 From Chapter 1 of Make Yourself Clear: A seesaw is not really a game. It is more of a preoccupation, wherein both parties concentrate on the action, engrossed for as long as it holds their attention. While the board is in motion, there is no end and no beginning. When one person decides to stop – sometimes by rudely jumping off and sending the other person plummeting toward the dirt – the preoccupation ends. For the game to continue, both players have to be mutually invested in the outcome – and each other.  Not the doodle above, but the story depicted below....
"When I approached the service desk this time, though, the person behind it barely looked at me. She was new (to me). While typing and looking at a screen, she told me to see one of the service specialists. She seemed agitated when I asked for further clarification. Somewhere in her training, or in her ongoing assessment from her team leader or supervisor, one of the following had happened: 1) she had been led to believe that paying attention to the screen in front of her was more important than paying attention to a person who had physically entered her service area; 2) she had been rewarded for handling something on the screen rather than the person in front of her; or 3) she had been allowed to persist in her work without realizing a key choice point: deal well with the item on the screen or deal well with the person in front of you (it’s possible, of course, to handle both parties well, though not necessarily at the same exact time)."  To create some on brand, multi-colored doodles for the Make Yourself Clear website, I first had to set up some custom colors in Explain Everything. Using the eye-dropper in the color picker, I was able to pull the 3 colors from an imported image (the one at the top) and set my color palette to match This made it easy to use the colors in lines, object fills, bucket fills, and shape colors. And, those colors stay with the project so if I need to come back and add more images, I'll have those colors ready to go.
 On a quarterly check-in call a few weeks ago with one of EE's team members whom I knew was a gamer, I asked what's the best thing he's seen recently. He said "Apex Legends." Now, I love playing video games even though I am not necessarily skilled in any particular genre or format. I just appreciate good game design and being immersed in interesting environments. I used to play Counter-Strike (nearly 20 years ago) and just loved playing with other people even though I was never very good. I somehow got to be around and observe the folks (in IRC!) who ended up creating an eSports website called 'gotFrag' back in the day (go [rdw]). I also like single player games with good stories. eSports and streaming continues to be a growing industry, though still not necessarily recognized much less talked about in most traditional learning and business environments (though some universities, like some pro sports orgs, are starting to create their own eSports divisions).
So I downloaded the free Apex Legends for my PS4 and over the next couple of weeks and learned enough not to completely embarrass myself. I also learned quickly that I will not be improve quickly enough to be like some of the experts who play because I do not have the drive nor the resilience to achieve that kind of excellence. I was confused - then delighted - when one evening I was paired with two players - @da_olaf and @himmie_ who not only were speaking to me via the in game voice chat but apparently to an external audience as well. This team proceeded to win our match with very little help needed from me. Soon after I left the match, I decided to investigate and understand what I had just experienced. Sure enough, I found @da_olaf's Twitch.tv channel (and subscribed) and learned that he and @himmie_ are frequent collaborators. I also learned that with Amazon Prime, you get one free Twitch.tv subscription (so if you have an Amazon Prime account and have never explored Twitch - use it one of these guys' channels! It's really interesting). I also found them on Twitter (hence the mentions in the subject line). I had not had a recent reason to be curious about this space, but now I am extremely curious. I want to draw attention to this experience for a number of reasons:
And if you are curious about my what my gamertag means, it's drrsqrd = Dr. R. Squared  We’ve noticed that delight often starts for people who are in a neutral or negative state. They are either on autopilot (at best) or bored (at worst), either frustrated (at best) or fearful (at worst). On autopilot or bored, for example, they select a new program to watch and it doesn’t just perk their curiosity, it ends up giving them a completely new way of seeing the world and their place in it. Or, another example, fed up with a work culture that is toxic and allowed to be so, they find a new job in an environment that supports their growth, encourages them to take risks, and rewards them by giving them partial ownership of their most innovative products. Excerpt from Chapter 13 of Make Yourself Clear
 I added a shopping list to the Toolkit page of the Make Yourself Clear website.
The contents and suggested uses are below:
 We think it is a lot of fun to take the 'Did a Computer or Human Write This?' quiz shared by the New York Times several years ago. This template allows you to have a simple answer key that a larger audience can respond to instead of using the computer-based quiz.
 My EDU friends Holly Clark and Tanya Avrith made me aware of Tim Grahl's work a few years ago leading up the publication of their co-authored book, The Google Infused Classroom. Last week I learned that Tim was offering a discount and early bird promotion for his Book Launch program, and with two months until Make Yourself Clear releases, it seems like it could be good timing. I've seen some free webinars from Tim before and have always been impressed. You can learn more about this particular program here: Book Launch
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