Acts of Loving Kindness, Michael J. Goldberg

SUMMARY: I would like you to believe that performing acts of loving kindness is our duty and responsibility. That it is our social contract with humanity. That it is the covenant we made with medicine and with each other.

SOURCE: J Child Orthop (2008) 2:247–249. DOI 10.1007/s11832-008-0115-z. Reprinted with the kind permission of the author, Michael J. Goldberg, michael.goldberg@seattlechildrens.org – M. J. Goldberg (&) Department of Orthopedics, Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center, University of Washington, 4800 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, WA 98105, USA

To Appear Separate or To Relate – That is the Question!

For more than a decade, I have been reading and sharing the book, The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti, my copy translated by Robert A. F. Thurman (1991), a Columbia University prof.

In the beginning of Vimilakirti’s teaching is an homage to Buddha, followed by: “… the bodhisattvass’ purification of the Buddha-field.” My understanding widened from a narrow view of being somebody to include everybody in the universes — Buddha field.

The personal query ‘To Appear Separate or To Relate’ is a variant of the ‘To Be or Not To Be,’ one of the perennial questions. The challenge ‘To Appear Separate or To Relate’ assumes that there is an absolute core of something separate inside ourselves and everyone else, too.

Is there really an absolute difference between us or not ? Although a conflict seems to arise between being somebody and everybody, I see them together. The relative and absolute coexist. I know that there is noting that is not me.

Books

Light rain coming down on the tall evergreens makes a beautiful northwest image, best seen from in front of computer looking out the window. Good day for social networking, while three dogs nap in front of the wall heater: a three dog day.

A good friend pointed me to a new site that might interest you too. It is alltop.com and I am checking out news feeds in the categories of Food, Art, Books, and Music. Starting at alltop, I selected Culture > Books.

Scrolling through NYT and Powells and and Booksquare about half-way down, I selected the Issues in Publishing topic that opens to a post from Firebrand Technologies:

We offer book publishers software applications that help them track their
publishing projects from acquisition through publication. We also offer a
service called ‘eloquence’ which distributes bibliographic information from publishers to retailers, wholesalers, and aggregators, like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Ingram, Baker & Taylor, and Bowker.

I returned to Books for more exploration of this topic. Publishing Talk looks
interesting. I appreciate the post Death by Blogging.

Seeds of Compassion in Seattle

Eye to Eye with Dali Lama, by Ward Serrill, Special to The Seattle Times, April 11, 2008 (abridged)

“The eyes are the windows to the soul,” says an old English proverb. I am about to look into a pair of eyes that will change my life.

The 14th Dalai Lama walks into the room and sweeps his gaze across the dozen or so people standing around, bowing to each of us, his hands placed together in a blessing …

For 24 minutes I observe, ignored by all, invisible as a bird in the shadows. He never anticipates an answer. He listens as if for the first time and his answers defy expectation …

When asked about his religion of kindness, he replies “… all these things: compassion, charity, patience, forgiveness, joy; these do not belong to religion … They are simply the expressions of what it is to be human.”

The interview is over … We don’t speak a word. As he moves in front of me, my hands voluntarily reach out he looks up at me and my world stops spinning. His eyes reveal a deep gravity. I see serious work behind his childlike humor and spontaneity. The man has suffered much and discipline has made him into a spiritual warrior. This serious work, these eyes tell me, this inner work to discover peace and being.

Serious Games for Serious Topics in eLearning

Serious Games for Serious Topics
By Clark Quinn, Executive Director, Quinnovation, and Lisa Neal, Editor-in-Chief, eLearn Magazine

“Everyone [in corporate training and academe] wants to increase engagement and retention for learners, especially if the topic is an important one where compliance or business success is at stake. In addition to their underlying theoretical rationale, games have been shown—in practice and under a variety of circumstances—to be successful in terms of both engagement and retention. However, are games appropriate for all topics, in particular, serious ones? Can the design of a game, or even the fact that a game is being used, induce a sense of frivolity that lessens the impact of the learning?

“Serious games is a term that has evolved to describe the use of games in education, training, health, and public policy. Serious games do more than add window-dressing or fun to an otherwise serious (and potentially dull) learning task. They recast a learning task into one that is game-like and fundamentally alters the experience of the learner.

“The process of developing serious games properly starts with the learning objectives. Those objectives are turned into critical decisions to achieve a meaningful goal, which is set in a context or “world” where the application of those skills really affects an outcome that the learner cares about, with an underlying model that calculates the consequences of those decisions in the world and presents the learner with new choices until success (or failure) is achieved. Finally, we must tune that experience—adjusting challenge, feedback, support, and media elements—until it is engaging when tested.

“With such an approach, the necessary skill practice is contextualized or situated, making the learner responsible for exploration. This provides a constructivist approach to learning that includes just enough guidance to optimize the process. This does not wrap entertainment around learning, but recasts the learning practice as an immersive experience. The results can be described as “hard fun” in the sense that they don’t feel easy yet provide a compelling experience. When a serious game is done effectively, it engages the learner’s emotions and brain in a coherent experience that leaves them with new attitudes, understandings, and/or skills.

“Note that learning games are not total learning experiences. While it is possible to embed concepts, examples, and even reflection into the learning environment, games do not encompass all facets of learning. Instead, the game itself serves as practice in the overall learning experience, and other and resources outside the game experience are needed. For example, reflection on the experience should be scaffolded outside the interaction to facilitate deeper learning.

“Properly done, serious games are highly effective for serious topics. While the notion of a game may seem frivolous, the design and content are not. In fact, a serious game can introduce tension and crises to simulate the realistic experience of practicing a particular skill, or depict consequences, more easily than other types of learning. In the game Darfur Is Dying, for example, the difficulties of daily life such as trying to secure water while avoiding the Janjaweed militias is challenging and nerve-wracking, bringing home the simple challenges of survival for the people caught in this disaster and raising awareness of the importance of a solution.

“Pine and Gilmore, in their book The Experience Economy, talk about the step beyond the experience economy being the transformation economy, where people pay to have experiences that are transformational. That’s what we’re talking about here. Serious games challenge the learner and keep him or her engaged during the learning process. It’s the difference between watching a nature documentary and going backpacking in the wilderness.

“Deeply immersive learning experiences increase engagement, and results can be determined by learning metrics such as retention and transfer. Next to mentored real performance, serious games are arguably the best way to master a skill—serious or otherwise. However, any skill that is necessary for someone to learn can be deemed “serious,” whether it’s customer service, operating machinery, or detecting fraud. Essentially all are critical in their own way to an organization’s success. A serious game will not seem frivolous when done right. Whether you call it immersive learning simulations or serious games, it constitutes deeply contextualized, challenging practice. And that’s a worthy goal.

About the Primary Author
Clark Quinn, Ph.D., is an internationally known consultant, author, and speaker on e-learning topics including games, mobile learning, performance support, and organizational strategy. He’s written a book on designing serious games, Engaging Learning, works through Quinnovation.

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SOURCE: http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=opinion&article=96-1

Barack Obama, Seattle, February 8, 2008

You just want to dance and shout with the Fired Up, Ready to Go music video that launched the appearance of Senator Obama today.

This challenging musical project, conceived and delivered in a very short time, reminded me what can be accomplished when totally engaged. For more about the recording and reaction, check out Bergevin Brothers Music.

On YouTube is the clip of Barack Obama telling the story about Edith Childs, councilwoman from Greenwood, SC, who gave him the chant “Fired up, ready to go!”

At the Key Arena, I heard the senator ask us to “see ourselves in others,” as reiterated from Martin Luther King, Jr.