Monthly Archives: September 2012

Whether or not there are children who are unteachable

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Dave Murray of MLive published an interesting commentary on Are there Children Who Are Unteachable? What’s most interesting about the post is the commentaries from mostly Michigan readers of MLive (which is the online presence of the Grand Rapids Press). After you get beyond the knee-jerk reaction responses of people who post to every article with diatribes against whatever spot issue they have, some of the responses actually become quite interesting. I’ll let you read through all of that on your own and save my personal views on the issue, mainly because unlike the majority of the responders, I realize that I’ve never been a grade school teacher, so I’m not going to truly understand how difficult (or easy) it might be.

However, I thought I would share one somewhat similar story because it involved one of the first classes I was teacing. It was about a decade or so ago when I was teaching political science at Kalamazoo Valley Community College. I was really new, and I’d be shocked if I wasn’t making numerous mistakes in my attempt to use my doctorate knowledge in political science to teach others. However, one thing that remains in my memory was one student I had who was struggling throughout the entire semester.

He was a quiet Hispanic younger man who rarely chimed in during class, and we were nearly halfway through the course when he remained after class and wanted to speak to me. He said he was having trouble with some of the information and wondered if there was anything he could do to bring himself up to speed. Now, over the years, a lot of us teachers have a similar kind of story where some student, who is failing the course, suddenly realizes he’s failing out and tries to salvage his grade. He’ll promise all sorts of thing, but usually not deliver. Generally, this really burns out a lot of teachers because this happens so many times.

However, I offered him the chance to stop by my office hours, and I’d look deeper into his situation (as it wasn’t something we could solve in the few minutes after a lecture). To my surprise, he showed up the next day for my office hours.

We sat down for about an hour, and he told me what was giving him problems. Our subject at the moment in class was about Congress and the committee structure. His question, when he asked it, opened me up to realizing something that really impacted me. He wasn’t confused about Congress and the committee structure. He had no idea what Congress was.

During all of my lectures about Congress, I just sort of assumed that most young college students at least knew what Congress was, so that it was an easy jumping off point. My conversation with him made me realize that he had no idea what the concept of the legislature branch was and was listening during all of the classes, unsure of how to place it in greater context with the things he did know. And shortly after he started communicating, I began to realize what his context was: He knew nothing but street life, violence and family that threw him out of their home when he was only a teenager. He was working a crappy job, and someone told him the only path to any future success for him was either joining a gang (something he was considering) or school. So he decided to try school first.

Still not convinced he was on the level (as to his desire to actually pass this course), I gave him the opportunity to visit me during my office hours each time I held them, and I said I would try to help him figure out what he didn’t know. I figured he’d be like most students who would act really interested and then I’d never see him again. But he showed up each office hour, and he brought his book, opening it up each time and pointing out the things that didn’t make sense to him.

At this time, I was talking to a college colleague, who saw this student in my office one day and then pulled me aside, indicating that the majority of the instructors knew who he was and gave up on him a long time ago because “he is lazy”. Not convinced, I then offered my student the opportunity to visit my office for more periods beyond my office hours, just to see if he was serious.

And he was. After a few weeks, he started to actually do much better on quizzes and examinations. And his questions were always very well thought out. By the time we reached the final examination, he was earning a solid B in the class.

He passed my class, and he then stopped in one day a few semesters later, saying that he was transferring to a local university, having been accepted under a special program for indigent students. Where he is this day, I don’t know, but I can only hope he managed to finish and made a better life for himself.

However, I did want to point out a couple of things. I really felt ill about my fellow colleagues at that time, because they gave up on this student long before they ever should have. He wasn’t lazy. He was just lost. The other thing is that I also realize that my experience doesn’t prepare me to comment on K-12 education as I have never taught in those arenas. It also doesn’t talk to the realization that if I had been confronted by a classroom full of this same type of student, I might not have reacted the same way, having been so overwhelmed, there’s no telling what mechanism I might have used to keep myself from being overcome by such problems. This is the fact that a lot of teachers have to face on a daily basis with entire classrooms of struggling students, and it doesn’t surprise me that so many good teachers probably burn out and never continue.

So, if I was to comment at all, I’d think that what’s needed is administrative attention to detail on how to best support those teachers out there who want to do more but are overwhelmed. Just blaming teachers for not doing enough is often a very weak approach, quite often enough to push even more teachers out of the business. I read through all of the comments that come from MLive, and I’m often saddened to the point where I realize that I’d never be a grade school teacher with such hostility pointed at that discipline.

Guild Wars 2: A Different Kind of MMO

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Lately, I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2, after having given up on The Secret World, which I kept hoping would be much better than it turned out to be.

The interesting thing about Guild Wars 2 is that it is essentially free to play, AFTER you buy the original game. So, $60 later, I was allowed to enter the game. This isn’t a complaint, but it’s a reality of how the game is designed. Fortunately, there are no $15/month charges for playing the game, so let’s just say that it makes things a lot easier.

The game is quite polished and fun. There are a couple of problems here and there, but no more than when I’ve played any other “recently” released game. The other day, I was stuck on a mission because a raging bull didn’t reset, but they quickly took care of the problem on the next maintenance cycle, and it was fixed. So, they’re looking at the problems that come along, and so far I haven’t been too concerned that they’re just going to abandon the game.

As for the game itself, it’s another one of those sword and sorcery kinds of games with a bit of today’s technology involved. One of my characters carries a rifle and creates all sorts of 19th century kinds of turrets and traps. Another character is a necromancer, which definitely hits the sorcery part of the mix. But both interact well in the environment, so it doesn’t matter what kind of character you create; they all seem to exist well within the storyline.

And the storyline is actually pretty decent. It has that same Tabula Rasa feel of “you’re the only hope, and this is your story” type of writing within the game. Unlike World of Warcraft, it’s not just a theme park of fedex missions or “go kill 30 of that monster you’ve been killing for the last 45 levels”. There’s a lot of diversity to the game, including crafting and exploration. My biggest learning curve is figuring out all of the different things to do in the game, because it is a huge world and it has so many choices of things you can do.

One of the nice things is that it scales down your character if you out level an area, so that you can interact with the environment as a level 5 (if it’s a level 5 area) instead of the level 80 you might be. Unfortunately, it doesn’t scale up, so you can’t run into a level 80 area if you’re a level 5. You’d die quite quickly.

Anyway, so far I’m finding it an interesting diversion. Not sure I’ll be with it for years to come, but if they work on the end game and work on making sure there are always things to do, I can see myself staying with it for awhile.

Our Constitutional rights are decided in the strangest places

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When it comes to the rights of men and women in the United States, quite often the very limitations of those rights are fought in the strangest of places. When it comes to freedom of speech, some of those rights were decided by the Supreme Court when analyzing whether or not pornography should be authorized as a version of “speech and expressioin”. The right to protest was decided by a case involving someone who burned an American flag. Now, taxation is being argued in an equally unlikely place: A strip club called Nite Moves.

Nite Moves argues that its exotic dancers are conducting performance art, and therefore, are not subject to sales tax, because that is a right under its state tax laws if the act can be construed as “art”.

Now, if I didn’t know the “adult” entertainment business as well as I do (I’ve talked before about how I used to design web sites for that industry back when web pages were new), I’d say this is a great battle, and that it’s about time there was a movement to represent women who are often exploited (by both customers, and unfortunately, their employers), but in reality, I’m not convinced that the company involved is looking out for the interests of their dancers rather than their own bottom lines. Unfortunately, that business model has always been that way. This is one of those industries (and I’m not talking about Nite Moves, specifically, as I don’t know their personal business model) where quite often the female workers (who do all of the work that actually attracts customers) are treated as independent contractors for any reasons that benefit the management and as employees when it benefits the management. Let me explain an example: When it comes to taxation, the business holds the girls as independent contractors so they’re not paying taxes on their intake (and other such little schemes), but when it comes to paying them a required minimum wage, they’re independent contractors who are not obligated to pay, legalized employee rights, health care and sick pay. Yet, they’ll be required to come to work on specific days, work specific hours and do specific employee-like things. One of the biggest gimmicks these types of companies do is charge the girls a performance charge (or skim from their profits somehow), so they can’t work unless they pay rent on the stage or something like that.

Sadly enough, this is the kind of atmosphere where this Constitutional fight will take place. Now, if Nite Moves is nothing like I just said, that’s great. Unfortunately, these rights will be fought for the many disreputable companies out there that are that way, and that’s unfortunate, but that’s how many of our rights first make it into the legal process.

Personally, I think lap dancing is one of the greatest forms of both art because it involves not only dancing but acting. The dancing makes sense (regardless of whether or not it’s actually great dancing or just gyrating on a guy’s crotch until the time is up), but the acting is a little overlooked by the industry at large. I would imagine that a young woman has to be one of the greatest actresses around to act like she’s really enjoying giving a lap dance to some loser that equates his interactions with women by how many dollar bills he carried into the strip joint (honestly, I have no idea what the going rate these days is for this, so if it helps the post by replacing “dollar bills” with “twenty dollar bills” I’m fine with that, too.

The Secret World: An MMORPG that’s struggling to make itself known

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Recently, NCSoft announced that City of Heroes Freedom is closing shop. NCSoft did this because it was trying to consolidate its properties, and (at least according to me) it chose to close a pretty profitable property to focus on its other crap…I mean games. In October, the game will shut down, and it will no longer be accessible.

Therefore, I decided to start searching earlier and try to find a new game. First, everyone who I know that games suggested Guild Wars 2, which was just released. But Guild Wars 2 is made by a company that is actually controlled by NCSoft, and after this announcement (and the closing of Tabula Rasa, another game I enjoyed), I’ve decided to avoid NCSoft products like the plague. That means no Guild Wars 2 for me. Besides, I’m really not in the mood to play another medieval-like game with orcs and elves (or some variation thereof).

So I came across The Secret World, which happens to be made by Funcom, which to my surprise happens to be owned by Electronic Arts. To be honest, EA doesn’t have a stellar record when it comes to MMOs. It was the company behind Earth and Beyond, which turned out to be one fo the first MMOs to shut its doors while so many others were struggling but remained open. Under its Maxis-bought brand, it put The Sims Online almost as fast as it closed it down. To be honest, I don’t know if The Sims Online is still around, but it’s such a failure that even if it is still around, no one cares.

But, with no other real options, I decided to try it out. I refuse to go back to World of Warcraft because of how limited it is in depth. Their recent addition (or soon to be addition) of Kung-Fu Pandas really has me scratching my head, wondering what happened to that company, but that’s another story.

So I picked up a copy of The Secret World at Wal Mart. Why Wal Mart? I don’t know. I was there looking for a bookshelf and then decided I’d just pick it up because at $50 of a release price, I honestly wasn’t going to get a better or worse deal anywhere else. Sure, I could have probably found a cheaper copy through Amazon or some other obscure online dealer, but sometimes the hassle just isn’t worth the savings.

I signed in for the first time on Saturday. Essentially, if you  don’t know what the game is about, it’s a three sided game (a lot like Dark Age of Camelot and every realm versus realm-like game released since) in which you play either a member of the Illuminati, the Templars or the Dragon. I started off as an Illuminati, and it’s a hybrid version of the “real” Illumnati, except for reasons that I haven’t really figured out, they’re headquartered in New York City. The game makes the point of stating that this isn’t the Illuminati we all know and love, but I think that’s more for legal reasons than anything else (and a fear of the real Illuminati targeting developers for revenge or other such nonsense). The Templars makes a point of indicating that it’s not “really” the Templars of history but a new version of the Templars that has its origins recently, although their history stretches back through time and embraces the old ways (huh?). They’re headquartered in London. The Dragon is the “Asian” mystique group in which all sorts of Japanese-like mysticism are combined into a mish mash of ridiculousness, where voice overs recreate bad acting from the 1940s when white actors used to pretend to be Asian by speaking badly. The part that doesn’t make sense for me is that the faction is so grounded in Japanese-ish nonsense, and then the faction is headquartered in Seoul, which is Korean, not Japanese. I haven’t spent a great deal of time walking around Seoul yet, but I suspect that I’m going to see Japanese writing, although I hope the developers were smart enough to realize that some people might actually speak and read Korean well enough to recognize that Japanese isn’t Korean and Japanese writing in Seoul is pretty damn out of place.

Regardless of what side you choose, your starting character starts in Kingsmouth, Maine where zombies seem to be getting out of control. Yep, zombies. And ALL of the enemies you fight are essentially some kind of zombie or zombie-like hybrid. I understand that demons show up later in the game in other areas, but so far it seems very limited in the kinds of things you fight.

The story isn’t all that great either. Essentially it boils down to this narrative:

“Hey, you, stranger, you’re not going to believe what happened. This morning, zombies tried to take over the town. Nope. Not sure where they came from or why. But they’re everywhere and I really need a can of tomato juice from the local grocery store (that is overrun with zombies), so would you be a dear and head over there for me and get me some? If you do, I’ll give you a couple of bucks for your trouble.”

This may sound like a complaint thread, but it’s not really meant to be that way. First off, the game is interesting in that it’s in our time, not in some fantasy land that exists in some weird dimension. No, this world exists in our world and seems to be happening while the rest of the world is oblivious to what’s going on, thus, the secret world. The three factions are in conflict with each other, but when they meet in a place like Kingsmouth, they all work together but then go head to head when they end up in a pvp area (which I have yet to find being such a low “level” character).

Which brings up the subject of “levels”. In The Secret World, there are no levels. Instead, you get ability points (AP) and skill points (SP). You use those to buy new abilities and skills that help round out your character. It’s like someone who played Ultima Online liked the idea that there were no levels in UO, but you just improved your skills instead and tried to update that for the 21st century. It’s a noble idea, but the one problem it causes is that people aren’t exactly sure how they stack up with/and against other players. To be completely honest, I don’t know how I stack up against any creature I come across until I actually start fighting it. I went to the area next to Kingsmouth last night and killed the first mob of bad guys I came across. The second one schooled me like I was a converted ghost in a Pac Man revival. So, I have no clue how to figure out if the monster I’m looking at should be attacked, avoided or worshipped like the god it is.

Another problem I’ve come across is apparently a bug in the game design in how it interacts with a laggy system. I have an assault weapon specialist who has a leech heal ability, but it works about 70 percent of the time because I’ll be fighting a mob of zombies and then every time I press the button for it (and I press it a lot), it gives me a message of “you don’t have a consistent line to your target” or something equally unhelpful. This can happen when I’m standing in front of the target, poking his chest with my finger, and it will still not let me use the ability. Which means I either get lucky with my other abilities, or I die.

In this game, I die a lot. As a matter of fact, there’s a GREAT quest story of trying to find an old killer that was never brought to justice, and the only way to do it is to die yourself and follow a mysterious group of white ravens that help you solve the mystery. Strangely enough, that doesn’t actually count as a spoiler because so much more has to be done that you’ll kind of figure that out, or you’ll end up just quitting the game out of frustration.

One of the things that seems promising is the possibilities of unexplored ground in this game that I haven’t yet discovered. It seems to be very much like a game that has a lot of mysteries and secrets, which is generally my kind of game. But I’m fearful that it will collapse into one of those grinding MMOs where there’s no important concept that you’re exploring through the game. An example: I’m playing an illuminati character. I would like to see that the organization has many secrets that I have to uncover, and those secrets need to be important to the game itself, not just some lore I click on to add an entry to my lore book. I would like to see that new areas of the game open up after you figure certain things out. That, to me, would be so much cooler than finding harder to find lore buttons in the middle of nowhere and having no reason for doing so.

One of the real problems the game faces is that so few people seem to be playing it. The developers aren’t really responding well, playing the “nothing’s wrong…it’s going just as planned” card, which usually gets played right up until they shutter the store, And EA will shutter it. Don’t ever think anything different.

But I’ll let you know more as I get deeper into the game. I had a three day weekend to fully explore what I could. I suspect that there’s FAR MORE that I haven’t seen yet. My hope is that whatever I have yet to discover ends up being interesting and fun.