Opinion

Are Mario, YouTube & My Little Pony killing my Daughters Imagination?

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Imagination 1440664813 Are Mario YouTube 038 My Little Pony killing my Daughters Imagination

I am a huge advocate of the benefit of games. They are amazing and I would quite happily argue with anyone shouting about games and violence, or games being bad for kids. I am also not against T.V. My youngest has amazing shape recognition, counting and even spelling and maths abilities – at three – thanks in large part to Team UmiZoomi!

However, I have started to notice a slightly concerning issue with my eldest daughter. She seems to have no imagination any more, or at least a very reduced functionality one! Read More ...

Generation Y all the Fuss?

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Millenium 1433492931 Generation Y all the Fuss

There is a lot of noise about Generation Y or Millennial’s, those born after 1982. They are seen as some kind of strange new evolution of the species, the saviours of our universe. One of the key things that is spoken about when they are mentioned is that they grew up with computers in their houses and gameboys in their hands. There are other differences, but this is the one I hear the most. The way they are spoken about you would expect them to be able to fly and shoot lasers out of their eyes. Read More ...

Self Preservation – Advice I give my daughters

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Self preservation 2 Self Preservation 8211 Advice I give my daughters

Many years ago I was looking at starting up a self defence class (I was teaching JuJitsu at the time). This document was based on conversations with people who had been attacked and reading up on the topic at the time. I never did anything with it, but now that I have daughters, it is central to how I talk to them about self defence – or more accurately – self preservation. After years of tweaking and a few days of conversation on facebook recently, I felt I could publish it. My hope is that the advice here, the advice I give my own daughters, can be of help to others should they need it. Read More ...

How do you deal with being wrong?

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Error 1432641088 How do you deal with being wrong

Not really a gamification related post today, though it could pertain to the gamification community!

It happens to us all at some point. Someone says something, you see something, read something, hear something – whatever – but it shakes the foundations of something you knew in your hear was correct. Until you discovered this new information, you would have staked the life of your entire family line on what you knew to be correct. Now, you find out that you had been wrong all along – how do you deal with it? Read More ...

5 Groups of Fun

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Fun types v3 5 Groups of Fun

One of my on-going side projects on the site is to find out more about what people find “fun”. This does not directly relate to the motivation related content on RAMP or the User Types though. It is all based on a simple question – “What do you find fun?”

This is by no means a comprehensive study and in reality you are far better off considering Nicole Lazzaro’s 4Keys2Fun! However, I am finding it interesting to see what people say.

I have previously released basic results that identified 21 unique things that people find fun. This is based on around 180 responses to the question, but show a distinct pattern. From these 21 “types”, I have started to pull together five distinct groups. Read More ...