Why write so many essays in school?

Most students write a lot of essays in high school. The only reason is that the government wants you to so they force it on you. It makes sense. You have to write a few pages and defend an argument. Writing essays is a great way to improve your writing.

The only problem is that you will most likely never write essays again after school. A while back on this blog I talked about how students can write blogs instead. The more a student writes the better (more on this later).

One other activity students can do is write sales copies. Email marketing is a lucrative field. I do it almost every day. Writing essays is another area where school hasn't caught up with reality. In reality, you could be training students to be effective members of the 21st century. To do that you have to select the practices of the past which are obsolete and discard them.

A great exercise would be to ask students to pick a product and write an email trying to sell it. It works out an entirely different part of writing and is really under utilized. With anything creative all you have to do is do a lot of it and you get better. It sounds contradictory but the more you produce regardless of quality the better you get.

The other activity that should be encouraged is to write a blog. This is the best way to get students to write. They can write about anything they want to. It would be very easy to mark this. The more blog posts and the more words the higher the mark. There has to be a few rules to this but essentially this is how it works.

You can even ask students to put their work into the Hemingway app. I will be doing that with this blog post.

The debate about writing specific content and reading specific content revolves around the quality. Well in the 1940s, there was a similar debate about comic books. The consensus was that if a person is reading then it is better than causing trouble or other non intelligent activities. Today a lot of teachers still scold kids to not read graphic novels. Who cares, they are reading.

The same thing happens with writing. All you have to do is give people a forum in which they find interesting and they will do more of that activity.

Writing essays is great but there is room for improvement. Instead of writing 100% essays that students hate, write something more interesting. Since this is an international blog. I am sure people from Europe are confused with this post. In North America, the school system is set with an 19th century attitude.

Simple adjustments can have a profound effect.

There are too many games and there will be way too many games in the future

If you haven't checked out this episode from extra credits, go watch it.


It's a good episode. The episode tries to ask the question "are people really getting mad because there are too many games?". A very good solution is presented and that solution is better match making. It makes sense that people want to play a game that they are in the mood for and to have software match it up. It fails to take into the account this problem:

Saturation is the bane of content production. 

 I always say look at where the music industry is today and that's what the game will become. Sure there are stars making millions but there are many people not making any money at all. If you want to produce album ready music you can spend about 500 dollars for the software needed.

While games are expensive to produce the cost is going down and when the cost goes down the quality dips as well.

This isn't bad it's just the way it is.

Sure there will be a few people who make money on their computers in their home. It will be great for some but for many it will be a shock. It will be a shock for people who are used to a game having X features and X budget and to have this game not do well.

Music matching like the game matching above has been around for a while. The biggest problem is that if you want to listen to AC/DC you don't want to listen to a band that sounds like AC/DC you want to listen to guns and roses.

This will work a little differnt for games. But nobody is going to want to play a clone of Candy Crush.

The best bet is have a blog that recommends good games.If you are a game developer get ready for this explosion of games. There are 33 million books on amazon and 14 million songs on iTunes. How many games will there be on the app store in 5 years?

When I learn online I feel like I have a huge advantage over everybody else

Lot's of people want to learn the traditional way. They want to physically go to a classroom hear somebody speak, do the homework ask questions etc.

Learning from your own home on your own time is so much more efficient. I try to learn something new on a daily basis and I only learn online. Why move your body anywhere to exercise your mind?

Not only are the tools of better quality, it is simply more efficient. If you have ever learned by watching a video, you can actually speed up the video to 1.5 times the speed. Once you do this you can never go back to videos in normal time. It just isn't worth the time.

Online learning is for people who simply want to get from A to B as quickly as possible. It trims all of the excess baggage when it comes to learning and just focuses on the content. 

One of the most overlooked advantages to learning with video

Some people love learning by watching videos. One of the most overlooked reasons as to why this is important is the fact that you can watch videos at a faster pace.

When I was making an XBOX 360 game I needed to update my knowledge in C#. There were no post secondary classes that had a course on how to do this and the only course was available through a DVD. The DVD was made with Visual Studio 2005 and we were already in 2009. It was obsolete but most of the information I needed was there.

I was watching the tutorials and going though them one by one. Then I realized that VLC player has a feature that could make your videos play faster. At this point in time I could fly through the videos.

Why go to a lecture in real time when you can watch something at 1.66 the speed. This was my favorite speed to watch videos at. Whenever I watch a tutorial today and it isn't spead up, I don't like watching it.

This is a huge productivity feature nobody talks about. Few educators ever talk about productivity and fewer implement it. 

Watch your videos at a faster rate to learn more in less time.

Check out this blog post about educational apps

I was featured in an article about creating educational apps. You can view it here.

http://www.skilledup.com/blog/how-course-creators-are-following-the-mobile-education-trend/

Is the term social a buzzword?

It seems like everything new is social this and social that. Do start ups really want everything to be social or is it just a buzzword? Should every idea have a social component to it? The core concept is that if people talk about your idea/product/app then it will gain more traction and people will enjoy it more.

There are certain products that are social and certain products that are not. Having a cool cafe can be a social business, your Facebook game about zombies is not.

What about education. Everybody likes to make education social. That is people getting together in a place and sharing their marvelous ideas together and they come out of the experience feeling really positive. Being social and collaboration are extremely important but over emphasis won't get you that far. At the same time over emphasis on being social is just as bad and underemphasis.

Think back to your college days. There were people who locked themselves in a room and studied or produced and there were people who played bridge, world of Warcraft or magic cards depending on how old you are.

Who was more successful in the long run? If anything the asocial people sat down and learned some skills while the social socialized. Turning fantasy into reality is difficult to do so talking about it will get you only part of the way. Actually sitting down and following through will be much more beneficial.

Being asocial is just as bad . Often times people do not even go out to meet people. They just sit in their room and create. While this will get you a good product, you do need to meet people run your ideas through filters.

Where do you draw the line? Because I create technical stuff like apps, games, and creative stuff like music and movies. I can say that if you want to be successful sit in your room, turn off the phone, turn off the internet and get stuff done. This will be a huge advantage to you because most people would rather just fantasize about the future in a coffee shop. If you can get something out the door you put yourself in a whole other category than those who do not.

At the same time, you do have to go out and meet people and you do have to go out and get your ideas tested. Working in a bubble is never good and you need to expand your horizons. Be wrong a few times (or many times).

If you want to create things, I would say be at lest 50% asocial and 50% social. Although in my experience people who are at least 70% asocial tend to be more successful. Any combination above 70/30 will be beneficial. Personally I am about 90/10. After seeing how many people flutter away their time socializing I personally tried hard to go the other way.

I love socializing but not all of the time. Personally, I am really at home in my office. It is my favorite place to be. I guess that makes me an introvert. 

Does using technology keep you mentally sharp in your old age?

When you get older your mental capacity shuts down. I recently read an article saying that your StarCraft 2 ability goes down at the age of 24. It makes sense because there is a lot going on when it comes to a StarCraft 2 game.

It also makes sense that when you get older you are not mentally as sharp. It's harder to learn new things as you get older. Even simple things can be harder than it sounds. I recently played a game to teach kids math. In this game 1-5 animals went into a barn and 1-5 animals left. You had to pick how many animals and what kind of animals remained in the barn. This sounds really simple right? For me I got it right but it was doing the task was much harder than I anticipated.

I have also noticed that older people who are into technology are more "with it". This leads me to believe if somebody is using the most current technology for some reason they are more cognitively able.

When you start to think about it it makes perfect sense. Technology changes all of the time and you have to find a new way of using it. When I upgraded from iOS6 to iOS7 there were a few things that I found hard to do. By using this technology I learnt how to do something new. When you use technology more this happens all of the time.

The short answer is that people are learning when they are simply using technology.