Learning in Playful Environments

  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Pirsig My rating: 5 of 5 stars What made my reading of this book so interesting was that I was given my copy by my friend Pete who is an engineer. Every Friday night Pete and I ride our pushbikes 25 kms around the east side of Singapore, drink a beer or two and ride back again. We talk: Pete about engineering, me about teaching and the books I read. One Friday Pete passed me a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and said he'd always wanted to read it; he'd bought two copies and we could read and chat about it each week. Thus began a remarkable bookclub. What Pete loved and helped me to see better was the idea of an engineering problem as holistic. When things go wrong you can treat the symptom or you can think more holistically to understand the nature of the system. But, as Zen and the Art explains, the engineering systems we engage with also include the user as an integral eleme...

The company I keep Includes poets.  Odd individuals  Who see the world sideways,  Lurking in conversations,  Waiting for the weird words,  The unusual observations, And surreptitiously wrapping them  In paper napkins  To sneak them home.  Best to keep your insights hidden  Lest they pilfer those too  And sell them to the world in a poem. A friend has been writing a poem a day and publishing on Facebook. At dinner last night he was asked if he'd written the day's poem. "I'll do it later" he said, "hopefully someone will say something that will give me inspiration".