Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Roger Greenaway on fun and "reviewing"
Roger Greenaway writes:
"I got this feedback from a recent programme:
"This comes from one of the stars of a 10 minute game of 'no ball football'. But his falls following tackles did not get noticed by our unobservant referee - whose unsurpassable qualification for the role was that she didn't know any of the rules. So when we got to 'no camera action replay', my choice (we all had choices) was to replay his falls in slow motion and from different angles so that the viewers could judge whether he was 'diving' (pretending to be fouled) or whether he really was fouled. All totally absurd and surreal because the whole game is one of pretending, and the replay just brought out even more over-acting.
"I still have fun with my game creating process (which teaches creative and appreciative decision-making along the way). It will be difficult to outdo the philosophers who created a game of three-legged three-goal football a couple of summers ago, but last weekend a group of corporate trainers decided to rope themselves in a group bundle and hop a slalom course while emitting a Maori-like war chant. The audience (a two year old girl attracted by the noise) joined in by jumping in time - just another play day for her. This event (as always) creates plenty of material for review which in this case was action replay, a guessing game (requiring intuition and empathy) and creating an invisible person to join the group.
"For my purposes, it doesn't matter too much if fun doesn't happen, but it is quite likely to, and things are much better when it does. As well as your own influence, I am grateful for you introducing me to William Glasser's theory which includes fun as one of 5 needs. I 'work' with this a bit. The idea that reviewing can be fun is a revelation to many people, but overall I find that good reviews go through a whole range of moods and that the groups who have most fun also tend to get most profound. I guess I like good portions of both (fun and serious) and prefer this to a whole meal of either one or the other."
Note: not being familiar with Roger's use of the word "reviewing" I asked for an explanation. Roger responded: "I would say that 'debriefing' is generally what trainers do and 'reviewing' is generally what learners do. But common usage of both terms is to collapse the trainer-learner distinction and create a badly drawn area of common ground that is quickly conquered by the trainer trying to impose their own picture of the world."
There are so many connections to draw between Roger's approach to reviewing and my approach to "deep fun" that I just had to let Roger speak for himself. And myself, too.
"I got this feedback from a recent programme:
'Many thanks for the two days last week. If there is a ratio between fun and learning then I have nothing to worry about. I now move forward having had a breath of wind put into my sails. Thanks again.'
"This comes from one of the stars of a 10 minute game of 'no ball football'. But his falls following tackles did not get noticed by our unobservant referee - whose unsurpassable qualification for the role was that she didn't know any of the rules. So when we got to 'no camera action replay', my choice (we all had choices) was to replay his falls in slow motion and from different angles so that the viewers could judge whether he was 'diving' (pretending to be fouled) or whether he really was fouled. All totally absurd and surreal because the whole game is one of pretending, and the replay just brought out even more over-acting.
"I still have fun with my game creating process (which teaches creative and appreciative decision-making along the way). It will be difficult to outdo the philosophers who created a game of three-legged three-goal football a couple of summers ago, but last weekend a group of corporate trainers decided to rope themselves in a group bundle and hop a slalom course while emitting a Maori-like war chant. The audience (a two year old girl attracted by the noise) joined in by jumping in time - just another play day for her. This event (as always) creates plenty of material for review which in this case was action replay, a guessing game (requiring intuition and empathy) and creating an invisible person to join the group.
"For my purposes, it doesn't matter too much if fun doesn't happen, but it is quite likely to, and things are much better when it does. As well as your own influence, I am grateful for you introducing me to William Glasser's theory which includes fun as one of 5 needs. I 'work' with this a bit. The idea that reviewing can be fun is a revelation to many people, but overall I find that good reviews go through a whole range of moods and that the groups who have most fun also tend to get most profound. I guess I like good portions of both (fun and serious) and prefer this to a whole meal of either one or the other."
Note: not being familiar with Roger's use of the word "reviewing" I asked for an explanation. Roger responded: "I would say that 'debriefing' is generally what trainers do and 'reviewing' is generally what learners do. But common usage of both terms is to collapse the trainer-learner distinction and create a badly drawn area of common ground that is quickly conquered by the trainer trying to impose their own picture of the world."
There are so many connections to draw between Roger's approach to reviewing and my approach to "deep fun" that I just had to let Roger speak for himself. And myself, too.
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