Reflecting on Late Night Learning

Sandra Dodd recently enhanced a few of her pages, including: Late Night Learning.

I've noticed the article before, and often reflected that a lot of our learning happens late at night.

Last night Fish requested a bout of Dance chasey - the night before I had tried to teach the boys the basic modern waltz steps... they weren't really interested and for some reason I began to chase them with a constant forward waltz step - the next second they began laughing and encouraging me to continue chasing them... I got a work out and we all had a laugh.

Tonight we watched At Five in the Afternoon; last night it was A Rake's Progress. I wish I'd made note of all the other movies that have caught our curiosity at different times - but who thinks about making a note when one is enjoying the movie?

water fight

Today Fish and I had a water fight.

I soaked about 75% of his body LOL.

This is my weapon.

Freelancer firefight

I am dueling someone on Freelancer:

I like colours i made a picture and i think i over saved it with this one

This is one of Fish's WoW charecters from a year ago wearing a full armor set witch I made for him.

Fish plays: Radical Aces

Radical Aces is a game about defending a mars station. Players get a choice of planes. I normally go with the Sky Bullet because it is the fastest so it is easy to get to the other side of the map because the attackers normally come from two directions.

Ramadan

Apparently Ramadan (the ninth Muslim month, featuring daily Fajr, fasting, Iftar and culminating in 'Eid-Ul-Fitr) begins today. Langwitches' links for 2007-09-10 caught Mum's bloglining curiosity and we were all reminded about a program we watched recently: 30 days as a Muslim. Cricket was interested in the program's occasional exploration of blind blaming attitudes towards *all* Muslims based upon terrorist acts by a few.

Subsequently we discussed use and misuse of the thought process: generalising.

soccer

Let me tell you my excitement of a few weeks ago. I kicked three goals for the Koalas, my indoor soccer team. We won by 7 goals.

Now, to spell "goal" I tried "goll" and "gole", but they didn't look right so I asked mum. Naturally she wanted to talk about words spelled with 'oa'. The only other 'oal' words she can think of are foal and shoal, neither of which we use at all. 'oa' is in our phonics book, but for the long 'o' sound like in boat and coat... foal was on the page but mum and I think the l makes 'oa' sound different.

Raptor

I was doing the quest The Bait for Lar'korwi on World of Warcraft and I had to place to items on a rock to summon

My pet was dead and I had to revive him and I did not have my buffs up.

Lunar eclipse 28 August 2007

IMG_0135
Originally uploaded by Niroshana Fernando

Cricket did suggest I get my camera, but I still don't have a tripod. So for colour and recollection I have to rely on others (eg thanks Niroshana Fernando). I love the photogallery at Backyard.

Graham phoned while we were watching Numbers, sending us running out the front to catch the blood moon. I think we may have missed the reddest (was that before the full eclipse? - or maybe clouds drifted over).

Still it was exciting just to watch an eclipse even if we didn't see the colour that others did.

How is capsicum spray made?

How is capsicum spray made?  Annotated

• this answered Mr14's question: how is capsicum spray made? - post by moonflowerdragon

Compass - The Fundamentalist

Tonight we caught a portion of The Fundamentalist series on Compass - ABC TV Religion. We caught up with Mark Dowd when "He travels to Gaza and meets the mother of a suicide bomber and also visits Jewish settlers committed to living on disputed land no matter the cost."

I haven't tracked many of the things we've been doing because I'd hoped we might make posts here a little more thoughtful and contemplative or reflective, but then I don't have much record at all. So, as our principal reason for blogging is actually for a fun way to record-keep; while it being a forum to communicate our thoughts and benefit readers is more of a potentiality... we just might merely post more items like this (ie this is what we watched).

When I was a Lad

How curious... I keep up with Sandra Dodd's updates to her webpages, she recently mentioned this one: When I was a Lad and I played the mp3. The boys loved it - which surprised me. Then "Cricket" recounted a Simpson's episode in which Sideshow Bob sang the whole HMS Pinafore musical to fulfil Bart's last request.

I will *not* be torturing the boys with a bunch of comprehension questions, it will be absorbed into other experiences and we'll discuss our thoughts from time to time. Like: we find it funny as I believe we're supposed to, that 'the rule of the Queen's Navee' would not have naval experience - but really how much of what type of experience would such an authority require to do the job well?

Lots to think about...

Bloglines (via Mum's RSS Subscription to) mentioned a post from Cool Cat Teacher Blog

Mum went to see what the World's Best Presentation at Slideshare was all about, and ended up with concepts very worth all of us discussing. How will these interesting snippets affect our lives in 10-20 years?



Mum is thinking it is important that we learn effective thinking, intrapersonal and interpersonal skills; adaptability, flexibility, creativity.

Current Events: Britney's Hair

Mum peruses The Current Events in Education blog, and although we pay extremely little attention to 'celebrities', today mum decided that Britney's Hair was a nifty short little thought activity we could do together.

So after checking out the article: Britney's Mane Event: Day 2 Hair for sale? we're considering the suggested questions:

1. Why would Britney have done this?

Cricket: annoyance, frustration, separation, any reason.
Fish: maybe one of her songs went wrong, if she was married maybe she got divorced, depression,

Who knows, any reasons that anyone else might have could be equally valid for Britney. Wanting a change or celebrating a change, expressing 'letting go' after a relationship separation (cutting them out of your hair eh Ceccy?), or letting go of a previous image or attachment to appearance.

2. What can we learn about the nature of fame from Britney's behavior?

Cricket: Nothing.
Fish: Nothing.
Nothing, even non-famous people shave their head.

3. What is hair? Check out Wikipedia?

"a filamentous outgrowth of dead cells from the skin, found only on mammals. "

4. Is it actually fair to call Britney's behavior absurd? Why/why not?
Definition of absurd: inconsistent with reason or logic or common sense;
Cricket: No, because deciding to change one's hairstyle is not illogical, or unreasonable or uncommon.
Fish: No, because.
No: If she wants to shave her head it is up to her, it is not absurd. Just shaving your head is not absurd.

Painted Swift spider

supunna picta 9mm
Originally uploaded by moonflowerdragon.

As I blogged over at moonflowerdragon, Cricket spotted this spider running very fast up the fridge. While he and Fish wanted me to just squash it, I was curious - not knowing what kind it is.

We know now, thanks to my new digital camera, and the entymology department at the Melbourne Museum.

We might have identified it ourselves at the University of Queensland Find-A-Spider Guide, but I was looking at medium-sized spiders, not small ones because I measured it at 9mm rather than 8mm or less. The boys didn't want to look at the photos at all. I must admit I didn't enjoy it either.

From Cassowary to India

Cassowary
Originally uploaded by chatallot.

Today, upon reading of the Tarzali home-edding family's cassowary spotting, I asked the boys whether they knew of the Cassowary. "Yeah" said Cricket, launching into his associations " a flightless bird... lives in the rainforest ... related to the emu". Fish didn't know.

...Wikipedia or Google? ... okay Google's first suggestion is Wikipedia anyway...

From there we learned that the Tarzali Tales would have been referring to the Southern Cassowary. But first we explored what 'ratite' meant ("any of a diverse group of large, flightless birds of Gondwanan origin ... hav[ing] no keel on their sternum and, lacking a strong anchor for their wing muscles, could not fly even were they to develop suitable wings); then checked that Gondwanan did indeed mean that the cassowary is supposed to have descended from beasts particular to the Gondwana supercontinent.

In the process I learned (I think for my first time) that the name of the supercontinent Gondwana is "derived from the Gondwana region of India", "because some of the earliest rock formations of this continent were first investigated in part of the region"

Puzzle Pirates

It was Lucas who introduced Cricket (and thus Fish and I too) to Puzzle Pirates. Thank ye very much ye little blaggard ;-)

We had begun to tire of the grind ('kill' lots and lots of monsters to achieve the quest) on Silkroad and this much lighter game offered a less violent, more amusing form of play.

Both offer the opportunity to explore social issues particularly in the online world. That other players may be real people on the other end means that what you do makes a difference to someone else - if you don't keep up your end of the pirateship tasks your character could be planked (and I think I witnessed recently robbed into the bargain). I think also that how well you do your task impacts on others' tasks (though I don't know that for sure in puzzle pirates). And when it comes to melee when one ship grapples another to plunder - your skill (and luck) may affect the consequence for the whole crew.

Curiously we have found beggars in both games - players who ask other players for game-money. How we feel and what we think about the begging is also interesting to observe. Fish can totally relate to the desire to have someone just give him the money so he can get the thing he wants NOW (a wolf in Silkroad, doubloons to play different games in pirates), and so he is inclined to give people the game-money they ask for because he would like to be given for his own asking. Me: "getting money in this game is quite straightforward and easy, if time-consuming... if you want the game-money play the game".





Enough of each begins to feel as monotous as bouncing a ball against the wall but Cricket loves another opportunity to play poker.

Silkroad Online

Which friend do we have to thank for the introduction to Silkroad?

It has kept us happily busy for the last few weeks. It is contributing wonderfully to Fish's reading and Cricket's spelling as we party up with game-friends (and strangers) to quest and try to survive trading on a fantasy silkroad.

Fish has enjoyed Trader and Thief jobs and I've tried out Hunting.

Issues we've explored have been: balancing such games with health and family needs; world-wide timezones; comparing virtual with real-time behaviours (what do we ever know about other people's motives).

I want to expand on that last one first. We discovered (although the game discussion forums did warn) that clever thieves are undetectable while they mark traders out... a new young trader trusts this friendly player who offers to escort you with your carefully loaded trade horse (which is such a low level it may not be attacked by player-thieves) only to be killed by strong npc thieves spawned in the area by the 'helpful' guy's thief friend, after which the 'helpful' guy now in his thief suit and his friend make off with your trade gear.

Watching Fish discover intricacies of the game first hand, despite the warnings, I was reminded that his learning style is very much to leap in and give it a go. It is a huge emotional challenge to support such learners. He is of an age where "it is just a game" is not comforting or consoling, mind you he is also of an age where not winning is almost intolerable. Having said that, it occurs to me that my own style of playing (reading about the strategies, watching others) reflects my own distaste for losses.

Update: 17 February 2008
This post has attracted advertising comments for bot services - please don't make such comments, I will only delete them. If you wish to pay for the advertising space I guess you could make us an offer.

Moonflowerdragon: Scenarios for Internet Ethics

Moonflowerdragon: Scenarios for Internet Ethics

I just blogged over at moonflowerdragon:

Thanks to my Bloglines account, and Francey from Gargoyles Loose in the Library, I now have a bunch of new scenarios to raise when discussing internet issues with my boys.

Our local library gave us material from the government's initiative to promote internet safety (can't remember what it is called), which didn't really address anything we hadn't already discussed ... but finding the material prompted a refresher discussion in a timely way for our exploration of Silkroad (about which more later, right now I want to PLAY).