Not Another March Madness Blog.

Today in class we talked about how we are all over-achievers and we are doing everything we possibly can in UC 256 to bank as many points as possible. Well I would have to say I fall into the over-achieving category. I've been occupying myself this month with reading the other group's blogs and writing thoughtful comments, and I've found that I've really enjoyed seeing everyone's perspectives and their unique links to the course materials.

However, I have some frustrations as well. Pretty much every other post that I see is about March Madness, or basketball, or sports. I am not a close follower of March Madness; sure, I rooted for Michigan while they were still in the tournament, and my mom is a Syracuse Alum so I've been cheering for them too, but without actually watching the games.

Here's my request: PLEASE stop blogging about March Madness and let's open up our horizons. I have no authority to speak for anyone, but I do know that not everyone is interested in sports! So many posts about March Madness is extremely limiting for those of us who are trying to get a good grade and write blog comments. I feel like I have nothing to say on the topic.

This whole process has become a bit of a game for myself. The objective of my blogging game is to find the posts that have nothing to do with sports. It's not as easy as you think.

I do apologize if my request is a little harsh, and yes, I realize it's ironic that I just wrote a whole blog post about sports when I'm advocating for the opposite. I'll leave you with this: there's a whole new world of games out there off the basketball court; let's explore them a little more before the course comes to a close!

May the odds be ever in your favor!

I am not much of a follower when it comes to trends or the latest obsessions, but when it came to The Hunger Games I must admit I did jump right on the bandwagon with everyone else after reading the first book of the series. They were a perfect mix of competition, emotion, and even romance that kept me wanting to read more. Needless to say I was one of those people at the midnight premiere of the movie which came out last Thursday. No I was not the crazy fan
wearing Katniss's face on my t-shirt or holding an awkward sign, but I was eager to watch the movie.

I can honestly say I loved the movie. It followed the entire book so well. Theintensity of the movie kept everyone on the edge of their seats. You could feel the competition in the air, along with the emotions running through each character. I would highly recommend it to anyone. My roommates who did not even read the book loved the movie. Go see it!

Socializing While Gaming

I never considered myself to be much of a gamer, however, this changed when I got the iPhone. Now, whether it's Fruit Ninja, Temple Run or Tetris, I can't seem to put my phone down for more than five minutes.

My newest addiction is Scramble With Friends. This popular game involves creating words out of scrambled letters in a short period of time to accumulate points. This game is played against an opponent. The opponent can either be a stranger assigned randomly or can be a friend found through Facebook friends or contact lists. 

A lot of times gamers are stereotyped as anti-social, however, applications such as Scramble With Friends are changing that. For example, this game allows players to challenge their friends and even communicate with them through the chat feature. Not only can you chose to play with people you know, but you can even meet new people through the game. I even read an article about how two people got married after randomly playing each other and then talking through the chat feature in Words With Friends.

I think it's interesting to examine how gaming is changing due to new technology and the applications that come with it. Only a decade ago I got my first cellphone, a Nokia phone with the game Snake. With this game, the only person I could play against was myself. There was no social interaction that came with this game. Now, games present a new social element by allowing instant interaction and communication between numerous players. Whether it is maintaining relationships with family members and friends or creating new bonds with people from all over the globe, there are new opportunities to socialize through gaming. How do you think games will continue to evolve to further facilitate sociality?

Paige Rowin

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Sports and Improv in the Same Family?

Ok, so you've probably guessed by now that I love improvisation; in fact, I'm practicing it for my major quest. While doing this week's readings, something really stood out to me. I'm not a huge sports fan, though I do know a lot about them thanks to my dad. Needless to say, I've been thoroughly educated in hockey because I spend most of my childhood waking up at 6am on a Sunday morning to go with my family to my cousin's travel hockey games back in New Jersey. In this week's New York Times article, Adam Gopnik was cited in saying that hockey is “in part an improvisational game played on a frozen street, in part a brutal game of rugby played at high speed, in part a form of soccer on ice.”

The word "improvisation" caught my eye, and so my friend and I got into a debate of how much sports come down to improv. Sure, teams devise their plays ahead of time to score as many goals as possible. But how can you really devise plays against a team before you've even played them, or before you even know what situation you're going to be in? My opinion is this: hockey can be very heavily improved. Once players find their opponent's weaknesses, they can devise a new plan or play. If a team member gets put into the penalty box, the player must come up with a new way to pass the puck. When the opposing team comes out of the blue with a spectacular new play, players must find a new way to get to the goal and score. 


This can be applied to most sports of this sort, like soccer, lacrosse, and basketball, where action is constantly taking place and you're never sure what you're going to get next in the competition. And, of course, like I've been learning, improv takes a lot of skill and talent--as does thinking on your feet (rather, skates) in the middle of a hockey game. That's not to say planning plays is insignificant; don't get me wrong, strategy is a HUGE component in competitive sports. But we shouldn't ignore the improv on the rink! The pure talent and skill that comes out in those deciding moments will be what the crowd of fans, and the team, will remember at the end of the game.

Rivalries in Sports

Yesterday, the Lakers played the Celtics, a matchup of the two best basketball organizations in NBA history, with each having won the most championships. These two teams account for more than half of the total number of NBA championships.

But what makes this rivalry bigger than the Knicks-Celtics rivalry, who would fall into the intense New York-Boston rivalries?

There are many rivalries in sports, some driven by geographical factors, and others by historical or non-competitive factors, but the most intense rivalries are driven by one thing, results.

The Lakers and Celtics have been a part of the biggest rivalry in basketball, but this year it has calmed down, not because the history behind each team has changed, but because the Celtics are at the bottom of the East's playoff picture, they are deviating from being a perennial contender. The Celtics aren't scary this year, so other rivalries are gaining steam.

The newest rivalry in the NBA is the best example of this results over geography rivalry argument. For the first time, the Lakers and the Clippers are a part of a newly labeled rivalry, and battle for LA.

The Clippers have emerged as a good team this year, something unexpected from one of the most unsuccessful franchises in all of sports. Clipper-Laker games now receive an enormous amount of coverage, when before it would be a blowout affair.

yuck

Results drive rivalries, and I'm sorry Clipper fans, but LA is still the Lakers' town.

Alternative Grading: Linear Rewards and the Rivalry System

I decided to ponder some new methods of grading in school based on only rewarding students based on performance and the N-Effect. 

Linear Rewards:

This system entails rewarding those who do better with more extra credit (A minor amount).

For example, a simple design could be implemented would be to give one extra credit point for every 10 points you earn on an assignment (Every assignment gets a free 10% point boost based on the amount of points earned).

Someone with a 70/100 on an assignment would instead earn a 77.

This percentage can range from any percentage really, as long as it provides the incentive to keep doing better.

This system entices people to do better on all assignments because there are better rewards if they do better.  It’s better than a flat reward system (Or otherwise an inflation of the grade) because some students with low grades benefit more from flat bonuses and therefore may not try as hard and bank on the inflation rather than their own skills.

Rivalry System:

N-effect of Rivals put into place on Students

This system pits two anonymous students of a similar caliber to compete for a few extra credit points.

This system should require a preliminary system that somewhat ranks the students based on their performance on the first major assessment (This is not entirely necessary, however it will make it more fair).

These rankings will allow for setting up the Rivalry System:

Consecutively ranked students will be paired up anonymously (only the professor or teacher will know who is paired with whom)

On every assessment, each student will be shown their own grade (of course) as well as JUST the grade of their anonymous rival.  If the student scores higher than their rival does, that student earns an extra X percentage points on their Linear Reward. 

For example, Student A earns a 70/100 and student B earns 75/100, and the Linear Reward is set at 5%.  Since Student B earned more than Student A, Student B earns an extra 2 percentage points, setting his or her  Linear Reward to 7% instead.  Student A would not earn this extra bonus.

Student A: 70*1.05 = 73.5
Student B: 75*1.07 = 80.25

This system encourages students to score better with both the Linear Reward design as well as puts them in a small competitive setting that is most effective (N-effect with rivals by Steven Garcia).

What do you guys think of these designs?

Recess!

I remember those days in elementary school when we would anxiously wait for the bell to ring to signal lunch and recess, and then beg for five more minutes when it was time to go back to class. Not only did we want to play, we needed to play games with our friends, either a structured game or making up our own rules. Looking back, I realize how important it was that we had those wonderful hours of nonsense fun. According to psychologists, playing as a child is extremely necessary for our social and creative development.

As a psych major with a focus on developmental psychology, I've been lucky enough to conduct some research on my own for my research methods lab this semester. Recently, my research team and I observed child's play in preschool children, and coded for the presence of three different types of play, all of which we talked about in class last week.

First, parallel play is defined as children playing near other children, but there is no interaction between them. Associative play is somewhat similar; the children play near one another and exchange toys and comments. Lastly, cooperative and sociodramatic play is when children play a game with a common goal, like box ball, a board game, or even make-believe games like house or tea-party. Ultimately, we observed that boys engaged in more cooperative play than girls, and girls engaged in more parallel play.

So what does this say about how boys and girls will develop socially? Not too much. We don't want to over-generalize these results; we all know there are tons of boys that like to play by themselves and a lot of girls that play make-believe games. Our study had some confounding variables and definite room for improvement, but one thing is important to think about. Perhaps we should consider how gender expectations affect children at this young age. Are we subconsciously giving girls messages to do quiet "girl" activities like drawing, and giving boys messages that they can be more rowdy and energetic than their female counterparts? How early are gender stereotypes reaching children, either through media or peer reinforcement? What needs to be changed? These are questions that as a psych student, I would definitely be interested in studying further.