tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post4448794131007860553..comments2024-03-28T04:04:55.806-07:00Comments on Faculty of Language: Where have the MOOCs gone?Norberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-27313785781874658212017-03-21T22:15:49.564-07:002017-03-21T22:15:49.564-07:00Nice to be visiting your blog once more, it has be...Nice to be visiting your blog once more, it has been months for me. Well this article that ive been waited for therefore long. i want this article to finish my assignment within the faculty, and it has same topic together with your article. Thanks, nice share. <a href="http://getexbackguru.net/language-of-desire-review" rel="nofollow">the language of desire</a><br />awsome logo designhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00775645275337719209noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-50087331644563123362017-01-25T15:14:48.181-08:002017-01-25T15:14:48.181-08:00Well that's a very peculiar interpretation of ...Well that's a very peculiar interpretation of what happened with board games. I'd rather attribute the recent upwards trend to the increased mainstream appeal of nerd culture, which has always had a soft spot for war games, tabletops and PnP RPGs. In particular the latter has become much more newbie-friendly after the late 90s saw a move away from simulationist RPG mechanics with tons of number crunching to storytelling systems with extremely streamlined rules. You can map a direct trajectory from DnD/Pathfinder to World of Darkness and eventually Fate, with corresponding decrease in rule density. Another factor is the decline of local multiplayer in video games since the end of the 6th generation (PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, Dreamcast). Conventions are also more of a mainstream thing now, as are video game using typical mechanics of card games and board games (e.g. Hand of Fate), so both can act as a gateway drug for audiences that usually wouldn't consider tabletops. No need for some metaphysical analog VS digital dichotomy.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07629445838597321588noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-33998141137120662162017-01-25T14:25:40.180-08:002017-01-25T14:25:40.180-08:00It seems that there has been a resurgence of board...It seems that there has been a resurgence of board games being played in board game venues of late. Here's what the article reports:<br /><br />Board games are the clunky polar opposite of the shiny digital experience. But Sax demonstrates that even as the Web has risen and the revenue from video games comes to rival the profits from movies, there’s also been a striking renaissance of people pushing little figurines around the tops of tables. Hundreds of new titles emerge yearly (which is why board game parlors like Snakes & Lattes have game sommeliers, who try to figure out which of their thousands of games you’ll most enjoy playing), and some of them, like Settlers of Catan, become huge hits. The reason, Sax suggests, has only a little to do with the games themselves, and more with the desire to do something with other people:<br /><br />With analog gaming, whether it is an intricate board game or a child’s game of tag, all the players need to work together to create the illusion of the game. It requires a collective investment of your imagination in an alternate reality to believe that you actually own Park Avenue [Place], and the colored slips of paper in your hand are worth something.<br /><br />When we play video games “we share ownership of that experience with the software. The program and device restrict our ability to shape the experience of play to our imagination.” Whereas analog games, requiring as they do a table full of people, are very different. Sax quotes an academic who coedits the journal Analog Game Studies, a man named Evan Torner:<br /><br />I can’t invite five friends over to my house and say, “Let’s all play starship!”…But I can invite them over to play a game my friend designed on one card, called Vast and Starlit. It’s just this little piece of cardboard that lets us all pretend we’re on a starship together easily.<br /><br />Some games were explicitly designed as mere social lubricants: the best-selling Cards Against Humanity, for instance, whose creators wanted something “so stupidly simple, ridiculous, and juvenile” that any group of people could “pick it up and start laughing in seconds.” The game, says Sax, “distills the appeal of the analog gaming experience down to its essence: human contact.”Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-54066679710798624942017-01-25T14:01:47.911-08:002017-01-25T14:01:47.911-08:00Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I ...Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I learned almost all the formal stuff I know from books or papers, never enjoyed classes much except for two, and actively dislike "engaging" lecturing techniques --- I'll pick the info dump any time of the day. Engineers probably have a similar mindset, so they don't see why MOOCs aren't the best thing ever for everyone.<br /><br />Anyways, I still think that online courses serve a purpose at least for very small and niche areas. For instance, very few linguistics departments offer courses in mathematical linguistics, so if you're not at one of those you're pretty much out of luck. No online courses, no textbooks that could take you from 0 all the way to reading the primary literature, heck, not even a good bibliography --- it's a very inaccessible field, unfortunately, so you have to be incredibly dedicated and devoted to get to the point where it becomes really fun and insightful.<br /><br />On a completely different note, could you maybe explain that board game part for those of us who aren't NYR subscribers and thus only get to see a very brief snippet of the article?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07629445838597321588noreply@blogger.com