behavioural psychology

I see game design and learning design (what a good professional teacher does) as inherently similar activities. The principles of "good games" and of "good learning" are the same, by and large. This is so, of course, because games are just well designed problem-solving spaces with feedback and clear outcomes and that is the most essential thing for real, deep, and consequential learning. These principles include (among others): making clear what identity the learning requires; making clear why anyone would want to do such learning; making clear how the learning will function to lead to problem solving and mastery; making the standards of achievement high and clear, but reachable with persistence; early successes; a low cost of failure that encourages exploration, risk taking, and trying out new styles; lots of practice of basic skills inside larger goal-based and motivating activities; creating and then challenging routine mastery at different levels to move learners upwards; using information and texts "just in time" and "on demand"; performance before competence (doing as a way of learning and being); getting learners to think like designers and to be able themselves to design; encouraging collaboration and affiliation with what is being learned as part of an identity and passion one shares with others; good mentoring by other people, as well as smart tools and technologies.

The App Center is expected to be rolled out globally in "the coming weeks", said Facebook's Aaron Brady in a post on the network's developer blog.

"All developers should start preparing today to make sure their app is included for the launch," he wrote.

However, Mr Brady said the store was not designed to compete head-on with the likes of Apple's App Store and Google Play.

"The App Center is designed to grow mobile apps that use Facebook - whether they're on iOS, Android or the mobile web," he wrote.

Stunning new visuals of the brain reveal a deceptively simple pattern of organization in the wiring of this complex organ.

With the global structure of brain region-t0-region communication mapped out, and revealing a simplistic structure, the potential to understand what goes wrong in brain injury should be aided greatly. These crude maps, for the moment, should at least give us a refreshing view on how the different regions might function together.

I can't wait to see what new angles in research come out of this connectome project. 

A new study surveyed 92 college students during their first semester at school, who had a Facebook profile picture that could be coded for smile intensity, and followed them for 3.5 years.

Ten years after Ulmer’s first geocache 5 million geocachers around the world have logged more than 1.3 million caches on multiple websites. When the hobby celebrated its 10th anniversary last year there were nearly 600 separate commemorative events on six different continents – geocaching on Antarctica is one thing, partying there is another. More than 350 of those events were in the US. Geocaching has been covered by tons of local and online media and a few major ones. The Washington Post recently ran a TechCrunch article about the GeoMate Jr., a GPS device made simple so that five year olds with geocaching aspirations can join the fun. Much of the time, however, the hobby makes headlines because some non-geoacher mistook an oddly-placed ammo box of trinkets as something dangerous. Go figure.
So what’s so interesting about finding a slingshot? PRNewswire quotes Bryan Roth, one of the co-founders of geocaching.com, the global online headquarters: “People love treasure hunts. Just look at the popularity of the ‘Pirates of the Carribean’ and ‘Indiana Jones’ movies. …we’re able to deliver treasure hunting to everyone in a way that combines technology, outdoor recreation and a global community.” And, with a one-time cost of the GPS at about $100 it’s about as cheap as hobbies come. Says Roth, “Geocaching is accessible to everyone.” It gets even cheaper if you have an iPhone and maybe even more fun. The Geocaching app costs just $10 and locates the nearest geocache wherever you are with the push of a button.