text:
Webinar Date: May 22,2013
Webinar Description
Educational games and apps are a useful tool for Blended Learning, making it important to choose games in different content areas that not only align with standards and support learning goals, but engage students as well. In this session, Max Holechek, UX Designer, Ayu Othman, Art Director and Dr. Tim Hudson, explored games from a developers eyes. They discussed how game design principles can be used effectively to increase student engagement and achievement, both in the classroom and in digital environments. They shared examples of games that employ these principles in different content areas and in games that are solely developed for entertainment. They also explained how to classify and select educational games according to their purposes and needs.
View Transcription
TH: Director at DreamBox Learning and thank you for joining us today, for this webinar here at edWeb.net. It's right about starting time and we've got a lot of great ideas to share with you today, so we're going to get started. The very first thing are a couple of webinar tips that you see there on your screen: close other applications, maximize your screen for a larger view. there's a link in the upper hand corner; you'll get a CE certificate in the next 24 hours, and also information to access a recording of this presentation. And then also, for those of you maybe doing some live tweeting, we have a hashtag there: #edwebchat.
So really, my name and picture were on the first slide but today is far more about two amazing team members we have here at DreamBox, Max Holecheck and Ayu Othman who are our UX Designer and our Art Director as you can see on that slide and they have taught me amazing things about game design, user interaction. I myself, I'm a former high school math teacher, I spent several years in suburban St. Louis teaching high school math and then was the K–12 Math Curriculum Coordinator also in suburban St. Louis prior to joining DreamBox as the Curriculum Director. And there's a wealth of things that Max and Ayu have to share with you today that I think you're really going to find fascinating, learn quite a bit and I'll be making connections to the principles they share to the learning aspect of what's coming out of the games that students are playing. So this really is about design principles for student engagement and the principles apply to classrooms as well as to digital experiences.
So, if you are working on Blended Learning or doing anything related to Blended Learning, you probably checked out Michael Horn and Heather Staker's, "Classifying K–12 Blended Learning" white paper, and in that they share several different, actually in-practice models of Blended Learning and here are two of them. One's called the Flipped-Classroom—that's being used by the Stillwater Area Public Schools, and then the Enriched-Virtual model and you sort of see here an overview of how many students, how many teachers, what's happening in the brick-and-mortar school scenario, and then what's happening at home—that's were online instruction and content, are happening on computers. Enriched-Virtual does have some computers at schools. So you know, you look at these different models and you dig in to hear what the teachers and the educators in those situations are doing to help reach all learners and try to leverage technology.
And you know I think about when I look at this sometimes people think of which blended model is better and that question really can't be answered because these are just two static images. We really have to answer the question, what is happening during class? What is happening on the computers? Those are the two key critical points because when we do Blended Learning or when we use games for learning, when leverage technology or even our classroom lessons, those are strategies, those are a means to what ends? So I really want to frame our conversation today in terms of Blended Learning because certainly for a lot of these schools, kids are doing, using learning games both in the classroom and on the computers. But really, the blending is a means to what end? So two key points, before I turn it over to Max and Ayu: Is the quality of digital learning experiences is just as important as the quality of classroom learning experiences? Too often, people don't understand enough about what's happening, when students are learning digitally and so maybe they don't give that the lessons on learning online, the same amount of scrutiny and critical analysis about the pedagogy and things as they would to what's happening in the classrooms. So that's the first point and then the second point is that principles of game design can be used to improve student engagement in learning.
So with those two points, I'd like to introduce Max and Ayu and here's a brief slide introducing a lot of the work that they've done. Both of them have worked together in the past at other companies. Max that you see there our Creative Director of the Nancy Drew PC Games Series and I'll actually asked them to come on and start broadcasting here while I talk a little bit about this slide. And Max has worked as a Producer and Design Consultant in several different names. I'm sure you're familiar with there: Nick Junior, PopCap Games, and he's been a lead game designer on some of those games that you might have played as well. And Ayu is a 2D and texture artist. Is how she got started and then was the whole Art Director for that award winning Nancy Drew Series and then created the game, was the Art Director for Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box. But you can see them showing up in your window and I want to go ahead and pass it off to them and let them take it from here. So Max, Ayu, welcome, I'm going to hop off.
[expand title="View rest of transcription"]
MH: Hello, everyone.
AO: Hi, folks.
MH: Shall we continue with the next slide?
AO: I think so, on with the show.
MH: Okay, some of you might be here with the question on your mind, how can I make learning seem more like a game. And funny enough that might not necessarily be the right question unless you really know what you're asking. Some of us really stepped away from the world of games when we got older and only when we got, when you became adults and we found we have more children in our lives. We find ourselves going back to games like Candyland and Cootie and you know what the last 15 to 30 minutes of these games are like, right? You know, you're playing Candyland, it's like you know, 45 minutes into this thing and you pull up the card—it's just like back to the gum drop forest. Oh hey kids. Actually, the real one was you know, you're just dying to end this game. And Cootie, last 15 minutes right, you're just rolling the die for 15 minutes just trying to get that last six, right? So is this fun? No, these are terrible games. Let's be honest with ourselves, they're around only because of nostalgia. So we have to remember that focus on the game isn't necessarily the best thing and Ayu, what should the focus be on?
AO: You know, I think there's one word that sums it up and it's just one word and it's called: FUN! That's right, so we assist of you know, focus on the fun people. We want to leverage sort of the engagement experience. You know and everyone should have a good time you know, having either playing games with learning, games for entertainment because you know, what it really boils down to is, you know, if you take the fun out of the play you know, a lot of times you know, the whole sense of learning and sort of the curiosity factor is just stripped away because most of the time these games are become grinds. We just have to complete a series of tests you know, to achieve something that may not be very meaningful to you, So that's why I want to put that quote out there because you know, I mean as most of you are probably familiar with Joanne E. Oppenheim. She did write the book Kids and Play and you know I really like this quote, just really sums that what we're really about. So the thing is … what is fun? Well you know, Max sort of he describes fun as the word to describe a complete engagement and I totally, absolutely agree with that. So here's one theory that I think most, some of you may be familiar with, maybe in your game theory and game design classes and the concept is called flow. So, Max could we move on to the next slide.
MH: I wasdrinking coffee, Ayu.
AO: [Laughing] There's no break for you, Max. No breaks on the webinar. So what is flow? So flow is the concept of, you know, of heightened focus and immersion. You know, where you lose yourself. You become so engrossed in the activity you know, time, sort of warps and you know, I'm sort of getting ahead of myself with what, what flow is. But we move on to the next slide, you know it's sort of a semi-gratuitous shot of you know me, yours truly, you know, enjoying a good surf session but it really sort of highlights the concept of total immersion where you know, once you hit a certain skill level and you know you meet a level of challenge that just completely matches you know, your level of expertise. You know, instead of these beautiful, I called it a dance between the mind and the body, where sort of your actions you know, you forget yourself. You lose a sense of yourself. You experience ecstasy and the ecstasy in Greek actually literally means you know, standing to the side of something. And it sort of becomes the analogy of stepping into an alternate reality and that's what games are about. Games are sort of presenting us with this beautiful alternate experience in depending on what your ultimate goal is, whether it's for education, entertainment. You know, it's a wonderful sort of sense of psychological state that you enter in. So let's just kind of diving slightly deeper into the concept of flow. We have you know, as I put it in sort of in English layman's terms. Flow is that sweet spot we experience during an activity and as you can see in this graph you know, there is sort of this interesting correlation between the difficulties of, you know, the challenge that you are experiencing and your skill set. And the idea of flow is to maximize that sweet zone that you see on the graph. You know, where if it's you know, too easy and you have a high level of skill, it's naturally obviously too boring or probably just you know, end the game or if it's too hard, it's too challenging and you probably also end the game because you know, unless you're one of those where, you just have to finish the game no matter what. It's not the best experience and you know, right in the center there is that sort of the flow where the level of difficulty that's presented to you is just right based on your level of skill.
And then on,the next topic that I am going to present to you is, you know, the genius behind the Flow Concept. So, I am going to take a stab at pronouncing his name. He's a professor of psychology, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, and there's actually an interesting TED talk and I really regret not posting the TED link but I will post the link to his TED talk at the end of the webinar and hopefully, Lynn can share it with the rest of the team. And what he proposed in this sort of lives we're trying to figure out what is that makes people happy. It's sort of do a lot of research into the psychology of happiness and, you know, irregardless of financial status, you know, once you've met your sort of basic hierarchical needs. You know, there's a sense of what is it that makes people happy and he spends his life's work in researching that idea and so in the next slide, some of his sort of the key concepts he came up with based on his research. So as you can see in the presentation, to that first point, I just want to clarify the challenge activity, so in the game design, game theory you know granted, we have what we called the noob, you know, the noob factor, where it's N00B as in gamer talk is when you're a complete and utter beginner to a game experience, right? And you'll totally be called a noob but the thing is, a good game will, well kind of, getting a little bit ahead of myself with Max's awesome presentation coming up. Oops. [Laughing.] Technical excitement there, going back to the elements of flow. So back to the first point about the challenge activity, we're not assuming that, you know, we're plunging someone into a challenging activity right at the get go. You know, a good game will sort of introduce that person slowly, you know, either tutorials or with the whole concept, and as they progress, you know, that the challenge level will you know increase along, you know, with the skilllevel.
And then to the secondpoint, you know, I just want to clarify the merging you know action and awareness seems. You know at first like could not quite understand what that meant, but the truth of it is all about being in that, so that mind/body awareness and then sounds it's kind of you know sort of, I forgot what the term was, but it's basically when you are so into the activity and so engrossed in it that you know your actions are basically are an extension of your mind. So as you could see in that early shot of me surfing, you know if I want to go left, my mind says left and I immediately going left and I'm just experiencing that at the get go. And I always like to joke it, you know some of the Karate Kid metaphor, right? So you go from wax on wax off and all of a sudden you know in the Eye Of The Tiger face where wax on wax off becomes sort of this flow and you know, he defeats his you know, archenemy on the competition field. And then the other points you know I think are pretty, pretty self-explanatory and the main thing I want to point out with this is that even if you don't understand you know, we don't call it flow. I think you know, great teachers and coaches actually utilize all of these you know, subconsciously or they have different terms for, you know for this. And I really want to make this clear that you know I think we are all speaking the same language. It's just a matter of how we want to apply the concept of flow in good game design.
MH: Yeah, absolutely! So, in a nutshell, Cootie—not good flow?
AO: No.
MH: So, what is a game? According to the gentlemen below that says "A system in which players engage in an artificial conflict defined by rules that results in a quantifiable outcome." But add a little flow to that and you have yourself a good game. So what makes a good game, these are some Good Casual Game Design Principles that both Ayu and I integrated into the work that we've done and what is—I should probably explain casual gaming to those who have better things to do than play games. Casual games are the kind that you most often play on your smart phone or your tablets. They're simple, engrossing experience as designed so they can be picked up and put down after just a couple minutes of play and basically casual games are opposed to the hardcore console games like that potentially require a lifestyle change in order for you to complete those. And certainly, there are a lot more game design principles that are described here within our timeframe but here are a few and we'll start off with relevance to the player and the game goals.
Contextualize your game and what do we mean by that? Well, who's ready to play a game of Fist Flat Two? The rules are really simple, now fist beats two but two beats flat but flat does beat fist and you know, you're wha-wha-what—and of course, if you will add a context of rock, paper, scissors then rock smashing scissors is a lot easier to remember than you know fist smashing two. Another way to look at this is, you have a mathematic concept, you have a curriculum concept, you have a game mechanic concept like you're matching a three like items in a row and how do you present that? Well, this is certainly one way you can do it. But adding contexts just brings a lot more engagement and fun into the experience. So instead of you know matching you know like colored squares, you've got picking fruits or movie-style archaeology or the old favorite matching 3 gems in order to create rips in the time–space continuum which we're all-
AO: And also pretty pictures do count 'cause as in Max showed in that slide, you got to have good art.
MH: Yeah, absolutely.
AO: So, it is a plus because I'm an art person. [Both laughing.]
MH: A second point is, don't assume your assumptions are valid. Like the, well for instance you know, so many hours spent playing the old classic video games but in a way some of them have left us with bad ideas for what default game design is. Like when we think of video games we think, well, three lives? You got to have three lives, right? It's going to be kind of punishing but you get three lives. It's like, well only if one of your major goals is to collect quarters from children, right? I mean, that's why you had three lives and that's why they were a little bit difficult. And you know speaking of the topic of being kind of punishing, it's a funny thing if you give the average person a pencil and paper and say design a game. It doesn't matter who you are. They will come back with the rules like okay if you land on this space, you'll lose everything you collected and you go back to start and you have to hold five live bees in your mouth until you roll a six, right? It's, consciously or not, I think that we hold a lot of the humiliation and pain of playing games in our head. So when we do kind of decide to design themselves, we create a lot of penalties for some reason and keep that in mind next time you're playing one of the contemporary casual games and you'll see that we've come a long way from three players and all of the rules are written for what that game is trying to accomplish. It's not adding any sort of foreign things just because you think that's what makes the game if I make myself clear.
AO: Also, holding live bees in your mouth is not good.
MH: No.
AO: I wouldn't advise it. [Both laughing.]
MH: And we'll hand it back over to Tim to talk about Planning Backwards from Lesson Goals. Can you hear us Tim?
TH: Alright. Yep. So the classroom application here is that we need you know, the contextualize a game and you need to contextualize learning goals that if you've done any work and all of the curriculum work I have ever done from the start of my career has been around the work of Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe with "Understanding by Design," where you first have to define what is it you are trying to accomplish in terms of learning. And then, one of the, you know, pieces of evidence you are going to collect to be sure that those learning goals were accomplished. Then, you plan your learning experiences and instruction and that's the context in which you should be you know, choosing games and designing games. And so the key questions, what do you want students to accomplish, how will you know they've achieved it and then question three, what games can help students meet these goals.
So, for example, if you have a learning where you want students to understand the perspective of others and you want them to have to exercise some strategic thinking, these are usually more process-oriented learning goals. Oregon Trail is a great way to actually do that. I think it's a highly underutilized game. It has been around for decades but, you know, there's all these variables down here about weather, temperature. You're constantly making decisions. There's this sense of you have to arrive hopefully with everyone surviving that's sort of a badge of honor if you make that to make people like Nicole get dysentery that's how the kids learn about dysentery. I think. But it gives you great perspective and puts you in the mind of people literally traveling the Oregon Trail in a pretty good way.
If one of your goals is for students to recognize the shapes of states, or to recognize presidents, the Stack the States game and Presidents versus Aliens, both published by the same person on the App Store. If it's just about shape recognition of states, I mean these are pretty good games for it. You know the shape of Minnesota or Illinois, apart from, you know, rivers and geography, those are fairly arbitrary things. There's no necessary reason with the shape of states. The way there is a reason why you know five times five is 25. There's sort of some context and some meaning there as opposed to the shape of states. And then, what the presidents look like that's something that you just sort of put into a game like that. And that's a recognition learning goal. That's the key thing there. If you want students learn about geography, culture, inquiry, investigation: Carmen Sandiego. You know, when Max and Ayu were talking about planning this, it's sometimes hard because there are so many games out there to speak about games that everyone kind of knows and these have been around long enough that they are sort of worth bringing up to say you know what, I personally learned a whole about geography and culture from Carmen Sandiego because it's open-ended. Students can make their own decisions and learn some things along the way. If your learning goal is practice, that is probably where you are going to find the most games in Apps that are out there and going way back, Number Munchers would be an example of that. It's really just practice. Ideally, students would already have had some rich learning experiences to know what multiples of two mean. I mean, it is possible that students might just know that, multiples of 2 end in 2, 4, 6, 8, or 0 but that doesn't give meaning to the mathematics. So, you could actually beat this game without understanding things about mathematics and that's kind of what I called a practice thing. I wouldn't want students to learn about multiples from Number Munchers but I'll be happy with them practicing recognizing multiples after they have learned what they are mathematically.
And the reason a lot of these games and a lot of distinctions are important is because of how much technology can do these days. If you are familiar with WolframAlpha, just wolframalpha.com—it's a computational knowledge engine as they call it. And, you can actually type something in like this, I have two cookies, you give me three cookies, how many cookies do I have? And this is the output of the program—it actually interprets the language you typed in and gives you the answer as well as a model for it. I would say 10 years ago or even in classrooms today, if you give students in elementary school that question, this is actually a highly viable answer because they're justifying their response and explaining their answer and showing it in multiple ways. So what do we do when a free website available 24/7 on a smartphone can actually solve problems that we've been giving kids for a very long time? So, it's a very different reality.
So, we have to be pretty clear about our learning goals. That's the whole connection to that first point that Max and Ayu made that the existence of things like these WolframAlpha, calculators means we, as educators have to be more honest about the memorization, about the algorithmic procedures because they're so easily done. David Bressoud, who's a columnist with the Mathematical Association of America back in 2009 wrote an article. Here's a couple of quotes. The second one's pretty key in terms of learning games. "If a student feels she or he has learned nothing that cannot be pulled directly from WolframAlpha or perhaps a calculator, then our courses perhaps have been a really be a waste of time" and maybe even our games, too. So, you have to take a look certainly in mathematics at whether the game is teaching concepts or just practicing things that a calculator could give them.
We're only going to show you two DreamBox games today. Here is the first one and we made this game kind of calculator proof to help kids add numbers that were negatives, decimals, fractions, and I think this was originally Max's idea to put a mini golf aspect on it. You see the number line down there below. The student has two putts. They have two numbers to choose and they have to hit negative 8.3 but there is a windmill here. See, you can't just choose any two numbers. You have to use your intuitive sense of ratio and proportion on this number line to kind of know where halfway is and kind of the windmill is kind of a third of the way. So, what's the third of -8.3 means really great thinking and a really fun game. So, when I am classifying learning games personally, I don't have any references or sources on this, it is something how I viewed them as a teacher and as an administrator.
I think about learning games where you don't need prior instruction. These are really learning experiences. They're usually conceptual. They're usually simulation or situation. For example, miniature golf as a situation, Oregon Trail more of a simulation. There is usually a critical thinking focus. Kids have to be active agents. It is usually self-directed focusing on kids having realizations about content. It is usually content specific and then the learning context and content comes first and then the game is wrapped around the key learning points. And I contrast that with things that need prior instructions. For example, the Number Munchers, I would expect that there be some instruction that happens before students play that. Those are usually practiced. They are often rote, they kind of have a flash card design. That's kind of I look at. When I look a game, I think is this really just a fancier flash card that is a little more engaging than written cards. A lot of times, there's memory focus, which is valuable we just have to be sure about when that is happening during the learning process.
It's often teacher-directed because that prior instruction is required. A lot of focus on recall and then a possibly interchangeable content like when I would look at math games, I would think, you know, can I swap out five times five equals 25 with you know the capital of Missouri is Jefferson City. That sort of, if it has interchangeable content, that's kind of because as this last bullet shows. The game design came first and then the content was inserted and they're certainly you know, there is a valuable time and place for that which we have to be careful and make sure we are choosing the right games for where students are in their learning. Jackie just chimed in at the bottom, she calls them worksheets on steroids that could be a bullet right there. Are they really just more engaging worksheets? So, back to you two.
MH: Alright. Thanks Tim. Yeah absolutely, one of our simple rules in casual game design is, if your game looks like an Excel Spreadsheet, it's time to start over. What you want is understanding upon a glance, and this is really what we need. I think most of us are familiar with Angry Birds and even without a tutorial, just taking a look at the game itself, you can kind of put two and two together and really that's one of the main tent poles for good design—at least casual game design which I should say and I should have said before really mirrors a lot of what was already established for game design for children. It's being able to present the material in such a way that you look at it and you're just ready to dig into it. It's like you're recognition's like, I might not get it but I really want to explore. I really want to tinker with it or you can look at it and say, oh, oh, oh, I know exactly what to do and you just go in there and when you invoke that feeling in a player you don't want to slow them down with a tutorial and I'll get into that a little bit later. Another game that deliciously sort of like puts you in the action and you know what to do is Temple Run. You just run, run, and we'll tell you later, just run. Monkeys are chasing you run, run. I love that. I'd never experienced the game or you just like go, go, go, we'll explain later, just go. Love that.
And oh yeah, the gradual introduction of rules. I don't know if you ever played Plants Versus Zombies. But the game that you have with the designers probably had in their head when they were thinking of Plants Versus Zombies was probably something like this. It's like and then you know what you got to do, what you got to you know keep track of the suns and then you got to you know get the kind of plants that you know will react to a piece kind of zombies and then there's a lot of different types of sort of structural things you can put in there and then there a lot of interesting strategy with the water versus the ground. This is all going on our head and a lot of times game designers tend to accidentally front load a lot of this and you know that you have a really good game design when your hands when in the later levels it looks like that but you start with this and again at a glance you can pretty much figure out what you probably need to do. Here's a floating sun, you might want to click on that because this UI says that suns are worth 25 points, okay cool. And I can see here that these plants are worth a hundred and also if I plant these guys, I'll be shooting at zombies that are coming after me. At a glance, you can kind of figure out what's going on, which is great.
AO: And that totally ties in with the concept of flow.
MH: Absolutely.
AO: Where, when you first start out you know, you have no idea what you'll be doing and if it's presented properly. You start out with just you know that easy way, easy access and as you start mastering all these basic skills and progress you know, this is the screen, when you look at you go, this is awesome I can't make to dive into this level.
MH: Yeah, absolutely. I mean looking at it. If you'd never seen this game before it's like, here's Plants Versus Zombies: GO! And if you're looking at the screen. I mean it's really daunting right? And I think one of the things that we tend to forget about casual games is that they can get very sophisticated and very complex. You know, level 100 you know, there's this nice, slow ramp-up and that's whats make casual games really nice as apposed to hardcore games …
AO: Right.
MH: … sort of front-load, everything you need to go. You need to know and then go. I least a good portion of it. Another rule is just get out of the player's way and I sort of touched on this a little bit before in that you don't want to slow the players down with a lot of unnecessary content like for instance, what you are looking at are screenshots from a new game that just came out called Pudding Monsters. It's a great little puzzle game and they did their best, I think to really maximize the localization of this game where there is little to no text in this and what they do is to explain to you how to play the game by these little Pudding Monsters who speak gibberish, giving you little graphic balloons that sort of explain the rules to you and what you didn't get with the little word balloons, there are additional animations like in the column on the far right. You'll see animation where it shows that you are to flick the little Pudding Monsters across the screen and between little animations like that and these little guys speaking to you in iconography. You got everything that you needed to know and not one word was printed on the screen and that's brilliant. And certainly something that help you know, it helps kids like jump to the action more because when they see something that' just really engaging and they want to get into it so try not to slow him down. And yeah and other points kind of fall into this like you know, you may have this great epic story line that you're just you know waiting to sort of like provide as exposition to your wonderful world just like you know.Kids just wanted—or people—just wanted to jump in there and play the game, an exposition.
AO: Right. It's sort of one of those you know one of those primary story telling averages right. It's all about show don't tell.
MH: Right.
AO: I mean, show, don't talk about it.
MH: Right.
AO: Just get into the meat of the and just present it. Have the person just jump in and experience it as supposed to exposition text you know that's too much of that.
MH: Yes, somehow bring the player into part of that past epic before you then move on to the game that you may be have it in your head already and with that, I'll hand it back over to Tim.
TH: Great. So a couple of comments coming up about you know what do those games teach and just as a reminder, we're talking about game principles and then I'm connecting it a bit to the curriculum. The idea being that you know Pudding Monster doesn't necessarily help you meet your common core or state standards but there are design principles there that make people make children want to play the game and how can we leverage those in our classroom. So, the classroom application to this particular point about getting out of the player's way is that often times when we front load explanation, it is actually disengaging. You know, you think about like the slide like Max had said that Temple Run, its just run. I'll explain later and there's way for us to design great learning tasks where we can give them to kids and let them run with them and we can save the explanation for later. So, an example, when I taught sophomore geometry, I wanted kids to realize and learn that a circle has maximum area given a fixed perimeter in two dimensions, which sounds pretty awesome and I could've have just said that and explained it and made it a bit of knowledge without necessarily much sense-making but instead, I decided to create this elaborate deal where they were creating an elephant habitat and I restricted it and I said it had to be a regular polygon. So, I was using the vocabulary and like these are regular polygons and we were using calculators and technology to help with this. And it took me about 15 to 20 minutes just to explain what on Earth they were doing, and even then, I had to answer question after question after question. That was a very disengaging experience. Even though, I wanted it to be more investigative kind of exploratory lesson, it failed on the engagement front because I was in their way. There was a high barrier to entering that task and there's a lot of great folks in the math and science blogosphere talking about how do you just give kids a test that they can immediately run with.
So, in your classroom, if your learning task requires more than about a minute of directions, there is probably too high of a barrier to engage with. So, I encourage you to try redesigning the task to create a simpler entry point, a lower barrier to entering the task. So for me, with the Elephant Habitat Lesson, I should have just said, here's the deal, you got a mile of fencing. Build an elephant habitat and make it as big as you possibly can and just let them go. You know, that's 10 seconds instead of 15 minutes and then I could have had better classroom competitions about who can find the most area. And eventually, they would have settled on that. Now the trade off is this, it probably requires more class time to actually complete the task but it results in more engagement, much better thinking, and much better learning—and that's really the key because it is about learning outcomes and about allowing kids to jump right in and start thinking. Yes, so like Robert Welch is saying how does it apply to upper or high school students? That's exactly the example when I used with high school students. Lower the barrier to entry, give them a short task that is really rich and is noisy and is not exactly clear how they're going to solve it.
So towards that end, we put explanation at the front of our lessons too often, there is a great book, "Teaching What Matters Most" by Strong, Silver, and Perini, ASCD published it has great ideas for all content areas and some great rubrics around authenticity, rigor, great ideas, and they have a quote from a fifth grade teacher in New York who talks about how you know, she had great math teachers, wonderful people, but they didn't exactly teach good math because it was just "do your homework, go over the homework, here's the new exercises, here's how to do them, I'll be around." It is a very common experience every time I give talks and share this quote. People are nodding and I taught high school math. This is kind of how we did things. And so what it is, is what we're really showing kids how to do something as opposed to some of the games we've been talking about. We don't front load instruction but in the classroom, we tend to deliver content you know, let me show you how to do this, now you go do that. Can you do it on your own? May be we need to show that to you again or you know it. You know, there's that collecting evidence there in the blue circle. And we are trying to give kids understanding and you really can't give someone an understanding. That's some learning principles out of Schooling by Design that really reinforce the points that Max and Ayu are making. When you want to understand the game or understand when you are learning something, it is about the student's realization. It's about them having those a-ha moments and understandings can't be given. They have to be engineered, so learners see for themselves the power of an idea for making sense of things and as teachers, that's what we're trying to do. We are trying to connect students with their own critical thinking where they see for themselves the power of ideas.
So you know, there's some pros and cons to Blended Learning if this is what you are trying. You know, the benefit is we're really becoming more thoughtful and strategic about the use of precious class time. That's a key thing and technology is a key part of that. What do students really need to come together to study? But the danger is sometimes we become less thoughtful and less strategic about how students learn and make sense of things. And we think that like Jackie had said, worksheets on steroids are really going to make the difference and that's not just the case. So when engaging learning takes place, if you are looking at games or maybe designing games for your classroom, the key is first, you engage with the context. Plants Versus Zombies that's kind of a context. Elephant Habitat, that's a context. Miniature golf, that's a context. Oregon Trail, there is your context.
And the student does some thinking. They make their own predictions. They do some you know inherit transfer of learning. They get feedback. Games are great at giving feedback. Teachers are great at giving feedback. How can we give kids better feedback more frequently. Then the game or the classroom and the teacher need to do some adaption, do some differentiation to help make sure which students didn't understand it or aren't able to independently transferr—that's kind of how the cycle would look with better learning games and better learning experiences. And this is how we engineer learning from realizations.
MH: Great points Tim, and certainly I want to look to back on is, giving feedback to the kids. So let's say that you are designing a casual game and you've done great work. You have this great context for your game that works really well with what it is that you're trying to show. So, like mini golf, the context works well with the lesson and you did a great job at like whipping the kids into a frenzy where that you, they're looking at it. They kind of get it. They want to jump right in and you open the gates to Wonka Land and they're streaming in. If you're still going, "Any moment they'll have a mouthful of live bees." You know, that you're doing something wrong because feedback you know as we know, particularly for children, is really, really important that they'll always feel safe exploring. That they kind of tinkering, kind of whittle, and that there's no real repercussions for exploring. Another thing that's important to keep in mind is, making sure that for the context of this webinar and kind of like swapping "player" with "student" because we're kind of walking that thin line there.
So, I apologize if I'm inconsistent with that term. But, we always want to make sure that the player makes informed decisions while they're playing based on what they can see. You know everything that they can see on the game, even though it might be complex like this screenshot from Coconut Queen and you have to like actually, you're not seeing the entire map on the screen. You have to click and sort of drag the map around to see all the different properties that you've slowly been building on this island. If you have set a bunch of workers to work to like clear the forest in order to build a lodge or something. They're not going to like wrap up and then be sitting there waiting for you to like come over and like give them more work to do and meanwhile, like you're losing money on the deal and because you're not watching the UI and you're starting to lose points because you're not paying attention—mouthful of bees—that's what I'm talking about.
The player always knows what's going on. There's nothing going on off the screen that can be done to sort of hinder the progress of the game. And the reason why I put Coconut Queen up there is, a couple of friends of mine worked on this and did a great job of making sure the player always knew what was going on even if it was far off the visual portion of the screen by using some pop-ups and what not. Another point to keep in mind is the exploration is a great. When you think about exploration where talking about you know feeling free to like you know twiddle of that things without them exploding on you and you have to start over. But then also you have the ability to like make errors and maybe even use those errors and that exploration to lead to an a-ha moment. I don't know if you ever played Cut the Rope, which is on the screen now. But the left hand screen shows the basic concept of the game.
You cut the rope, you try to gather as many stars as you can for expert points but ultimately you're trying to get that little piece of hard candy down to the little creature, Om Nom. And to the right, you've got a screen that shows just how complex some of these physics puzzles get and there's no way, well, the chances are very low that you're going to end up figuring out how to do it on the first time and half the fun of puzzle games like Cut the Rope is, you have to use your trial and error to figure out the right combination of logic and steps to actually fulfill the puzzle and I really loved that about Cut the Rope. Yeah and is that a good segue for you, Tim?
TH: Yeah that's great.So this kind of piggybacks some on what I said earlier that having that engagement in exploration first is a key thing and this is how we want to design our classrooms as well as our games. So, we have this learning myth, where we think if I cover it clearly they'll get it. But like someone was mentioning in the comments a moment ago like the textbook is something that like a videogame manual. Is probably best read after you've played the game a little bit. Textbook isn't really designed to connect with your brain in a great way. We need to remember that presentation of an explanation no matter how brilliantly worded, it is not going to connect ideas unless students have had ample opportunities to wrestle with examples.
Now, I realize in a webinar format, there is a little bit of irony there because we are just presenting information to you but given that everyone on this webinar is a professional educator who struggled with engagement, struggled with learning, learning about games. There is a course of accommodation for sort of a time for hearing new ideas. And so, we don't want to really start by telling. It doesn't happen in games which are highly engaging, and in a highly engaging classroom that's not always how it starts. This is straight out of how people learn. Providing students with opportunities to grapple with specific information relevant to a topic has been shown to create a time for telling that enables kids to learn so much more from an organizing lecture. That's a principle that I didn't use in my classroom nearly enough. And so, that happens when kids are struggling with games. You know, they may go to somebody and say, I have been trying to beat this level and I just can't figure it out.
So, if your learning goal is something about systems thinking, SimCity is a great game. It's in its fourth or fifth iteration—who knows—but you are trying to build a city and my cities always failed and but I kept trying and kept trying and finally I did go ahead and ask somebody. I consulted someone who I thought had more expertise and they told me that you know, my industrial places were too close to my residential. I didn't have enough fire stations and all you know. I was building my city for traffic jams. I mean there were a lot of things that had someone told me how to build my city at the start, it couldn't have been fun at all because there is sort of the answer.
So, we need to make sure that within our classrooms, as well as within games we're not answering questions that students haven't even asked yet or trying to pick their interest to drive their curiosity. And if your learning goals are exploration or creative thinking, Logo which is a great thing that has been somewhat underutilized, I think in terms of learning and exploration for students. It's great. Tons of exploration, tons of critical thinking and if you want some additional game ideas, I mean obviously we are highlighting more games than we are learning games. But if you go to Common Sense Media, you know, I think they have ratings on something like 1,300 games or whatever and they just recently gave out 50 awards. They're on for learning award winners. There are 50 Apps, games and websites that received their highest ratings for learning potential. You can check that out, DreamBox is one of those 50 winners but there are tons of games across other content areas as well. So I encourage you to check that perhaps. And yeah, Carol just mentioned Scratch from MIT. I think Ayu, you have done some work with Scratch, right? A lot of folks—it's great. I have known them about for years. It is a whole lot of fun and great thinking, just like Logo.
MH: Yeah and another thing to keep in mind is that the use of the rewards for engagement and then also replay motivation. There's a lot of different things that are done in casual games to keep players coming back and keep them motivated as they play. Particularly as the rules continue to increase in the game so it gets more sophisticated. They can be challenging and the trick is always to keep it a fun type of challenging and not a frustrating sort of challenging. So one of these rewards is the old three-star system that I think we've all seen if we've played casual games and I think that we all sort of know how that works, wherein you have two types of level-passing scenarios. You can complete the goal, the minimum goal and good for you and that will get you on to the next level. But in the case of, we were just looking at the screens from Cut the Rope, if you collect a one star or one to three stars then you can sort of going for extra points. It's like you can make by with the minimum to get to the next level or you can like really stretch your brain and go for those reach goals and it's really funny—I found that it really depends on the temperament of the student of the player.
I see a lot of kids just sort of like do the minimum but they almost all will go back and then like the game menus are very good at showing which levels you have gotten different stars on and you can see like the ones you only got one or two stars on and vast majority of players will go back and they'll try to get three stars and that's really cool. Another way that, another reward that you can offer the player are meta game awards and these are the things that are like when you, by meta game what I mean is outside of the basic rules of the game. There are different objectives that you can get like when you pass the level 10, you'll get an award or a badge for passing level 10 or if you really use your noggin like we were describing in Cut the Rope and do something that was, that really took some you know good thinking and good strategy. Then, you'll unlock another badge or another engagement or another trophy and those things go into a trophy case that students can take a look at and this is something that will like motivate them to come back and try to fill up that trophy case.
TH: Max.
MH: And we're going to touch on it, yeah—
TH: OhI was just going to say there yeah, we're going to touch on that in a second.
MH: Okay. Yeah. Sorry, did get a little distracted there. Tim, why don't you take it away?
TH: Yeah. I thinkI might have put your slides slightly out of order here on this last point. Sorry about that.
MH: [Laughing.] That's okay.
TH: Theclassroom application, we know too many of our students think about grades in terms of rewards. I think the classroom application here is that we need to rethink assessment and grading practices. Some of the best work I did in my classroom teaching and coordinating math was really, really making sure we're assessing and reporting their learning in appropriate ways that don't actually unintentionally create the wrong ideas in the minds of kids. So first thing is learning is not linear. You know, this is a screenshot from Angry Birds and you got the different stars like Max was just talking about and part of probably learning is you know, if you played Angry Birds and maybe you are working on level two and it takes you a million tries and you finally get and then get on down to level 15, if someone were to get back to you and say, "hey, how do you beat level two," I mean it was a short term learning thing. You don't actually retain it kind a like you think about it if your handling out series as packets to students to help them work ahead in mathematics and work independently. There is a concern there that you don't actually retain in the long term learning.
So, we don't want to sort of assassin and give assessment in that sort of linear fashion. And I think about when we're assessing students you know, if we are giving them a puzzle or engaging them in some strategic thinking. If you think about Angry Birds, it more of puzzle and strategy than it is exploration because they tell you which bird is you have to use and how many birds that you get. So, it's really sort of figuring out that puzzle and how do you, you know, knock this down with a fewest number of birds. Given that these are the birds that they going to give you but if it really strategic thinking, you will be able to pick your own birds and in your own order and you could really as an educator or as someone watching them play, you can really get some insights into how students are thinking based on the birds they choose and then which order.
And it's kind of how we design something at DreamBox. And here we have this game with this very short term reward. You are trying to move the pirate ship around to find either the buried treasure or something you left behind and you could see the equations over there were adding and subtracting decimal numbers. Students create these equations themselves. Some series of things when we say here solve this, here solve this, and here solve this. Kids have to decide how they want to move the ship and by giving them that agency, we are able to know more about how they are thinking and allowing them to explore. So with grading practices with rewards and then we will get back to Max for the mini awards phase. Is that sometimes we assess behavior rather than learning and that could happen in videogames.
You could rack up a billion points on Super Mario Bros and never actually beat the game. And we know as educators, we have to find learning goals that students have to reach. So in thinking about you know, are they spending energy with impact for their learning? We know that score of zero just mean that student did complete an assignment. When you're handing out points or you're assignment points, there are some real things that you think about there and prefer you do something like Ken O'Connor's book, 12 Fixes for Broken Grades. We know the percentages to still learning and there's some meaningless numbers often. We know that we don't go to the doctor and get a 78% or 82%. In the same way, capturing a whole year of mathematics learning one number or social studies learning is kind of odd. And we know students engage in point grubbing because of how we do this and that's certainly a problem. Maybe they have earned enough points to pass but haven't learned much like the Super Mario problem. Back to you, Max.
MH: Yeah, thanks. Yes, I think I had a little ahead of myself. But let us jump to the next slide since I already talked about what mini games are. Here is an example of three types of awards. Like for instance, we're talking about the, and also it's very important in casual games to give early rewards and many of them too. So one reward is you know, you'd pulled up a skilled move here. You got a combo bonus and sometimes you know, depending on the combo bonus, you can unlock a new trophy and then down in the lower right you see thetrophy case that I was talking about. And you know the interesting thing is and here's another example of the store.
Another way that you can keep your players coming back is you can use a pointer commerce or completion systems to earn upgrades and features as well. And concepts like the commerce system and badges and trophies and achievements and earning rare items or decor for your game, those have taken really large step forward in what it means to be a game. We're seeing something in the industry started a few years ago called gamification. The thought that you know, we can take elements of the game and put it in a nongame media experience like say a website and if we make the website social and we add a you know, point system based on what contents you know, you are looking on our site. And give you trophies for you know, watching a movie and stuff like that.
We'll keep you coming back to the website and you know and that sort of works as a theory until I get you back to the website but you're not necessarily making it a game. And as a game, these websites are kind of fall flat. And here's Ayu to talk a little bit about why they fall flat.
AO: Well you know, just going back to the concept of gamification. It's definitely of highly popular and overused concept these days. I mean if you even look at you know at like Nike for instance, you mean they have special shoes that connect with your app and you can track your progress you know, how many calories you burn and how your performance is, and you can compete and then there's a social aspect where you can compete with your friends. See how well you're doing. And of course, everyone knows Four Square, I mean that's kind of like what started the whole trend essentially you know, with trophies and badges for you know, how and be, what is a king. I am not a Four Square person.
MH: Mayor.
AO: Mayor. Mayor of some place you usually go to. So you know that I think, so it's a bit like pulling the cart before the horse because you know gamification is completely valid as a you know tool for through engagement experience in a game design but these days I think it's just you know, being put before content and a lot of times, you know products with you know, mediocre or just you know mere content. You know, try to use sort of gamification you know instead of a covering you know, to hide or mask inadequate content. I think, if I say content three times really but that they really underscores the importance of you know, creating highly engaging content whether it's in your classroom or in a game product or you know, an educational game product in anything to be honest.
MH: In a nutshell,it's being used as a crutch, which is easy to do. It's you know.
OA: Right.
MH: But it looks like game, plays like game but it's got to have that –
OA: Right.
MH: Flow.
OA: It's got to have that flow and when all you do is mask, you know some experience with just awards and trophies and what not. It does become a grind and there are a lot of games out there you know, and it seems like a fun experience but all you have attest doing is you know,going out there and collecting items, trying to find things. That's what the concept of grind is, there's a lot of role play games tend to fall in that category. These are the ones that are not well designed and the good ones really engaged the person and you know, going out getting up you know and some Uber dragon and what not. That's why I really want to emphasize that you know, I'm not against gamification, I just think it's an overused and you know, somewhat abused mechanic.
So just simple flow, so you know, so the second point in testing the flow in the game design is you know it boils down to the player, you know, do the players want to pay the game. And I was like you know I mean, the quote about you know leading the horse to water and you can't get it to drink because definitely you know, it's on everyone's mind when you know, you have this awesome product and you know, but your kids don't want to or your students don't want to engage with it. So it really starts with you know, student, the user, the player. You know, getting them on board with what you are presenting to them in the classroom sort of that you know, that first step of motivation getting you know, beginning the experience.
And then, I think was the last slide I put up was testing for flow or maybe it's the second to the last slide. But like I always want to emphasize you know, it's really striking that right balance between you know, understanding where your students are and you know, raising them to the next level of challenge. So if there is certain advancement where they can deal with the three-headed dragon, that's wonderful and you have students who you know, partly would only deal with you know, a mouse first and that's equally as valid. That's all part of that you know, the flow of progression going from a noob in game terms to the highly skilled person who's mastered the content. So and one of the final notes about testing for flow in game design is you know, empowering the user, empowering the player. Given the player a sense of control even if it's sort of this you know, within artificial reality which is essentially the game.
You know, present them with the information and the tools they need to succeed you know either within the classroom or within the game of the game format. So these are sort of the four things you know, to look for and the main thing is that you know so many games out there these days and there are a lot of times you know we're just in undated with all of these information on tips and what not. You know at the very least you know, if we can use of these sort of high level concepts is that taking away point in sort of identifying and evaluating the games on the educational games you see out there and hopefully that will help some.
MH: Uh-hum. So basically, if Cootie had achievements, it would still stink.
AO: Yes, you can't mask bad game design. So, any questions? And we're on the Q and A portion now.
TH: Nice. Nice. Well, we bumped up right against our 60 minutes. So, I want to make sure on a raced time. I did see a few questions come through the queue. Actually, probably just a couple, there was a question from Rick in Tennessee, who said he would know a lot about a game-based learning but was considering for it was like ancient civilization renaissance course. Hopefully, Ricky got some ideas about where to start in creating a more game-based class or maybe in college just a more engaging class in the sense that you take a look at you know, low barriers to entry. You take a look at certain different times of rewards where may brother and his wife both teach high school social studies and courses like ancient civilization and maybe to the renaissance.
Anything that you can do to create a context that put students in the perspective of people from different times, different areas, where they have to make decisions, where there is a lot of noise where it is not clear, what the stretch will be and then they get feedback on ideas that maybe well a couple of things that you can do in terms of, oh you know, the Magna Carta just got written. You're a villager, somewhere, some place. How would you respond to this, and then as a teacher, you take a look at their responses and maybe the next day, you give them feedback on, hey, somebody did actually tried that and here's what happened that sort of kind of simulation thing is a decent place to start. And then the last question, Tony from Alief Kerr High School said that we find a lot of things so far deal with beginning, the lower levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.
They want more and further and that's definitely a reality that a lot of learning games. A lot of learning games are very much of a knowledge and comprehension like I said earlier the sort of memory focus, recall focus level of Bloom's Taxonomy and hopefully in the future, there will be more games that focus on those higher order thinking type skills. So, one other question come through the name of the book from the earlier and that was Teaching What Matters Most and that's published by ASCD. So, thank you all for your time. One quick slide about DreamBox Learning, we do higher order thinking in mathematics and we combine rigorous Elementary Math, Motivating Learning Environment and our Intelligent Adaptive Learning Engine help differentiate elementary mathematics for students in real time and Max and Ayu as you heard from their expertise. They are amazing people to have in our team to help with that all three of these pieces to be quite honest but certainly their area of expertise is the motivating learning environment. So, I can't thank Max and Ayu enough for sharing their time and sharing their expertise with you all. I am fortunate to have them everyday helping us make DreamBox better. So, Max and Ayu, thank you so much.
AO: Thank you.
MH: Thanks a lot.
AO: Bye. Thanks for coming.
MH: Bye.
TH: There we go. Have a great day everyone. Thanks for coming.


text:
Sangakkara and Nuwan Kulasekara (9) were at the crease at stumps on an absorbing fourth day's play which saw a keen contest between the bat and the ball.
The Sri Lankan captain Sangakkara notched up his 21st Test century, his maiden one in India, to anchor the innings brilliantly but none of the other top order batsmen could stitch a substantial partnership with him to save the visitors.
Sri Lanka's hopes of staving off defeat entirely rest on Sangakkara who has to bat out the entire day along with the tailenders or take a big enough lead which will take the game out of India's grasp.
The Sri Lankan captain, who had never scored even a half century in India, began cautiously but played some delightful strokes at the fag end of the day.In Image: Zaheer Khan celebrates after dismissing Thilan Samaraweera
Coverage: India v Sri Lanka | Scorecard

subset: commoncrawl


text:
WRU GRANT :: 07 Mar 16:38
WRU announce round two of the Facilities Foundation Grant
The WRU is pleased to announce that a total of £233,579 has been awarded to clubs across Wales in round two of the Facilities Foundation Grant.
This money forms the second part of a £500,000 fund from the WRU announced in the summer which allows clubs to apply for financial assistance to improve their facilities and is in addition to the monies announced as part of the WRU Club Funding Index last month.
A further 30 clubs have benefitted from round two of the funding, allowing them to improve their facilities in a number of different ways.
Projects include refurbishment of club houses and changing rooms, the purchase of grounds maintenance equipment, posts and storage containers, the development of training areas, pitch improvements, the development of a 3G pitch and the installation of new floodlights.
Tenby are one of a number of clubs who plan to use their grant on improvements to their playing surface.
"Our main ground is outstanding but our Second XV pitch is undulating and we have got to the stage where we can't play our second team games there," said Club Secretary Martyn Williams.
"The junior sections play on there but we need to level it out so we are using the WRU grant to do that."
With a vibrant junior rugby section from Under 7s upwards, the new playing surface is vital in bringing through the next generation of players in the sea-side town.
"It will guarantee the survival of our youth and junior teams as well as our seconds," Williams added.
"We've renovated the changing rooms ourselves but it's vital we do the pitch now as without that there is obviously no game.
"We are working extremely hard to make sure rugby survives in Tenby and we are very grateful to the WRU for their support."
Dolgellau have used their grant for a similar purpose as they look to improve their pitch.
"We have been told our training pitch has poor quality soil so we are implementing a drainage scheme to maximise its use," said club secretary Selwyn Goldsworthy.
"Our club plays a vital role in the development of rugby in north Wales so it's vital our facilities are up to scratch. We are aiming to begin the work at the end of April."
Community rugby is one of the priorities of the WRU and its success is vital to the sustainability of the game throughout Wales.
This is the second of three rounds of funding with the period to apply for the final round ending on May 17. Clubs are encouraged to discuss any future project ideas with the WRU Club Operations Team (email email@example.com or call 01443 665844).
To apply for future funding visit www.mywru.co.uk.
Full Round Two funding in detail:
Clubhouse refurbishments: Aberdare, Beaufort, Canton, Cefn Coed, Cefn Cribwr, Crynant, Cwmavon, Garndiffaith, Lougher, Morriston, Oakdale, Pembroke Dock Quins, Penarth, Rhyl, Swansea, Tredegar, Ystalyfera.
Grounds maintenance Equipment: Amman United, Llandeilo.
Pitches & training areas: Barry, Crymych, Dolgellau, Fall Bay, Fishguard & Goodwick, Tenby, Tonmawr, University of Wales, Newport.
Storage container: Cwmbran, St Davids.
Floodlights: Treherbert.


text:
Quality : 720p Bluray HD Director: Michael Bay Stars: Bruce Willis,Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Affleck IMDb Ratings: 6,6/10 from 268.453 users Metascore: 42/100 Motion Picture Rating (MPAA) Rated PG-13Genres: Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi | Thriller Country: USA Language:English | Russian | Indonesian Release Date: 1 July 1998 (USA)Subtitles: English Other Details: IMDb Armageddon (1998) Plot : It is just another day at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a few astronauts were repairing a satellite until, out of nowhere,a series of asteroids came crashing into the shuttle, destroying it. Theseasteroids also decimated New York soon thereafter. Then, NASA discovered that there is an asteroid roughly the size of Texas heading towards the Earth, and when it does hit the Earth, the planet itself and all of its inhabitants will be obliterated, worse, the asteroid will hit the Earth in 18 days. Unfortunately, NASA's plans to destroy the asteroid are irrelevant. That is when the U.S. military decides to use a nuclear warhead to blow the asteroid to pieces. Then, scientists decide to blow theasteroid with the warhead inside the asteroid itself. The only man to do it, is an oil driller named Harry Stamper and his group of misfit drillers andgeologists. As he and his drill team prepare for space excavation, theasteroid is still heading towards the Earth.
Click Here To Watch Full Movie
Related Posts
Related terms: Armageddon, Ben Affleck Armageddon, Armageddon The Movie, Armageddon 1998 Full Movie, Armageddon 1998 VHS, Armageddon 1998 Full Movie HD, Armageddon 1998 Torrent, Armageddon Bruce Willis


text:
About the Book
1st Mosman 1908 Scout Group celebrated it's centenary in 2008, and is Australia's oldest Scout group. This book chronicles the Scouts trip, hiking and exploring in Tasmania, in October 2008.
See More
Log in or create an account to post a comment.
0 Comments
Delete this comment?
See More


text:
Paul Malhotra Photographer
La Maison De LunelWardrobe Stylist Male Brooklyn, New York, US
My MM URL: http://www.modelmayhem.com/lamaisondelunel
Mayhem # 1358387
About MeAt La Maison De Lunel, we believe that style is more than a look, it's a way of life. It's the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you think, the way you breathe, and a way to give others a glimpse of the world through your eyes--"style is free expression in one of the most artistic forms" is the philosophy of founder Pierre Lunel. At La Maison De Lunel, we work alongside the most fashion forward designers, the most artistic and inovative make-up artists, hair and wardrobe stylists, photographers and graphic designers. La Maison De Lunel is fast becoming one of the milleniums top styling companies. La Maison De Lunel welcomes those who seek to reach their full external and thus internal potential. We want our clients to look and feel beautiful. We work to enhance the very attributes that make you "you". Whether you're walking down the runway or down the street we provide the services that will accentuate your natural beauty. At La Maison De Lunel, our skillful team will help you develop your own sense of style so that you can reach your ultimate potential.
Have you worked with La Maison De Lunel? Add Credits for La Maison De Lunel! >>
Paul Malhotra Photographer
Lawrence Nurse Clothing Designer
Loren Eleece Model
O-Photogra... Photographer
Thienlapho... Photographer
Deena Kittell Clothing Designer
Loading Content


text:
Pure Inventions Blueberry with White Tea
· Blueberries are the fruit with the biggest antioxidant punch. Proven to help preserve vision and boost brain function, they may be our best defense yet in the war against aging! White tea and green tea contain the highest amounts of antioxidants of all tea varieties.
· Just add two droppers full to 8oz. of water for a refreshing all natural non caloric high antioxidant beverage!
· All natural - no sugar, calories, caffeine, alcohol or artificial sweeteners.


text:
It only takes a minute to get started. Fill out our simple sign up form and login to the site.
This step is up to you but will greatly increase your chances of your profile being viewed by others. Introduce yourself, your interests and attach any nice photographs of yourself.
Utilise our website's cutting-edge search to locate members who are up to your requirements. Or just scan through listings and locate folks that arouse your interest.
Found someone who meets your criteria? Send a message to them or just a wink and see if they're interested. With a little luck you'll be on your way to an amazing adventure.
And start dating


text:
Recreation & Entertainment
The Copperas Cove Parks and Recreation Dept. runs everything from tee-ball to water aerobics.
Located in the Turkey Creek Activity Center, 1408 Golf Course Road, the center is the site for low-impact aerobics classes and "Tuesday Night Out" adult activities. The department also sponsors an annual NFL Punt, Pass, and Kick contest. Other activities include a major league soccer camp, a summer track team, a swim team, and softball league play for adults. City sponsored aquatics programs include lessons, senior swim times, and an "aqua trim" water aerobics program. Sports information is available by calling 547-9247. Parks and Recreation events are outlined on an information hotline, 254-554-7271.
Copperas Cove City Park is the gem in the Parks and Recreation crown. Located on FM 1113 (1200 W. Avenue B) west of the downtown area, City Park is home to six ball fields, soccer fields, a sand volleyball court, a pool, two basketball courts, a recreational vehicle park with full hook-ups, several picnic areas, and a fishing pond. Parks and Recreation provides and maintains the fields for the Copperas Cove Youth Recreation Council who runs the baseball and softball programs for youths ages four through eighteen. Registration for softball, open to girls between 9 and 14, starts in February with games beginning in April and running through June. Youth baseball, for children 9 through 14 follows basically the same schedule, as does tee ball for kids 4 though 8, and coach-pitch ball for kids 6 through 8.
There are also many sports and activities offered through the Boys and Girls Club and the YMCA. Call the YMCA at 254-547-7181 or the Boys and Girls Club at 254-547-5578 for more details.
On any given weekend in Copperas Cove, you will see numerous cyclists and runners who visit Copperas Cove to train for bicycle and foot races on our farm to market and county roads. Cove is in the middle of miles of scenic, well-maintained, traffic-free paved roads.
The Copperas Cove Chamber of Commerce offers 25 bicycle or running routes ranging in distance from 10 miles to 100 miles, loops that start or end in the Copperas Cove area.
Looking to hit the links in or around Copperas Cove? Check out Golfing in the area on our golf page.
Where community celebrations are concerned, Copperas Cove takes a back seat to no other city. Folks here enjoy quality family entertainment and have created events to make sure the good times roll on throughout the year.
Each spring - on the third weekend in May - the Copperas Cove Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau presents the Annual Rabbit Fest. Held in City Park, this 4 day festival features a top-quality carnival, dozens of food booths, kiddie land, petting zoo, car show, Wild West shows, and arts and crafts vendors. There is also live entertainment throughout the fest on an open-air stage. Visit Rabbit Fest Online at www.rabbitfest.com.
In the fall is the Gallop or Trot at the Gap, a 5K, chip-timed race sponsored by Copperas Cove Chamber of Commerce. The route takes racers through the city park and the gentle rolling hills in Copperas Cove's residential area.
But wait -- we have more! Close out the fall season with this community favorite: Hold on to your souls as you travel past ghosts, demons, witches and who knows what else ... in the creepy backdrop of Ogletree Gap Park, ride on a hay filled trailer through thrills and chills. Experience all the excitement of the Annual Spook Spectacular.
Finishing up the year in style is the Copperas Cove Downtown Association's annual Krist Kindl Markt holiday bazaar. The association opens the downtown area to dozens of vendor booths that offer visitors a wide variety of gift ideas and a plethora of seasonal food items in an outdoor setting. The bazaar runs Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday on the first full weekend of December. Saturday is highlighted by the annual Chamber of Commerce Children's Christmas Parade, marking the first official appearance of Santa Claus in the Copperas Cove area.
For further information on Copperas Cove festivals or events, contact the Chamber of Commerce at 254-547-7571.
Copperas Cove Chamber of Commerce & Vistors Bureau
204 E. Robertson Ave.
Copperas Cove TX 76522
Map and directions
Contents © 2004-2017 Copperas Cove Chamber of Commerce & Visitors Bureau
Website by CT Design Online
While all reasonable efforts are used to furnish accurate and up-to-date information on CopperasCove.com, the Chamber does not warrant that all of the information made available through CopperasCove.com is completely error-free. The Chamber assumes no liability for any errors or omissions in the content of this web site or responsibility for content posted by our members or our advertising partners.
Branding images/logos are owned by member businesses / advertisers and not by Copperas Cove Chamber of Commerce. The use of a member businesses / advertisers branding image/logo does not represent an endorsement of Copperas Cove Chamber of Commerce by the member business / advertiser, nor an endorsement of the member business / advertiser by Copperas Cove Chamber of Commerce.


text:
History of SWIM/MDSA at Wikia
Welcome to the History of SWIM/MDSA mini wiki at Scratchpad!
You can use the box below to create new pages for this mini-wiki. Make sure you type
[[Category:History of SWIM/MDSA]] on the page before you save it to make it part of the History of SWIM/MDSA wiki (preload can be enabled to automate this task, by clicking this link and saving that page. Afterwards, you may need to purge this page, if you still see this message).
History of Swim Without Interference at Minnewaska and the Minnewaska Distance Swimmers Association
1) History of Minnewaska State Park and Swimming Use
2)Political Struggle Surrounding Marriot purchase
3)The Birth of SWIM
A) ===Judy Mage Lead Co-Coordinator.===
Judy liked to swim illegally at Minnewaska and one night she was busted and roughly treated. Then she met a friend on a bus to NY and decided it was time to take back the lake.
B) ===Ray Greenberg secondary Co-Coordinator.===
Ray was an avid Gunk Rat, someone who spent many hours enjoying the Gunks, hiking, biking, skiing and yes swimming illegally. One day while out at Awosting Lake swimming in a private unguarded and illegal spot he noticed that the Rangers were now on bikes. This introduction of more mobile transport technology was frightened him, since the early warning system for illegal bathers was the site of the Rangers truck lumbering down the carriage roads. The bikes are quicker and harder to spot and the fear was that a crackdown on illegal bathing would soon follow. While discussing this with a friend Mike Scher, they got pretty worked up....
C) Formation of SWIM and early strategies.
D) Negotiations with the Park
i)Significant action Demonstrations ii)Petitions iii)Media Outreach iv) Legislative Outreach...
E) Negotiations with the State
F)The Deal and the end of SWIM
G) MDSA Today


text:
When they returned, lights were out and the community — mostly fishermen at that time of year - was quiet.
They never learned of the evacuation warning that beach residents received in advance of Hurricane Hazel. While they were out, police officers had gone door to door, advising people to flee.
The newlyweds ended up riding out Hazel on Long Beach — and only barely living to tell the tale.
In a recent interview, Jerry Helms recalled watching a house float by as he and his wife sought shelter in a two-story house near the mobile home where they honeymooned.
"(A) man was standing in the door of that house," Helms said. "He was hollering at us. And we couldn't help him, and he couldn't help us."
Helms believes the man died, his body found buried in sand.
Hazel, which made landfall at the border between North Carolina and South Carolina between 9:30 a.m. and 10 a.m. on Oct. 15, 1954, remains the only Category 4 storm to hit North Carolina in modern times and strongest modern storm to strike so far north.
Hazel's surge was a record — 18 feet above mean low water at Calabash. The storm struck at the same time as the highest lunar tide of the year, the full moon of October, boosting the surge by several feet.
And that was before the storm barreled through the eastern United States, wreaking devastation far to the north.
"Its impact in Canada and all through the eastern seaboard was tremendous," said Jay Barnes, author of "North Carolina's Hurricane History."
A half-century ago, there were no satellites, no 24-hour weather radio, no Weather Channel to give those who lived in Hazel's path warning of what was coming. In the final hours before the storm struck, coastal radar provided some hint, and people were asked to leave the waterfront — if they were home to get the warning.
With winds of 150 mph at landfall, the storm swept ashore at 30 mph, then picked up speed. Over Virginia, Hazel had a forward speed of 50 mph.
By 10 p.m., 12 hours after landfall, the storm was in Buffalo, where it united with a front, intensifying in both wind speed and rainfall, and hammered Toronto. A headline in the Buffalo News the next day read, "300 missing, 27 Dead in Toronto Storm."
The remnants of the storm passed the Arctic Circle and eventually made their way to Scandinavia, where they finally dissipated, according to Barnes' research.
"It was a cataclysmic situation," says Gene Tomlinson, 77, of Southport, who rode with a friend in a four-wheel-drive vehicle to see the devastation at Long Beach.
"It looked like where a bomb exploded," says Tomlinson, who now chairs the state's Coastal Resources Commission. "Pieces of houses were in all directions, and power poles were in every direction. I don't recall seeing a single entire house down the entire beachway."
Similar devastation was repeated throughout the east.
Wind gusts near 100 mph were reported in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and New York. Thirteen people were killed in Virginia and 26 died in flash floods in western Pennsylvania. Twenty-one people died in New York state.
In North Carolina, Barnes estimates that on top of the 19 people killed, more than 200 were injured; 15,000 homes and structures were destroyed and 39,000 damaged. Thirty counties reported major damage; property losses totaled $136 million in 1954 dollars.
On Long Beach — now known as Oak Island — 352 of 357 buildings were completely destroyed.
The Helmses' marriage ended in the mid-1960s, and Connie Helms is now Connie Ledgett. But Jerry Helms still has vivid memories of their honeymoon's unwelcome interloper.
As Hazel came ashore, he and his wife fled her mother's mobile home, seeking safety in a two-story home where they pulled themselves up a handrail on an outside staircase, then broke through a door.
The wind and water brought other houses straight at them, Jerry Helms recalled.
"At one time, a house came straight toward us, and we though, 'Oh, Lord, this is it,'" Helms said. "We had seen another explode right in the air coming toward us. ... but this house is coming close to us. All of the sudden, it veered around."
It wasn't long before ocean waves swamped the couple's refuge. His wife couldn't swim, so Helms pushed a mattress through the top-floor window and got her on it with a blanket tied around her. Holding on to other end of the blanket, he jumped in the raging water.
"We were just swept right away," Helms said. "A big breaker came over and washed us away. We washed around out there for I don't know how long, but it seemed like eternity."
The two ended up in a tree, lying on the mattress and using the blanket as protection from the rain, which hit them like rifle pellets.
"When it was over, we couldn't see nothing nowhere," Helms recalled. "We couldn't hear nothing. It seemed like the world had come to an end. We thought we was the only people left in the world.
"Eventually, we looked around and saw the sun and the water. The island looked like it was rising, and the water started going out. It looked like the island was rising out of the ocean."
They climbed about 30 feet down to the ground and started walking as water rushed around them, headed back to the Atlantic.
The National Hurricane Research Division of NOAA ranks Hazel as the 13th most intense storm ever to hit the United States, behind several unnamed storms in the 1900s, Andrew, Camille, and Carla, Donna and Hugo.
Hurricane researcher Chris Landsea has tried to equate the damage done by a wide array of storms, taking into account inflation, population changes and increases in property values. His rankings place Hazel 17th, estimating that in 2003 dollars, the storm would have done $9.54 billion in damage.
The storm's 95 U.S. deaths do not include as many as 1,000 Haitians killed before by the storm before it struck the United States or the 100 people who died in Canada.
Margaret Harper, 87, of Durham lived in Southport and had a house in Long Beach that Hazel destroyed.
"We didn't know where it was headed, like they do now," she said. "We had several days notice that a bad storm was coming, but we didn't have ways to measure it like they do now. It's a whole different ballgame now."
Harper and her husband chose not to rebuild.
"I settled with the insurance company and went to Europe the next summer," she said. "When we did build, we built in the middle of the woods on Bald Head Island. I wasn't about to go back to the beach again.
"I think people take an awful chance when they build on the water."
Helms stayed in the area, but now evacuates whenever a hurricane threatens.
"I don't want to sit here and watch anything else disappear," he said. "People just don't realize how bad it can get."


text:
The RG3 injury is getting a lot of attention, but the Danny Salazar is more significant to most Cleveland sports fans. Does this erase your hope for another championship run in Cleveland? Ken Carman and Anthony Lima discuss.
The Impact Of The Salazar Injury On The Indians Down The StretchSeptember 13, 2016 9:00 AM
Danny Salazar #31 of the Cleveland Indians pitches in the first inning against the Texas Rangers at Globe Life Park in Arlington on August 28, 2016 in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Rick Yeatts/Getty Images)


text:
What Is StumbleUpon And How To Increase Blog Traffic
What is StumbleUpon and should bloggers using this platform
Is this another social media site? Is it a new trend in online networking? What is StumbleUpon and is it the bloggers new best friend?
What is StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is a discovery engine that sends interesting content to you based on your interests. The website is StumbleUpon.com and it basically predicts and discovers cool content for you to read.
StumbleUpon is one of the best social media systems for driving traffic to your blog so you, my fellow bloggers, will love it!
How to use StumbeUpon to help you drive traffic to your blog
First thing first you need to create your account… So how to do it:
- Fill up your basic bio information
- Select the topics you are interested in. You can select as many topics as you wish. By selecting your interests you are telling StumbleUpon what kind of topics to stumble for you every time you visit the site.
- Upload profile photo of yourself
After you have created your profile you can start your journey of discovering, liking and following new bloggers. At this point you should concentrate on stumbling other people's content and follow few bloggers before submitting your own blog posts. You can stumble by clicking on the red button on top of the page and click on the "thumb up" if you enjoyed the article.
Do not self promote! Social media is a community and StumbleUpon is not an exception. With StumbleUpon is very important to share others content and posts. The truth is that if you self promoting all the time StumbleUpon will bury your posts and no one will ever interact with you or follow you. You have to make sure you give value to others and by liking and sharing their content you will build strong relationship with them.What is StumbleUpon and how this social media can help you drive traffic to your blog. Click To Tweet
Now is time for you to submit your own content. You can do this by entering your post URL here . By submitting your own blog post you adding it to your "likes" and to StumbleUpon feed. This means that followers and people in your niche can discover it and share it. You can create sections like on Pinterest and post to them. Here on StumbleUpon they are called "Lists".
When you start using StumbleUpon you will notice that people have different coloured bars. These colours represent different interests. So for example my interest is "beauty" so every time I save someone's post it will appear in dark blue boarder.
StumbleUpon uses a paid ad version which can boost you up and give exposure to your blog posts. Click here for more information. I think it is very good tool and people who are interested in your topic will be directed to your posts. And this means more genuine traffic, right?
- Create a good description on each of your Lists and every time you post something, add it to your relevant "List".
- Participate with powerful Stumblers! Follow powerful profiles in your niche and be active with them. If you creating a valuable content and this content is related to their one, they will most likely share some of your blog post as well.
- Be on StumbleUpon for about 20 min every day! Don't over share and over post ( as far as I know this platform will not support you if you over do it ). So spend some time in there, follow the steps above and leave.
- Make your posts "shareable"! Add good description, use colourful photos and write a good content
- Add StumbleUpon button to your site! This way your readers can easily add and share your blog posts on this platform.
- Participate in Facebook bloggers groups! One of the best bloggers group on FB has treat especially associated to StumbleUpon. There we can stumble each other's posts and help promote our blogs. The group is called Blog Engagement/Promotion Group and it is awesome.
So what is StumbleUpon? It is a powerful place to get traffic for your blog and it can be a huge benefit to gain exposure.
Featured image source: Pexels


text:
Police Identify Body Linked to Joel Rifkin
Published: August 21, 1993
FARMINGDALE, L.I., Aug. 20— The New York State police today identified the remains of a woman whose body they were led to by Joel Rifkin, the accused serial killer.
Lieut. Eugene Corcoran of the state police identified the woman as Lauren Marquez, 28 years old, of Sunnyside, Queens, and Manhattan.
The police uncovered her body in a wooded area off Route 31 in Southampton on June 29, after Mr. Rikfin told them he had buried the body there. The police have said Mr. Rifkin has admitted to killing 17 women, some of whom were prostitutes, in the New York metropolitan area. They have also linked him to an 18th killing.


text:
We help you find a March music theory tutor. Music Theory tuition are a great method to start a fun new hobby, pick up a new talent and attain confidence in music theory. Use our site to search for March music theory tutors and determine which matches your requirements so you can enjoy your music theory tuition in March immediately!
First Tutors: Music is the best way to discover March music theory teachers in the UK, helping you find March music theory tuition close to you and March teachers to assist with any instrument, for example, piano, violin or guitar. We can help you find March music theory tuition or a one-to-one March music theory teacher to prepare for music theory exams and develop your music theory skills! We order March music theory teachers in your area according to their hourly charges and distance from you.
If you are a music theory teacher and would like to offer music theory tuition services in March or throughout the UK, please register with First Tutors: Music or find out more about us here. Becoming a March music theory teacher is a wonderful way to improve your own skills by providing music theory tuition while assisting others, all in the March area!


text:
SIMULIA Regional User Meeting: 25-26 September 2012
SIMULIA UK is proud to announce its 25th Regional User Meeting! Shrigley Hall Hotel • United Kingdom
The event began in 1987 and has grown into SIMULIA UK's most important event. Every year industry and academic users from all over the country join together and learn how the latest simulation technology and methods can accelerate and improve product development.
This meeting brings together users to share their knowledge and experience in advancing methods and technology for finite element analysis, multiphysics, process automation, design optimization and simulation management.
Attendees will discover new capabilities within Abaqus, future strategies of SIMULIA, provide input on future software enhancements and network with other users to share experiences and new ideas.
New for 2012! Get Connected at #UKRUM2012!
We will be capturing the buzz in the lead up to the RUM using our Twitter pages, so why not ask a question or share your thoughts on what you'd like to see at the conference! Tweet your thoughts and questions to #UKRUM2012.
Contact Us
If you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact us:
Claire Poole | t: 01908 278629 | e: email@example.com
Venue & Accommodation
Shrigley Hall Hotel
Pott Shrigley
Nr Macclesfield
Shrigley Hall Hotel (Trip Advisor)
Tel: 01625 575757


text:
Even though Samsung's Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge phones have probably been the most popular Galaxy devices so far, Samsung continues to rival Apple's twin iPhones with its massive inventory of over 150 phones, ranging from budget numbers like the J5 to the top of the line Galaxy S7 edge.
With the launch of the Galaxy Note 7, it will be interesting to see if the sales of the device alone in the future will be enough to see off Apple's charge once and for all.
The success of the Galaxy Note 7 will depend on how smooth it runs, remains stutter-free and doesn't go blank over long term usage. The phablet arrives with the tried and tested Exynos 8890 octa-core processor coupled with 4GB of RAM which is also present in Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge phones. However, the Exynos 8890 processor scored a little less than Apple's A9 processor in AnTuTu's Benchmark scoring which is a cause of concern.
Apple is expected to launch its next phablet next month with a more powerful A10 processor which will increase the gap even further, and it remains to be seen if the Galaxy Note 7 will continue to compete with other phablets featuring the likes of A10, Kirin 955 and Snapdragon 821 processors in the coming months.
While Apple hasn't experimented much with the design of its iPhones in the past couple of years, Samsung has hit the ball out of the park by introducing curved displays, earlier with its 'Edge' models and now with the Galaxy Note 7 whose display curves both ways, offering a beautiful and sleek look.
The display in Galaxy Note 7 is a 5.7" Quad HD Super AMOLED one which continues to impress like the ones in the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge phones did. The display is perfectly capable of supporting VR, consumes less power and its Always On feature will let you view texts, missed calls and battery levels one you get used to it. The display is also among the brightest in the industry and offers rich, vivid colours and deeper blacks to let you experience the best viewing experience in a smartphone.
When we reviewed the iPhone 6s Plus, while Apple is yet to bring in the much-talked-about OLED display, we found the existing Retina display with 3D Touch absolutely amazing. Even though the resolution is just a Full HD one, the 'Retina display' feature makes it 'pin sharp, crystal and a joy to stream content over'. The new 3D Touch feature which includes a Taptic Engine also makes the display highly sensitive to touch and lets you view options in apps they way you want to. Samsung is yet to catch up with this technology.
While the 12-MP camera in the Galaxy Note 7 doesn't sound very powerful, those who have experienced the 12MP cameras in Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge will be able to tell how good they are.
The 12-MP camera comes with 'Selective Focus' to bring in depth of clarity and beautiful landscapes as well as a 'Pro' mode which lets you adjust everything from ISO to white levels. The front camera also comes with features like 'beauty mode', wide selfie and video collage.
The rear camera in iPhone 6s Plus is also a 12-MP one and features Optical Image Stabilisation which also extends to 4K videos shot on the camera. The Live Photos feature also lets users take 2 second videos while taking pictures and when viewed later in the album, they look like short video snippets which can be a lot of fun to play with. The selfie camera is crisp without any heavy-handed airbrushing and focuses in an instant and the flash is more of a white light that momentarily blinds you to take some of the best lit photos on inky dark nights. It has the ability to go from chalky white to beige to make sure you are the star of the photo you are taking.
Given that both cameras feature the best technologies and offer brilliant results, it will be down to user ratings and personal tastes to measure which of them is superior to the other.
Samsung definitely had the battery life on the back of its mind when it started designing the Galaxy Note 7. Compared to a 3,000 mAh battery in Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy Note 7 brings in a powerful 3,500 mAh battery which will let you consume media, play games and chat for many hours at a go. While reviewing the iPhone 6s Plus, after streaming and downloading all day over 4G, we had to charge it once every 1.5 days which is a great feat for a phone battery which doesn't claim to be the best in terms of mAh capacity.
Just like iPhone 6s Plus comes with low power modes, Galaxy Note 7 will also benefit from a range of battery saving features that will come with Android as well as some built-in by Samsung. Once we make the phablet go through a rigorous hands-on review, we will let you know more about its battery prowess.
Samsung has decided to launch a single storage model of Galaxy Note 7 with 64GB as fixed storage compared to 32GB and 64GB variants of the Galaxy Note 5. Being a Note device, people will surely use it to store tonnes of media, work files and apps so as to access them at all times with the touch of a button. For those who need more, the device, unlike its predecessor, also features a MicroSD slot to let you add data to your heart's content.
While Apple seems highly averse to SD slots, the iPhone 6s Plus is available with as much as 128GB of storage, negating the need for extra slots. At the same time, the iCloud is a highly popular feature and is less prone to crashes, making it very convenient for users to back up their files in it and download them whenever they please. Given that both devices offer you unlimited storage capacities, either as hardware or online, picking a winner is depends solely on preferences of users.
Both the Galaxy Note 7 and iPhone 6s Plus are excellent devices with far-reaching capabilities. However, Samsung seems to have raced ahead with the design concepts it has employed so far this year and the Galaxy Note 7 is poised to become yet another success story for the Korean smartphone giant.
However, Apple will be launching its own contender next month and it will be interesting to see how the battle pans out by the turn of the year.


text:
US Foreign Policy must change.
The President must obey the Constitution.. Only the Congress can declare war. We spend 168 billion dollars for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. every year. The Fifty States have a total debt of 100 billion. We must bring our troops home and use the savings for the states and debt reduction. We must disentangle with the Middle East once and for all! Also we must bring our troops home from Japan, South Korea, etc.
Source: http://www.mikemoloney4congress.com/