THIAGI GAMELETTER: October 2008

SERIOUSLY FUN ACTIVITIES FOR TRAINERS, FACILITATORS, PERFORMANCE CONSULTANTS, AND MANAGERS.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Masthead
Our mission statement, copyright notice, and cast of characters.

Guest Gamer
Interview with Gareth Kingston
A game expert from South Africa.

Review Game
Block Towers Review by Gareth Kingston
Give a block to the other team.

Distributed Game
Trick Questions
Listen literally, think laterally.

Jolt
Last Week
That was the week that was.

Jolt Principles
Using Jolts with Large Groups
The more the merrier.

Conference
NASAGA 2008
Only two weeks more.

Learning Activities
Learning Activities Revisited - 8
Interactive stories and item processing.

Brian's Words
A Public Statement by Brian Remer
How committed are you?

Check It Out
Positive Psychology News Daily
A daily dose of happiness.

Single Item Survey
Interview Questions
You are the interviewer.

Masthead

THIAGI GAMELETTER:

SERIOUSLY FUN ACTIVITIES FOR TRAINERS, FACILITATORS, PERFORMANCE CONSULTANTS, AND MANAGERS.

Mission

To increase and improve the use of interactive, experiential strategies to improve human performance in an effective, efficient, and enjoyable way.

Editorial Roster

Editor: Sivasailam (Thiagi) Thiagarajan

Assistant Editor: Raja Thiagarajan

Associate Editor: Jean Reese

Contributing Editors: Brian Remer and Les Lauber

Editorial Advisory Board: Bill Wake, Matthew Richter, Samuel van den Bergh, and <type your name here>

Copyright Info

The materials in this newsletter are copyright 2008 by The Thiagi Group. However, they may be freely reproduced for educational/training activities. There is no need to obtain special permission for such use as long as you do not reproduce more than 100 copies per year. Please include the following statement on all reproductions:

Reprinted from THIAGI GAMELETTER. Copyright © 2008 by The Thiagi Group, Inc.

For any other use of the content, please contact us ( thiagi@thiagi.com ) for permission.

Subscription Info

All registered subscribers receive Thiagi GameLetter free of charge.

However, to prevent us from becoming bankrupt, we have decided to adopt a Busker Protocol. If you like what you read, if you find it useful, and if you'd like us to continue publishing the newsletter, please feel free to chip in with any financial contribution. Our estimated annual cost for this newsletter is $30,000. So we suggest an annual contribution of $30 (which is less than one-third the subscription cost of Thiagi's earlier paper-based newsletter). We would appreciate any amount that you send us, but make sure it is less than $30,000 (since we don't want to make a profit). You can mail your check to Thiagi, 4423 East Trailridge Road, Bloomington, IN 47408 or call us at (812) 332-1478 to charge the amount to a credit card. Or you can charge your credit card online , through The Thiagi Group, Inc. Please let us know if you need an invoice for financial record keeping.

Feedback Request

Thiagi believes in practicing what he preaches. This is an interactive newsletter, so interact already! Send us your feedback, sarcastic remarks, and gratuitous advice through email to thiagi@thiagi.com . Thanks!

Guest Gamer

Gareth Kingston is a Product Developer and Senior Instructional Designer at a South African company called Trainiac ( www.trainiac.co.za ). Most of his experience with games comes from working as an English Teacher in Taiwan where he had a range of age groups and a variety of class types to contend with. Games were a prominent feature of these classes as foreign English teachers are sold as “Edutainers” to encourage a love for the language and to debone any fear responses from learners.

Upon returning to South Africa, Gareth studied a PDM (post graduate business management diploma) and started work at Trainiac. He recognized many gaps in his understanding of the differences between child and adult learners, but he also noticed congruencies such as the need for positive reinforcement, the power of discovery learning, the pull of social interaction, and the benefits of peer control and managed team play.

Gareth has designed learning programs for many blue chip companies and will continue to use training games and serious play activities for the rest of his life.

Interview with Gareth Kingston

TGL: Gareth, what would you say is your specialty area?

Gareth: My specialty areas are learning program design, interactivity design, and conceptual simulation design. I am challenged by participants with various learning styles. I have a time limit for helping them achieve a number of objectives. My choices range from the standard stand-and-deliver techniques with butts in seats to a co-operative approach where the learners can assure feedback through their behavioral participation and engagement. By influencing the design aspects of the activity I can influence learners more effectively and the use of games assists me in meeting these objectives.

Interaction design involves humanistic aspects such as culture, humour, current topical issues that add context, and a clear understanding of the learner group I am interacting with. By tweaking certain factors I can create an authentic experience based on the learner's perspective. I use visual learning maps and cards in my designs to increase the interaction because learners are doing instead of telling.

TGL: How did you get into designing and using games?

Gareth: I got into designing and using games through the need to educate a classroom filled with very demanding kids, meeting their expectations, and achieving learning objectives. I used an interesting framegame called “the little teacher” game where you assign a new person each week to be the “teacher”. Since the “teach” script is firmly ingrained into a participant's mind the classroom becomes a self-regulating ecosystem and allows the facilitator to focus on more value- adding activities instead of playing the role of a “bad cop”. Students in my classes started to develop much faster and more confidently after I began using my own games. Students who had failed in other classes and had been shunted into my own classes became more confident, spoke more frequently, and performed successfully.

TGL: How long have you been designing and using games?

Gareth: I have been designing and using games for 9 years. Sometimes I will make them up on the spot if an opportunity presents itself. When training employees in a telecommunications company on their customer experience processes, I found a bunch of balloons, wrote the process steps on the balloons and we played a musical chairs type of game where participants had to bounce the balloons and keep them in the air whilst we played some music in the background. When we stopped the music the participants had to get into the process sequence. People who were not in the correct spot were eliminated and the activity continued. This spontaneous game reflects several interesting aspects: the effect of a familiar social game so the person eliminated does not get upset, the motivational strength of a game that is haptic and optic, and the incorporation of teamwork. Games have evolved in all cultures because they are rule-based social connectors that allow important skills practice that disengage our logic and increase our understanding of the world.

TGL: Where do you use games in your training?

Gareth: I use games for various outcomes: introducing a concept, developing an outcome, providing icebreakers, energizing the group, reviewing and reflecting, assessing and evaluating, breaking monotony, creating learner autonomy, engaging with content, dealing with the need for repetition, and connecting with my participants.

TGL: How do your clients react to training games?

Gareth: Clients respond positively if you create an immersive experience. Inclusion of clients in a game is a proof of concept that learning outcomes will be met and that their balanced scorecard is secure. Your client will realize that you are assisting them and making them look good as project owners.

TGL: How do your participants respond?

Gareth: Participants respond in the same way. If a negative personality exists, the peer-to-peer aspect and competitive nature of human beings extinguishes that negative spark. If any other negativity persists, I use Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a diagnostic game to uncover the underlying causes. No game will work if your participants are too hot, or hungry, or have been laid off from work. Due to the empowering nature of games, their universality, and the creation of an internal locus of control, games almost always elicit a positive response from participants.

TGL: What is the most horrible or embarrassing moment you had in conducting games?

Gareth: I have had so many embarrassing experiences that I'd need 50 hands to count them on. The most horrible experience I ever had was using training games at a trucking company for their induction program. The resistance came from one of the content experts who did not understand why we were playing games because back in his days you walked into the workplace and no one told you about the company and you just learned what you found out by yourself. This horrible incident had a happy ending. After we trained the new employees, the feedback was amazing. The next time I saw the content expert, he mentioned how good the training was.

In terms of embarrassing moments during game play, I find it very easy to recover if you use humor and creativity. If I mentioned a ball for an activity only to find that the ball was missing, I'd roll up a sheet of flipchart paper and use that instead. One of the beautiful aspects of playing games is that we treat each other as human beings so when things go wrong, being playful and intuitive is more important than being right. Participants are also very forgiving because they want everyone—including you—to succeed.

TGL: What advice do you have to newcomers?

Gareth: Get out there and start designing games already!

TGL: What types of games do you use most frequently?

Gareth: Energizers and attention grabbers. Once you have someone's attention you can then focus on the desired outcomes.

TGL: What is your most favorite game?

Gareth: I like creating a 5 x 5 matrix and hiding amounts in the grid. After you ask participants answer a question correctly, they have an opportunity to choose a block in the grid. Since this game is based on popular lotto and game shows, participants are brought in immediately. This game is also very low in maintenance and preparation time. The element of risk in not knowing what you are choosing separates the successful answer from the randomness of choice. So this game works because it allows for the review of material and for maintaining attention through curiosity and risk taking triggers.

TGL: Who are your favorite game designers?

Gareth: Thiagi.

TGL: Do you have any book recommendations?

Gareth: The Art of Possibility by Ben and Rosamund Zander. I like the use of games to coach people into high performance zones.

TGL: What's your prediction about the future of games?

Gareth: As the knowledge dump that we call the world wide web swallows more of the world, the need for social connection will become a priority. We can achieve this by playing with how we use the knowledge that we have accumulated. Humans have created games and sports for performance and amusement as a product of an evolutionary need to survive, compete, and outperform the competition as well as the need to connect socially and create networks in order to invest in the strength of community. Games are a salient aspect of human existence since they are boundary systems (having rules and regulations), systems of community and membership, and systems of performance measure and continual improvement. As such they are an indelible facet of our existence and will continue to be so.

Review Game

Block Towers Review
by Gareth Kingston

Here's one of my favorite review games.

Learning Triggers

Curiosity; Recognition of gaps; Competition

Learning Styles

All

Facilitator Style

Co-operative

Requirements

Outcome

Review the material and reflect on the material covered

Method

Divide the participants into two opposing teams.

Assign numbers to each team by numbering each participant.

Explain that when you call out a number the participants who have been assigned that number must stand up and compete with each other. For example, if you call out “5” the two opposing team players you assigned the number 5 to must stand up and compete against each other.

Explain that you will provide a question related to the material covered to date. Ask the question. The first person to hit the table gets to answer the question.

If the answer is correct the opposing team gets a block that they must place upright. Subsequent blocks must be placed on top of the previous block to form a tower. When the tower eventually falls down, the team loses.

When opposing team members hit the table at the same time, a tie breaker mini game is necessary. Ask the tied players to stare at each other. Explain that the first person to smile or laugh loses to the other player. (This tie breaker is an effective Neuro-Linguistic programming technique since the player, even having lost that opportunity to answer the question is smiling—which cues the brain into framing the event as a positive experience.)

Distributed Game

Trick Questions

What is bigger than the universe and if you eat it for a week, you will lose some weight?

This is a trick question. Think about it for a minute or so.

If you know the answer, you probably heard it before from a kid.

If you figured out the answer without any previous exposure, congratulations!

If you haven't figured out the answer and want to give up, check the answer.

In addition to becoming popular with children and torturing grown ups, trick questions reward you for thinking laterally, outside the box. They provide you with “aha” moments. They teach you to ignore irrelevant noise and focus on the critical piece of information.

I have been collecting trick questions like this one for the past couple of months. In case you are curious, here's the earliest trick question that is included in my collection. It is incorporated in an eighteenth-century nursery rhyme:

As I was going to St. Ives
I met a man with seven wives,
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits,
Kits, cats, sacks, wives,
How many were going to St. Ives?

Try to solve this puzzle.

If you figured out the answer as 75-1, you are a mathematical genius—but completely wrong. Read the rhyme again and see if you can figure out the correct answer.

If you want to cheat, take a peek at the answer.

I have incorporated the trick questions in a game that I used during a conference. Here are the unique features of this game:

Basic Idea

Different people are supplied with a different trick question and the answer. They exchange the questions and answers with each other whenever they feel like it. At the close of the activity, a contest is held during which the facilitator asks 10 trick questions one at a time. Players who cannot give the correct answer sit down. The last player standing is the winner.

Purpose

Participants

Any number

Time

This is a distributed game; it is played in the background during other activities (such as a conference). The game can last for several hours or several days. Announce the start time and the specific scheduled period (typically 10 minutes) for the ending contest.

Supplies

Preparation

Prepare your own question cards with a trick question and the creative answer. You can collect such questions from interviewing children, reviewing puzzle books, or surfing the Internet. To give yourself a head start, see the List of Trick Questions below. If you have more participants than questions, simply use duplicate question cards.

Flow

Distribute instructions and question cards. When participants check in, give each participant the same instruction sheet and a different trick question card.

Leave them alone. Let participants figure out how they want to participate and who they want to partner with.

Conduct the contest. At the scheduled start time, welcome participants who turn up. Don't be disappointed if all participants don't show up. Ask everyone to stand up and read a random trick question. Ask those who don't know the answer to sit down. Ask the remaining participants to say the answer to someone near them (either sitting or standing).

Give the correct answer. Announce the correct answer and ask participants who did not give this answer to sit down.

Identify the winner. Repeat the procedure, eliminating more participants during each round. To speed up the process, use some trick questions that were not used in the question cards. If more than one participant remains standing at the end of the scheduled period, declare them to be joint winners.

Answer 1

Answer 1

What is bigger than the universe and if you eat it for a week, you will lose some weight?

Answer: Nothing. (Nothing is bigger than the universe, and if you eat nothing for a week, you will lose some weight.)

Back

Handout 1

How to Participate in Trick Questions

What do you get? You receive one question card. This card has a trick question and the answer.

Here is an example:

QUESTION: What English word do most people spell incorrectly?

ANSWER: The word “incorrectly”

What do you do? Pair up with as many of the other participants as possible and share your questions and answers. Do this at your own pace and your choice.

How do you win? We will conduct a trick question contest for 10 minutes at a pre-announced time. You win if you give the most correct answers.

Answer 2

Answer 2

How many were going to St. Ives? Just one—you. Read the first line of the nursery rhyme again.

Back

List 1

List of Trick Questions

  1. QUESTION: A shirt and a tie cost $50. The shirt costs $10 more than the tie. What is the price of the shirt?
    ANSWER: $30
  2. QUESTION: Why are 2006 pennies worth more than 1998 pennies?
    ANSWER: Because 2,006 pennies are worth $20.06 whereas 1,998 pennies are worth only $19.98.
  3. QUESTION: Divide 10 by ½ . Double the answer. What do you get?
    ANSWER: 40. (If you divide 10 by 2, you get 5. But when you divide 10 by ½, you get 20.)
  4. QUESTION: Do Australians have a 4th of July?
    ANSWER: Yes, they do. The calendars in all Western countries have a Fourth of July.
  5. QUESTION: What seven-letter word becomes longer when you remove a letter?
    ANSWER: Lounger
  6. QUESTION: Do this simple addition problem in your head: Take 1000 and add 40 to it. Now add another 1000. Now add 30. Add another 1000. Now add 20. Now add another 1000. Now add 10. What is the total?
    ANSWER: 4100. (This is the correct answer. Many people get 5000, which is incorrect.)
  7. QUESTION: How can you stand underwater for more than 5 minutes without using any special equipment?
    ANSWER: Simple! Just hold a glass of water above your head.
  8. QUESTION: How many birthdays does an average woman have?
    ANSWER: Only one: the day she was born.
  9. QUESTION: You can break this simply by saying it. What is it?
    ANSWER: Silence
  10. QUESTION: How many times can you subtract 10 from 100?
    ANSWER: Only once. After the first time, you will be subtracting 10 from 90 (and so on).
  11. QUESTION: A Swiss barber claims that he'd rather cut the hair of three French-speaking men than one German-speaking man. Whey do you think he feels that way?
    ANSWER: Because he will make three times as much money.
  12. QUESTION: If there are 10 dollars on the table and you take away 8, how many dollars do you have?
    ANSWER: 8, because that's what you took away.
  13. QUESTION: In Sri Lanka, why can't a man marry his widow's sister?
    ANSWER: In order to have a widow, the man must be dead. Dead men cannot marry.
  14. QUESTION: John and Mike are born to the same mother on the same day. But they are not twins. How come?
    ANSWER: They are two members of a set of triplets.
  15. QUESTION: Some months have 31 days. Others have 30 days. How many months have 28?
    ANSWER: Twelve. All months have at least 28 days.
  16. QUESTION: Tracy's father is an astronomer and he has three daughters. He named one of them Venus and the other one Mercury. What's the name of the third girl?
    ANSWER: Tracy.
  17. QUESTION: Two boys play seven games of chess. There are no ties. Both boys win the same number of games. How is this possible?
    ANSWER: The boys are not playing against each other.
  18. QUESTION: Why do women in India have more shoes than women in the neighboring country of Pakistan?
    ANSWER: Because there are more women in India.
  19. QUESTION: You are a racecar driver. If you overtake the last car, what position are you in?
    ANSWER: You cannot overtake the last car.
  20. QUESTION: You are a racecar driver. Just before the finish line, you overtake the second car. In what position do you finish?
    ANSWER: Second. (You finish first only if you overtake the first car.)

Jolt

Last Week

The past affects our present level of happiness. We can make ourselves unhappy by brooding or ruminating over bitter, hostile, and resentful experiences. We can increase our happiness by savoring the past with gratitude, pride, and contentment. This jolt demonstrates how our current emotions are determined by the nature of our thoughts about the past.

Purpose

To explore the impact of rumination or gratitude about the past on our current level of happiness.

Participants

Any number

Time

5 minutes

Handouts

Flow

Distribute the questionnaire. Randomly distribute equal numbers of the two versions of the questionnaire, one for each participant. (Everyone will assume they have the same questionnaire.) One questionnaire is the rumination questionnaire. It says, “Think back about last week. What were three unpleasant problems or obstacles that you encountered? List them briefly below.”

Give instructions. Ask participants to take a couple of minutes to respond to the Last Week questionnaire. Emphasize that the answers are for their eyes only. Nobody will be required to share the responses with others. So participants can write short cryptic responses that only they understand.

Check on the emotional response. After making sure that everyone has completed the questionnaire, ask participants to decide whether the act of responding to the questionnaire made them feel more positive or more negative than before. Ask participants who became more positive to stand up. Request the participants who became more negative people to remain seated.

Check the impact of the questionnaire. Explain that you had two versions of the questionnaire. Read the item from the rumination version and the gratitude version to explain the difference. Ask participants to raise their hand (while continuing to be standing or sitting) if they received the gratitude questionnaire.

Debrief participants. It is likely more of the people who are standing up will raise their hands (compared to those sitting down). Conduct a debriefing discussion to reveal that thinking about the past affects our emotions. Ask for real-world examples of this principle. Also ask how participants can increase their thoughts of gratitude about the past.

Handout 2

Last Week Questionnaire

Think back on what happened last week. Recall three events from last week that frustrated you and made you feel unhappy.

List these events briefly below.

You do not have to share your responses with anyone else, so you can write them down in an abbreviated or cryptic fashion.

  1.  
  2.  
  3.  

Handout 3

Last Week Questionnaire

Think back on what happened last week. Recall three events from last week that helped you or made you feel grateful.

List these events briefly below.

You do not have to share your responses with anyone else, so you can write them down in an abbreviated or cryptic fashion.

  1.  
  2.  
  3.  

Jolt Principles

Jolts are interactive experiential activities that lull participants into behaving in a comfortable way and then suddenly delivering a powerful wake-up call. Jolts force participants to re-examine their assumptions and revise their habitual practices. A typical jolt lasts only a few minutes but provides enough insights for a lengthy debriefing. Not all jolts entrap the participants; some of them suggest thought experiments and activities to provide enlightening insights.

Using Jolts with Large Groups

Most facilitators are afraid of conducting experiential activities with large groups, but this fear is unfounded. Actually working with large groups provides several advantages. For one thing, because of the contagious nature of experiential activities, large groups produce greater impact and more insights.

Some jolts involve individuals solving puzzles. In this situation, it does not matter how large the group is because the interaction is not among members of the group but between the individual participant and the puzzle.

Some jolts involve pairs of participants interacting with each other. So the unit of interaction is two people rather than all the 200 people in the room.

Some jolts are designed for use with large groups. Example: How quickly can everyone in the room line up according to their dates of birth (months and days, not the years). After this jolt, you can debrief your participants to drive home principles related to complexity, self-organizing social systems, need for clear instructions, mob behavior, or the emergence of take-charge leaders.

Sometimes the room setup or logistics prevent you from conducting a jolt with a large group. In this case, just bring a small group of volunteers to the front of the room and conduct the jolt with them. Other people watch what is happening and learn vicariously.

Conference

NASAGA 2008

Games, Activities, Simulations: October 15-18, 2008

The 40th Annual Conference of the North American Simulation and Gaming Association (NASAGA) will be held in Indianapolis. The only conference that specializes in training games and simulations has a lot to offer to trainers, facilitators, instructional designers, and performance consultants. Visit the conference website ( http://www.nasaga.org/webx/Conference2008/ ) for more information.

Here are some highlights of this exciting conference:

Preconference Workshops

On October 15, 2008 you will have a choice of three preconference workshops:

Keynotes

Each day of the regular conference (October 16-18) will begin with an important, inspiring, and intriguing keynote presentation from a though leader in our field:

Scott Rigby: Motivational Roadmap of Players

Pierre Corbeil: Play Pride

Rosalyn Chan: Art, Simulation, and the Work Environment

Conference Sessions

The conference will feature more than 30 concurrent sessions conducted by knowledgeable practitioners. You can read the descriptions of these sessions on the “Program” section of NASAGA 2008 website. In the meantime, here's a peek at a few selected sessions:

Judee Blohm and Chuck Needlman: Readers' Theater: Bringing Unheard Voices to Courageous Conversations
Debi Bridle: Brilliant Ideas to Fuel the Imagination
Michelle Cummings: A Teachable Moment: Processing the Experience
Matt DeMarco: The Gift of Teamwork
Tim Gustafson: Why Won't They Let Me Use Techniques That Work?
Greg Koeser: Twist and Bond — Using twisting balloons for various games and modeling
Chuck Needlman and Judee Blohm: Nested Boxes Simulation
David Piltz: TOOLS: Tactile, Overt, Operational Learning Strategies
David Piltz: Controversy: Facilitating with EASE
Brian Remer: The Board Game Body Shop
Nick Smith: Money for Old Rope?
John Steiner: Quick and It'll-Stick Instructional Design (On The Fly)!
Tracy Tagliati: Crafting Clever Closers
Sivasailam Thiagarajan: Integrating Training Activities with Content
Samuel van den Bergh: Games that Work Wonders across Cultures
Stella Ting-Toomey and Leeva Chung: Culture Shock: How Much Shock Can You Take?
Marian H. Williams: Physical Webbing - Building Knowledge and Creating Understanding Through Mindmapping Structures

Visit the conference website ( http://www.nasaga.org/webx/Conference2008/ ) for more information. Or register today.

See you at NASAGA 2008 in a couple of weeks!

Learning Activities

Learning Activities Revisited - 8

Content and activity are the yin and yang of training. You need both to produce effective and engaging learning. Content without activity produces sterile knowledge. Activity without content results in wasted effort.

It is not enough if you have both content and activity. These two have to be carefully balanced, aligned, and integrated.

We have access to different sources of training content:

Over the past several years, we have been exploring different types of learning activities that can be used with different sources of existing content.

I discussed two or three learning activities in greater detail during each of the past seven months. This month, I explore learning activities associated with interactive storytelling and item processing.

17. Interactive Storytelling

(Content Source: Stories)

This activity involves fictional narratives in a variety of forms. Participants may listen to a story and make appropriate decisions at critical junctures. They may also create and share stories that illustrate key concepts, steps, or principles from the instructional content.

Sample Interactive Storytelling Activity: Appreciative Encounters

The training objective for this interactive storytelling activity is to identify factors that contribute to positive cross-cultural interactions:

  1. Divide participants into two or more approximately equal-sized teams, each with 3-5 members.
  2. Ask each participant to work independently to come up with a story related to a positive intercultural interaction. This story should be a personal anecdote that features a delightful encounter with one or more people from a different culture.
  3. Invite participants to walk around the room and pair up with someone from a different team. The two participants should share their stories with each other. Ask participants to listen carefully to each other so they can repeat the other person's story at a later time.
  4. After a suitable pause, make sure that both members of each pair have exchanged their stories. Ask participants to return to their teams and to take turns presenting two stories: their own story and the story they heard from their partner during the previous step. Each team member should present the stories in a random order without identifying which story belongs to whom. In other words, they should present the other person's story as if it were their own.
  5. After each participant has finished presenting the two stories, other team members try to guess which one is the presenter's own story and which one is plagiarized from someone else. The presenter identifies her own story. This process is repeated until everyone in the team has presented two ideas.
  6. Ask members of each team to think back on all the stories they heard and identify the common themes among them.

18. Item Processing

(Content Source: Unorganized information)

In this activity participants organize bits of information, ideas, facts, questions, complaints, or suggestions. Item processing results in deeper understanding and easier recall of different types of information.

Sample Item Processing Activity: Complaint Clusters

The training objective for this item processing activity is to identify major categories of customer complaints and to come up with examples of each category:

  1. Collect several customer complaints and print each complaint on a separate card.
  2. Lay out the cards on a table in a random order.
  3. Ask participants to study the complaints and sort them into categories by moving the cards around. Impose a gag order: Tell participants not to talk to each other during this process.
  4. Ask participants to continue silently rearranging the cards until consensus is reached.
  5. Remove the gag order. Ask participants to study each cluster of cards and come up with a suitable label for the category.
  6. Ask participants to study different categories and discuss similarities and differences among them.

Brian's Words

Brian Remer is Creative Learning Director at The Firefly Group ( brian@thefirefly.org ). In addition to being a master of the 99-words format, Brian invents games and interactive strategies to expand learning and deepen insights.

A Public Statement
by Brian Remer

A Public Statement

A white pickup truck, bent and beginning to rust drove past. On the back was stenciled, “Just Married 5/15/06.” Yet this was more than a year after the nuptial date and the sign had been scribed not with the usual shaving cream or cardboard sign but permanently!

I marveled that anyone would deliberately lower the resale value of even a modest vehicle. Was this an expression of jaded ennui, eternal optimism, or a perpetual reminder of what's really important?

More significantly, what am I similarly committed to that I'd make a traveling billboard to advertise it?

Check It Out

Positive Psychology News Daily

In the September issue of TGL, we explored evidence-based activities that increase our happiness. Here’s a web site that provides additional up-to-date information about happiness.

Positive Psychology News Daily ( http://pos-psych.com/ ) provides the latest news about happiness, the science of happiness, and Positive Psychology. The goal of the web site is to be your fun, collaborative place for a research-based daily boost of happiness.

The articles are written by invited guest authors or alumni or students at the Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) programs (one at the University of Pennsylvania and the other at the University of East London).

If you want to receive happiness-related articles every day, you can enter your email address at the web site. All past articles are archived; you can locate relevant articles by typing keywords on a search box or by using the graphic image maps that are conveniently located at the web site.

Single Item Survey

Interview Questions

In our Guest Gamer interviews, we use a standard set of questions.

As you read the interviews, you probably wanted to know the answers to some other questions. Perhaps you are bored of our questions and you have been thinking of more interesting ones.

We have decided to let you share your interview questions with us. We will incorporate the more interesting ones in our future Guest Gamer interviews.

Send us your suggested interview questions.

Here are some samples that we got from our friends:

To send your interview questions, visit this survey page (opens in a new window). You may include your name along with your suggestion or keep it anonymous. You may send more than one response.