Tracking Change

This chapter adds yet another type of tracking game, one the authors call thermostatic tracking games. Thermostatic games are based on the notion that many experiences, discoveries, and ideas follow a recognizable pattern. The pattern begins with a steady state, is followed by adjustments due to disruptive changes, and then returns to a steady state. They argue that this is what a thermostat does, and that is why they refer to this kind of tracking as thermostatic. They use examples from poetry, literature, anthropology, the history of philosophy, and sociology to show how the thermostatic process works. They conclude by emphasizing how these games can be used to identify set points and visions for change.

Test

This final chapter explores yet further examples of how the principles of testing can be applied within the social sciences. As with the previous chapters, the authors begin by asking students to Google questions and then use the results Google provides to ask more sophisticated questions about the impact and personal consequences of the question. They begin by asking a question about how serial killer, Harold Shipman, was able to escape suspicion for as long as he did. They then take up a question about the common traits of serial killers, paying attention to the effects of the traits and how these traits may have personal connections to students. They conclude the chapter with a section about how we might make the decision to eat a third candy bar.

Test

In this chapter, the authors continue with their focus on testing. They use examples from the humanities to search for impact and personal significance in Google searches. They begin elucidating the process through a Bertrand Russell logic game concerning the present king of France and whether he has hair or not. This example is used to demonstrate how sophisticated logical principles can be evaluated by using Google as a helper. Next, they highlight an example from philosophy by interrogating Google results questioning the sanity of a major scholar. Finally, the last example asks students to look for impact and personal connection by considering the reasons Eve may have eaten the forbidden fruit.

How to Track Progress

This chapter introduces a second kind of tracking game: progressive tracking games. In it, the authors show how students can use progressive tracking games to develop tracking skills that will become more sophisticated over time, rather than a simple matter of mastering facts. They introduce four levels of tracking that can be used to enhance learning. The levels take ideas and start with (1) definitions, move to (2) learning methods, build to (3) listing examples, and finish with (4) applying ideas in new ways. They introduce a series of games that teachers can use to help students learn how to track more progressively. They draw their examples from literature (The Great Gatsby), history (“The Gettysburg Address”), philosophy (miracles), and poetry (“I Could Not Tell”).

Test

The emphasis in this chapter moves from tracking to testing. In it, the authors demonstrate how the simple Googling of information can be transformed into something deeper and more meaningful: a testing of information that can make it significant and meaningful to students. They begin by addressing some of the ways that Google makes deep learning more difficult. They then introduce games that enable teachers to ask students to take information they get from Google and interrogate it for reliability and import. They ask students to evaluate the impact the information has for themselves and for others. In addition, they close this chapter by suggesting that nothing is true everywhere, and if students want to find meaning in their results, they should look for it themselves.

Rationales for the New Trivium and Their Underlying Principles

The purpose of this chapter is to lay out why the authors think trimming, tracking, and testing are key skills for the educated person. They propose that they make up a new trivium for education in the 21st century. Next, they contrast trimming, tracking, and testing with the old trivium. From there, they introduce the ways student commitment, self-explanation, and transferable skills come together through trimming, tracking, and testing. They close the chapter by extolling the virtues of practice when it comes to trimming, tracking, and testing. They believe as students do more of what they suggest, students will find more meaning in their education.

How to Trim

In this chapter, the authors introduce trimming as a way to be concise, to uncover the heart of arguments being made, and to make students more effective communicators. They point out the ways in which modern technology can be used to help students trim. They include examples that show how Sherlock Holmes would have been comfortable on Twitter. They discuss how trimming can be done with ancient Buddhist texts. They next provide examples from Adam Smith and Christof Koch's view of human consciousness. They show how trimming can be done in writing to illuminate both the horizontal and vertical planes of a text. Finally, they show how Twitter can be used to send signals about the meanings and significance of our statements.

How to Track

The goal in this chapter is to introduce how we think the logic of tracking found in video games is a useful way to think about how students track many varieties of information and larger ideas. The authors explain how thinking about learning in the same way we think about video games will help students to grasp important ways to understand and communicate. They show how tracking games are tools to aid in the understanding of seminal thinkers in a variety of fields. They provide examples of games that can be used to reinforce the logic of tracking from philosophy, literature, anthropology, physics, logic, and linguistics.

Test

The authors continue with their examples of testing in this chapter by considering several examples for how to engage in testing from the natural sciences. They explore the impact and personal connections that can be made regarding a feature of anatomy: eyebrows. They next show how to move from Google to Lookle with regard to the question of whether human beings need meat. They then move to a geological question about whether catastrophism was wrong. Next, they consider Edward Jenner's work moving from observations about the relationship of cowpox to smallpox to the development of vaccines. And lastly, they work through the possible impact and personal connections to Rudolf Clausius' ideas about entropy.