Kinection will be at the following conferences in November. If you’re attending as well, drop us a line and we can see about meeting up:

• DevLearn (San Francisco) Nov. 2 – 5
• Corporate University Week (Orlando) Nov. 16 – 17
• ACTFL (Boston) Nov. 19 – 21

This week we submitted our deliverables for Phase I of the “Task-based Communications Training System” to the Office of Naval Research (ONR). The deliverables included a review of language and culture training solutions currently in use by the Marine Corps (our first target customer), a set of competencies for the first phase of the project, and a curriculum for basic language, culture, and nonverbal behaviors.

The project will use games to help Marines learn basic communication and cultural skills for selected regions. A key difference from existing solutions is that Marines will be able to tailor the curriculum to the kinds of tasks they will perform while deployed — so a Rifleman working patrols will have one study path, while a Medic preparing for a humanitarian mission will have another. This customization will allow Marines to develop basic competence in targeted areas much more quickly.

I highly recommend the new game “Limbo” for its “film noir” look, eerie atmosphere and challenging spatial puzzles. It’s a big grisly, but there’s a gore filter you can turn off if you don’t like to watch your little guy getting his head chopped off (which will happen to you over, and over, and over again). I finished the game, and only needed two hints to do it (which, at my level, I take to be pretty good!)

The game successfully creates a strong sense of mystery and anticipation… sensations that learners often feel when exploring something they’re curious about, but that are largely missing from most eLearning programs. We as learning designers can learn something from Limbo’s atmospheric approach.

We (my family and I) wrapped up our annual trek to Japan with a visit to Ginkaku-ji in Kyoto. Ginkaku-ji, the “Temple of the Silver Pavilion,” is famous for its rock and traditional gardens as well as its exotic wildlife. After the hustle and bustle of the streets of Kyoto, the beauty and the tranquillity of the gardens is almost overwhelming. –Scott Meadows

Ed has been accepted as an adjunct teacher in the computer science curriculum at Concorde Career College’s Memphis campus. Nice job, Ed!

I graduated from San Jose State University with a Bachelors of Creative Arts. Apparently my fellow students didn’t get enough of me sharing my opinions during our classes so they asked me to give the commencement speech! –AJ Shultz

Doug Nelson and Scott Meadows met in Washington D.C. with representatives from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) — including Program Manager Ivy Estabrooke — and Allison Abbe from the Army Research Institute (ARI), to kick off Kinection’s language and culture project. This project, which will extend over the next two years, will focus on providing basic language and culture training for the Navy and Marines.

Wiley Publishing releases the book “Excel Formulas and Functions for Dummies.” Ed Lavieri served as the Technical Editor (2nd edition).

Ed Lavieri was accepted into the Doctorate of Computer Science program with an Emerging Media specialization at Colorado Technical University’s Institute of Advanced Studies. Congratulations, Ed!

I started playing Borderlands on the XBox 360. It is touted as the first of a new game genre called role-playing shooter (RPS). (Last year, Doug got me hooked on Fall-Out 3 and I thanked him with some Gears of War curb-stomps). Borderlands is a nice mix of those two games. –Ed Lavieri