waking up from a dream, trying to hang on to it... but it is gone - I suspect what I was trying to retrieve was never there anyhow.

It was in Australia, a swimming pool complex, it was all about playful learning, and I had found a young woman enthusiast attendant who was introducing me to the most amazing and highly relevant concepts about play. I would need to add these to my writings, they were a new and very exiting angle. She introduced me to her guru, a man in his 60’s, looking a bit like an ageing Hollywood star. That was it, that was the point at which I woke - needing to get this concept, which I suspect was never there, down, before it went, but it wasn’t there.

Tags: brain,play

Monday, 23 March I was downloading a program iTunes last night which is a digital zoetrope beautifully done and there it got into the Apple editor's pick so I was a bit cross about that at the time because I feel that this is what I had in mind but on looking at it a little bit further what I am doing is more of a display of images this zoetrope on iTunes on the iPhone is much more of a toy and I'm hoping that what I can produce is more of a tool more of the game so that got me thinking about the nature of game and toy the balance between something that is just a curiosity a pub game something that makes you smile for a second or two that is really are quite boring after that or something that you want to come back to again and again because it interests you and captures your imagination and that is the tool that I would be looking for one that I could really use with students in school and a tool that would capture their imagination and it is after all the capturing of the imagination which is what I am after as a teacher that's what I'm doing in my classroom I don't think I'm teaching skills they learn those I am out to capture their imagination get them fired up so what is it about the nature of games and gaming not that it goes to far to take up too much time it needs to be simple and easy beautiful and fun amusing titillating somewhere between game and toy toy and game it is the do with visual illusions so it is in the realm of the wonder err a must stop doing errs because my voice recognition software isn't too good with err though maybe this time I would have trained it enough that that is all beside the nature of games and gaming and how much time people are prepared to spend I found with photoshoppingpong earlier in the year that it took me a while to get into it took me a while to get going and then I was addicted and I was always looking forward to the next volley but I have had a lot of difficulty getting students involved to this extent it is much easier to get them involved within the structure of a lesson and much much more difficult to get them involved and working outside of lesson time until I have got them going far enough that they are doing it for themselves rather than for me I have not ever been particularly interested in games playing as games playing has developed over the last 30 years I'm of a generation that missed out on this but there are things that interest me about media it is much easier just to sit down passively in front of the television and watch whatever is in front of the eyes without having to even bother with making a choice as to what to view I have a library of interesting programs interesting films that would be much more edifying than the slush that is normally broadcast and yet it is an effort to to set them up to watch I have to watch them where as in front of the television with my laptop on my lap idly surfing the Internet while half watching a crass quiz I can successfully waste a lot of time the second gate

Tags: zoetrope,games,pingpong,television,addiction,play

OK Wednesday, 17 March walking up the hill again found the disadvantage today with my plan of doing this every day over Easter it's not much good in the rain thinking about games playing today I've spent the morning trying to key out the background err of the girls cheerleading err sequence and regretting that we didn't do it on a green screen because I'm losing part of the face our which would mean doing it all in photo shop frame by frame massive be time-consuming Iv'e done about a 3rd which took me the best part of a day question is how much time I waste on this if waste it is and so what background I put in that fits or adds meaning and I'm not sure I'm still totally taken unhooked by the process of moving the mouse and moving a figure that direct manipulation and it excites me in a visual way the fact that it's the person that I manipulating there must be an element to that in the same way that there is an element in life drawing I'm not saying that it's sexual because it's not except that it must have a similar sort of energy base in that it is a communication with another being and its manipulation of another being very similar to life drawing err but time is the big issue err trying to automate the process when it hasn't been done a green screen so maybe with my current yr eight after Easter I do one more set of sequences with a green screen based on what we've been doing by getting plywood and painting it green and then laying that down on the floor and still doing the death-defying acrobatic sort of stuff but the more exciting one this time was the one that came from the boys where he went bit wild to begin with again it's the wild creative wild thing like in the bottle top sequence where creativity came out of the accidental in that from their first bit of wild film it looked to me a little bit like a pinball machine so they then set up the next sequence as a pinball machine putting tape down on the floor with the idea that I would put a pinball machine background in behind the images are which I shall do again it's hugely time-consuming without a green screen but the idea is brilliant and possibly the Idea moves on one more step if you created a few sequences of pinball umm and built them into a Flash game with a lever so that you actually create a pinball machine that has an interactive element are different interactive element for the player and rather than just moving the figures with a slider they press the button to flip the flippers and you actually turn turn it into a game not that I would have time to do that although I am sure it would be perfectly possible but it would certainly be an idea to plan and to write up umm and I think probably to put a few of the Flash game examples in that I found over the years as examples like the feather one err and the singing one err so we shall put those into the website but also talking to Michaela about oakdragon and thinking back to my original game of only human and 10 pin bowling umm human skittles where the children were the skittles or the adults whoever was playing and we rolled a great big soft ball down the field at and whoever the ball hit had to gently fall over and if they touched someone else as they fell then those people had to fall over as well and it was just hilarious very very simple concept but absolutely hilarious and it doesn't the same sort of stuff that doesn't have a point to it human skittles it is just a game and the joy is in the playing and the joy is being playing as a group and is again it just is totally zany like the surrealist stuff like exquisite corpse err we have another fantastic session on Monday with exquisite corpse with consequences with my year sevens so that's definitely got to be corrected and go in as a part of this and is the surrealism thing about talking about surrealism I probably need to do a bit of work more work over this Easter umm on a Roland Penrose and talking umm doing my interview if I can set it up so that will be something to set up for this week and the digital flip books which are being will which show that the talk is today right I've reached the second gate so I'm going to stop more tomorrow turn the machine off and hope this works

Tags: Flash,flipbook,exquisite corpse,surrealism,play

This is an as yet unsubstantiated thought that our schooling is a direct decedent of our puritanical past. Schools, the army, the class system: control, categorise, regiment. Children to be seen (if that) and not heard. A Cromwellian nightmare of grey work pray serve. Anything colourful, fun, dancing, playful, banned as frivolous, not serious. At times I curse my puritanical upbringing, with it's work ethic. Artists are often seen as subversive, bohemian, selfish, reclusive, perhaps even not useful. Why are the head of sciences and maths at the school where I teach paid more than the heads of the arts and the humanities? The school will say that all students have to do these subjects, this is why they are paid more. Why do all students have to do maths and science, but not art, especially as we live in a society where the arts employ so many? Art is playful, often not serious, and therefore less important. There is also the thought that our education system, mechanised and industrial, is a result to an extent of the generation lost in WW1 - all the teachers that died, so classes were taught by specialists, in much greater numbers, on a conveyer belt of learning.

Tags: play,pedagogy,school

Thoughts from this mornings walk around touch - the jumping up and down of the brushes on the site. Clicking buttons - that button thing, the magic of going from one place to another, being in control. How does this fit with play - with desirable objects - my penknife - the Pitt Rivers.

Objects in the Pitt rivers - ornamentation, treasure, collect, pebble - the pebble from pre history story.

the scrubbing - touch in that - the fact that Apple call their ipod the touch.

Tags: touch,play,scrub,objects,pebbles