that Iraq would fall into place as the “third leg in the stool” and thereby constitute a groovy Israel-friendly, secular Democracy, platform for the reformation of the despotic Arab lands.

Needless to say, the magical rationale took the form of a tautological hunch: it could be so because it should be so.

Given my long memory, I recall other idiotic, (and destructive) irrationalities such as the ones which supposed, in turn, “perpetual war,” “fifty years of Republican rule,” and, on numerous occasions out of the mouths of inept brass and even more inept civilian leaders, that the US would be in Iraq for “at least ten years”.

The meta-question is: how is it the US can employ a long term plan in the light of the US being a democracy? The kneejerk response from the far right is: ‘the Constitution isn’t a suicide pact’. This puts in relief Bush’s sentimental response at a press conference recently when he mused about how ‘history’ might look back and wonder how it was the American people didn’t get the magnitude of the threat.

Magical thinking comes about, often, when people live in the bubble of a magical world. Bush still, after the revelations of O’Neill, Clarke, DeLillo, Suskind, Wilkerson, Woodward, (et al) believes that he is a world-historical figure and that there is a majority ‘out there’ able to get the whole ‘with us’ and ‘over there rather than over here’ world war IV b.s.

From outside this bubble Iraq looks completely failed, horrendously chaotic, and completely enabled to chew through lives and limbs for an indefinate period of time.

From within the bubble there is the blinding light of victory.

When all is said and done, magic likes to blame reality. That’s the set-up.

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
-Epictetus

“You have to let it all go, Neo. Fear, doubt, disbelief. Free your mind.” Morpheus (The Matrix)

Creating a mastermind is one of the fastest ways to get what you want. Our world is too complex to achieve much of anything by ourselves. Nearly all of our knowledge comes from outside ourselves.

Plus, when two people and especially three or four people get together, sparks fly. In our knowledge-based world, it’s nearly mandatory to constantly hone our skills. Books help. So do audio and video. Yet, the human touch is still the most powerful fuel to energize our minds. Year after year, professionals rise to the top of their fields by investing in themselves.

There are several ways to create a mastermind. 1) You can create an internal mastermind or role models (living or deceased), 2) You can join an association, 3) You can create a study group, or 4) You can find a mentor or coach. full article fr:Net-Intelligence

This is a start, at least. I’d could add quite a bit, but will add just a little. ‘Getting what you want’ is a constraint on open-ended learning worthy of its own deconstruction. What…why…how…are always good questions.

Yes, a group is a fine vehicle too. Leverage the differentiation. Different members want different things.

Also, getting what you don’t want can be a very powerful countervaling move. Sometimes the most explosive learning is the result of finding out that what one wants is something beyond what one thinks is wanted, or, that what one needs is entirely different than what one wants.

A Master Mind group is a good vehicle, yet the best groups most of the time benefit from keen facilitation. The more open-ended the group’s aims, the more keen must be the light touch and guidance of the facilitator.

Where The Sidewalk Ends
Behavioral psychology’s unexpected lesson for urban design
(Linda Baker)
[excerpts]
“The idea of this street is that it’s designed like a public square but it’s open to traffic,” said Ellen Vanderslice, a project manager for the Portland Department of Transportation. “We were very consciously trying to create a body language of the street that tells people something different is going on here.”
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Combining traffic engineering, urban planning and behavioral psychology, the projects are inspired by a provocative new European street design trend known as “psychological traffic calming,” or “shared space.” Upending conventional wisdom, advocates of this approach argue that removing road signs, sidewalks, and traffic lights actually slows cars and is safer for pedestrians. Without any clear right-of-way, so the logic goes, motorists are forced to slow down to safer speeds, make eye contact with pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers, and decide among themselves when it is safe to proceed.

“The whole notion behind psychological traffic calming is to give drivers responsibility for the speed they choose,” said Andrew Parkes, a research scientist at the U.K.-based Transport Research Laboratory (TRL)

I’m trying to visualize a shared right-of-way. I squint and see the cars moving very very slow. Read the article from Seed magazine; it’s really a different take on controlling urban velocities.