Chris Grayling, on cyclists

Chris Grayling was appointed Secretary of State for Transport on 14th July 2016, replacing Patrick McLoughlin, who had held that post since September 2012.

In early December, Chris Grayling was interviewed by the Political Editor of the London Evening Standard, Joe Murphy, on various aspects of his new job.

Joe Murphy noted

“Mr Grayling has not cycled since he was at the University of Cambridge, where he read history before joining the BBC as a trainee journalist, and grimaces at the idea of venturing out on a Boris bike.”

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Gamification

“Gamification is the concept of applying game-design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging.”

This came up in last night’s EdSocial, and I discovered that I understood the word better than I was sure how to spell it. (Well, “gamification” just looks wrong as a word.)

Madly click on little pixel eggs to turn them into dragons

In May 2006, an American high school student, T.J. Lipscomb, came up with a bright idea: a website called dragcave.net with little pictures of eggs. Players click on eggs to adopt them: it’s an artificial pet game. If the egg gets enough views/clicks, it becomes a baby dragon, dragonet, adult dragon. Because there are different species of dragon (so many, eventually, that the dragcave had to be divided into six zones: Alpine, Coast, Desert, Forest, Jungle, Volcano), because players can breed their own dragons and raise them from eggs, players keep coming back. And back. And back. Apparently dragcave.net has 40,000 active users and 2 million page views each day. Reputedly, Lipscomb earned enough from the dragcave game to pay his own way through college.