SPOILERS>>>>>>>>>>

1 18.25 ounce package chocolate cake mix.
1 can prepared coconut pecan frosting.
3/4 cup vegetable oil.
4 large eggs.
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips.
3/4 cups butter or margarine.
1&2/3 cups granulated sugar.
2 cups all purpose flour.
Don't forget garnishes such as:
Fish shaped crackers.
Fish shaped candies.
Fish shaped solid waste,
Fish shaped dirt.
Fish shaped ethyl benzene.
Pull and peel licorice..
Fish shaped volatile organic compounds
and sediment shaped sediment.
Candy coated peanut butter pieces, Shaped like fish.
1 cup lemon juice.
Alpha resins.
Unsaturated polyester resin.
Fiberglass surface resins.
And volatile malted milk impoundments.
9 large egg yolks.
12 medium geosynthetic membranes.
1 cup granulated sugar.
An entry called 'how to kill someone with your bare hands'.
2 cups rhubarb, sliced.
2/3 cups granulated rhubarb.
1 tablespoon all-purpose rhubarb.
1 teaspoon grated orange rhubarb.
3 tablespoons rhubarb, on fire.
1 large rhubarb.
1 cross borehole electro-magnetic imaging rhubarb.
2 tablespoons rhubarb juice.
Adjustable aluminum head positioner.
Slaughter electric needle injector.
Cordless electric needle injector.
Injector needle driver.
Injector needle gun.
Cranial caps.
And it contains proven preservatives, deep penetration agents, and gas and odor
control chemicals. That will deodorize and preserve putrid tissue.

source

Here’s the full recipe video:

and another:

Here’s one that you could eat (not tried it myself, but it looks good and doesn’t contain the cranial caps and cross borehole electo-magnetic imaging rhubarb) click for edible Portal Cake recipe.

‘The Cake is a lie’ meme explained

Portal is still my favourite game. I <3 GLaDos

I loved the music, places, gameplay, friends
I’ve made. I even got the wife to play.
I also built it into my MA.
But hey. All good things must but come to ends.
And even though my Shockadin defends
The flag, the node, the healer – pvp;
My Shadow Priest, her racial stole away;
My mage’s macros Blizzard thought offends
The balance of this bloody game. Enough.
Before this game I had a better cause.
This quiet rest now gives me time to spare.
Design, compose, and make creative stuff,
Is what I should be doing without pause.
I now have time. If only I could dare.

Damn. I used to be able to knock up a half-decent sonnet in 30 minutes. This rubbish Petrarchan sonnet took over two hours. Damned iambic pentametre and fiddly rhymes. Perhaps I should have stuck to the English sonnet structure. Perhaps I should have stuck to playing WoW.

This is purely informational. I haven’t tried them all, so I can’t say how well they safeguard minors. It’s best to be thorough and try them out properly yourself. YMMV

Ones I’ve tried and I think are good, though not with age restrictions in mind: Wordpress, Blogger, Facebook, Ning, Club Penguin, FreeRealms, Writeboard, 21Classes, PBwiki & Delicious.

RPG = Role Playing Game

Must be at least 16

• Friendster social network

Must be at least 13 and in high school

• Facebook social network

Must be over 13

• Bebo social network
• Blogger weblog publishing tool
• Chamber of Chat Harry Potter multiplayer RPG (no private chat, moderators)
• Gaia Online community with games, message boards etc…
• Hi 5 social networking site
• IMVU chat with friends in 3D
• Jaiku microblogging
• MySpace social network
• Ning social network created around an area of interest (can be open or private)
• Runescape multiplayer game
• Tokbox video chat (works with Twitter & others)
• Twitter microblogging Twitter is now for over-18s. See comments to this post.
• Vox weblog publishing tool
• Weebly website creation tool (includes blogs, forums)
• Wetoku video interview tool (requires parents’ approval)
• Wordpress.com weblog publishing tool
• Writeboard single wiki pages for writing activities
• Xanga weblog community
• 12Seconds video microblogging
• 43 Things microblogging site based around personal goals

Download & install application required

• There virtual world
• Teen Second Life virtual world (13-17 yo)
• vSide virtual world

No Age minimum specified, but require parental approval

• Awol chat, games, diary, friends, & cribs
• Boom Bang chat, make friends and explore a virtual world (moderated)
• Club Penguin virtual world for kids populated by penguins (moderated, ’safe’ chat)
• Endless Online multiplayer RPG
• Graal Online multiplayer RPG
• Marapets virtual pet site with games and chat community
• Neopets Virtual world for pets
• Millsberry Home building community (pre-scripted chat, monitored)
• Sanriotown Hello Kitty games, blogs and forums
• Shining Stars Chatting, naming stars, star worlds (’safe’ pre-constructed chat)
• Typepad weblog publishing tool
• Webkinz virtual pet community (’safe’ chat)

Download & install application required

• Dofus multiplayer RPG
• Eternal Lands multiplayer RPG
• Furcadia multiplayer RPG
• FreeRealms multiplayer RPG (restricted chat, moderated)

I couldn’t find anything definitive about age restrictions on Wikispaces, EduBlogs or 21Classes, but considering that they’re aimed at teachers and learners, I’m guessing that they must be OK for all ages?? I couldn’t find anything in PBworks’ (PBwiki), or Delicious‘ Terms of Service mentioning age either.

As a rule of thumb, when checking out an online tool that you might want to use with younger learners, check the Terms of Service (sometimes called Terms of Use) and their privacy policy. This should be somewhere on the homepage (usually at the bottom). Then do an inline search (hit Ctrl+F) for ‘years’ or ‘guardian’ or ‘13′ or something like that to jump to the bit about age restrictions, and then read the small print.

By the way, blogging tool tumblr. requires subscribers to be over 18.

And thanks to Denis for helping me with the list.

The article reports:

Dr Thomas Jackson of Loughborough University, England, found that it takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption by email

This adds up: we can waste as much as 8 1/2 hours a week if we answer our email as soon as we get it.

I like the reason they offer for why people might feel compelled to check their email every five minutes:

Tom Stafford, a lecturer at the University of Sheffield, England, and co-author of the book Mind Hacks, believes that the same fundamental learning mechanisms that drive gambling addicts are also at work in email users. “Both slot machines and email follow something called a ‘variable interval reinforcement schedule’ which has been established as the way to train in the strongest habits,”

Well, it made me giggle.

Now I don’t get any pleasure from email at all. In fact, I avoid it as much as possible. But then maybe I’m just a Misanthrope.

This whole ‘dangers of email’ thing got me thinking about Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero idea: 43 Folders Series: Inbox Zero

Here’s his video (hour long Google talk about Inbox Zero)

Via Slashdot Slashdot | Why Email Has Become Dangerous

The most striking thing about what Derek is doing is it’s relevance. He’s using simple technology that kids are already familiar with, but in a learning context. It has currency. He showed lots of video clips. The one that really hit me was of a young lad totally absorbed in a timed game on the Nintendo DS. He was doing sums. Doing them faster than I could. He was clearly engaged, clearly achieving, clearly aware that he was doing well. Apparently up to that point he had been considered a ‘problem child’.

He also showed some impressive statistics, anecdotal accounts and testimonials to show the effectiveness of games on speed and accuracy in test results using brain gym. Learners also felt better about themselves: improved confidence and self esteem.

He described a class where learners started the lesson on time and worked in silence on activities. He also described a high level of peer support.

This approach is also relatively light on resources. Consolarium uses readily available game consoles and handheld game devices with existing consumer games to engage learners. So no need to spend time and money on developing software and buying expertise, and no need to talk to the IT department about integration, compatibility or security. Just plug it into the TV and work out how to integrate the games into class work.

Although games can have an intrinsic learning point, he pointed out that games don’t need to teach something explicitly. He showed a class using Guitar Hero in an activity to stimulate a cross curricular project. The game helped to contextualise the learning and make the learning relevant. So in this case the learning happened away from the game. But the game set the scene, context and helped in the early stages to set roles and goals for the project. Nice. It looked like a lot of fun too.

Games become less of what we offer by the time kids reach middle school, where they were once part of kids’ education.

Here are a few other notes from his talk that I haven’t tidied up yet:

Tetris. Clever in that context, why not or how could they be clever in other contexts.

• tetris = spacial control, visual awareness and mental manual dexterity.
• zoombinis = strategy problem solving without even know that they were doing it.
• dance mats = help teach phonics
• pro evolution soccer and championship manager = teach strategy

www.ltscotland.org.uk/consolarium

He mentioned Tim Ryland’s work. Myst. Using the game in class to seed and stimulate a writing activity.

And tools to make games:

• Mission Maker
• Game maker
• scratch
• neverwinter nights is dialogue based . ss must create a story
• thinking worlds
• crazy talk – application that creates lip movemens on pictures. Allows ss to make their stories come to life.

She started by citing many examples of learning events from young kids who learnt to read, to social and cultural learning, to maths and economics… etc…

Then she logged into WoW to chat with some of her guild members. All this in front of an audience of 1200 conference attendees – very brave of her. She engaged her guildies in a conversation about Thanksgiving. She asked, “What are you giving thanks for?” and got a variety of answers, religious, social, historical – showing how the game can help to engage people in cultural conversations, adding “You see we don’t play the game to fight all the time. We have interesting chats.”

Then she asked her former guild leader Trojan to explain how he developed his leadership skills. He said, “Mostly by experience I would try to lead groups into instances… they needed a leader, I tried best to be that person”.

He then went on to list the skills he needed to lead a guild in World of Warcraft. I couldn’t type fast enough but here are a three points I managed to catch:

• You need to be understanding and open to suggestions
• Keeping an open mind is helpful.
• Sometimes you need to put your foot down.

Trojan is 21 and has been playing games for 15 years (he started with Super Mario) and is now studying to be a teacher.

Then she got some 4 guys and a gal to come on stage and do a group boss fight in World of Warcraft (a challenging part of the game called ‘Ramparts’). Another guy gave a commetary to describe what was going on while the party of 5 played. While they were setting up, he and Angeline explained leadership roles, a bit about conflict resolution, and the problem of selecting members and other decisions for forming and balancing 20 man raids.

Before the boss fight, the raid leader took the mic and gave instructions to his team about roles and responsibilities they would take on during the battle.
We watched as they did a messy job on the first boss fight, after which the raid leader gave them some feedback on their performance afterwards. He told his mage off for not using crowd control (sheeping)! Very funny. I think it was deliberately botched so they could show how a leader needs to give feedback to party members (as a learning point). It worked very nicely too.

He then gave instructions live over the microphone to his team about the next battle to avoid a repeat of the previous attempt. He explained where they needed to stand and what they needed to do while fighting the last boss. (again, nicely stage-managed to show off the role of the leader and the skills involved to coordinate the group).

At the same time they discussed the ethics of stealing items in-game from other players (ninja-ing). They also described the importance of sacrificing your needs for the needs of the group. Ethics and teamwork, good educational stuff.

After they’d killed the final boss, Angeline Khoo introduced the raid group to the audience by name (sadly I couldn’t type fast enough to get their names). They were all professionals working in education from IDA from schools from NIE etc….

She asked them what they gained from playing WoW?

• Family affair plays with wife and son.
• Social dimension – teamwork – place the team above yourself.
• The ability to coordinate people in the game. HR work, solve problems.
• Communication
• Anger management and tolerance.

She then asked how they managed their time.

• Clear boundaries time and quest objectives
• Prioritise against family time and work time. Learnt time management. During holidays.
• As an adult all our priorities are already in place. My real life priorities manage my time.

Some other questions:

Are people able to transfer the learning to real life contexts? Yes, gamers seem to show better coordination.

Is there a paradox between gaming relaxation and real world … does real persistence transfer from gaming to the real world? Maybe, but the purpose of this demonstration was merely to demystify gaming so that teachers could get an idea of what it’s about and how, maybe it might be relevant to education.

Great stuff.

Games for Change (G4C) — home

Video games rob reading, homework time: U.S. study | Technology | Reuters
Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine

actual paper http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/161/7/684