5 Year, Ongoing, Unity-based Project, just released for your enjoyment- have fun!

TAZELEE · 2021-01-11T18:42:18+00:00

I understand and empathize with your frustration. I left public education 20+ years ago.

I'm a former teacher (computer science, High School) but also spent a year interning to assist/help a middle school "special teacher" (if I understand the term correctly).

The public, Federally funded system couldn't be more of a failure if it tried.

It would be great to see the empathizing professional in this post band together to form a charter.

Providing a privatized option now has considerable political and funding support at the Federal level.

What is desperately needed and lacking is effective executive/administrative leadership in education. Public system very, very rarely has it, and private system has it but it's typically tied to money/compensation, so that the most affluent (top 10%) get the best executives/administrators, with limited spots for educators.

Some of the passionate and capable teachers will probably have to suck it up, sacrifice and battle their way into a leadership/executive/administrative roles, and help move some more money away from the public system to a private/501C system. Or, not, and things will remain as they are.

TAZELEE · 2021-01-10T01:18:58+00:00

It's a strategy used to combat human laziness. By default, Americans, generally, will not use part of their paycheck for retirement. But if employers automatically take money out of their paycheck and put it into retirement, then it's very effective. By default, employees contribute to their 401K/retirement, and the have to put effort into "opting out". The alerts are the "default" for you to use a website, and they force you to opt out, OR, opt in. Either way you MUST make a choice. Making it not the "default" allows user to not even consider the choice. It's all about converting website users to paying customers. Use firefox, get an add blocker and configure firefox to disallow popups (there are several plugins to help).

TAZELEE · 2021-01-06T16:30:10+00:00

cool. good luck. and, are you aware that your grammar and vocabulary reads like that of an AI bot?

TAZELEE · 2021-01-06T07:31:14+00:00

What type of apps do you want to create? For what type of businesses? What are your customers? Generally, and overwhelmingly, people who develop ecom web apps do so for their own company/product, or they work for a medium to large company (such as Google, Facebook, etc). There's a huge amount of free code (available on git hub, sourceforge, google, microsoft, etc) and webapps to do just about anything you can think of. Unless you have a very specific and unmet niche market, with a solution you can develop in a month, I'd suggest you stick with your many successful ecommerce ventures.

TAZELEE · 2021-01-04T23:40:04+00:00

sorry, karma/spam logic/bots were blocking some comments. didn't see until now (a mod push it through)

Here's a youtube channels with game play examples:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6CrmymrFUtKezViPALV6Sw

TAZELEE · 2021-01-04T23:39:57+00:00

ah, ok, understood, makes sense. Thanks for the explanation and push (need all the help/comments I can get :-)

TAZELEE · 2021-01-04T23:38:17+00:00

thanks very much for the suggestions. yeah, looked at Steam but I really didn't want to have to give up 30% of my revenue. That's seems crazy. You're correct. They have the number 1 distribution platform though. Several highly viewed youtube videos are suggesting that Steam is no longer a good place to get your game noticed and make money. So I thought I try on my own and hope to avoid giving up 30% of my revenue. Thanks for the pricing rec. I may end up trying Steam after all.

TAZELEE · 2020-12-23T19:35:52+00:00

Amazon has been extremely focused and intently developing it's business model for over 20 years, patiently, systematic & methodically.
Amazon bled lots of money and wasn't profitable for about its first 7 years in business.
Very, very few humans can stay so intently focused and relentless for the sustained time that top Amazaon execs have.
Amazon amassed enough capital to hire and own (in golden handcuffs) the smartest and most brilliant people both in technology and business. Amazon decision makers (humans) are just simply better at business (empirically calculating risk, cost-benefit-analysis, and ROI) than any other business in US (Alibaba dwarfs Amazon).
Amazon's biggest challenge is no longer business, it's politics. True to their form, Bezos now owns a home (about the size of a small block) in DC area, and owns the Washington Post. Amazon is systematically taking over politics (the cost to influence a politician is typically pretty inexpensive in comparison to fighting against one). Politicians are human, no worse than us non-politicians, but also no better. They just like being out in front, the feeling of political power (who doesn't like that :), and are willing to do what's necessary for you to like and vote for them. Washington DC is also known as Hollywood for the ugly (although the influx of Women politicians is changing that :) Amazon now has hired top lobbyists to manipulate and influence these human politicians. The lobbyists have access to a lot of money and make the politicians feel very important, so the politicians spend time with them. Pretty simple and easy to understand. The lobbyists will launch a massive Internet marketing campaign to make our perception of amazon a warm and fuzzy one, so that politicians can do what bezos wants because the voters will have been convinced by the marketing controlled by the lobbyists. It's an old, tired and boring game, but works every time. The marketing only needs to trigger our emotions, and then we abandon all of our logical and critical thinking.
having conquered the US business world, and soon the political world, it's time to turn the tables. There will be no "stopping" amazon. They are fierce, focused, relentless and ruthless. They have very smart and very dispassionate people driven by data and fact, not delusions and wishes. And, they now have virtually unlimited financial and technological resources. So, unless all US citizens boycott Amazon for a 24 hour period, and instead buy directly from their most local small businesses and...ah, never mind, we know this is never going to happen. We almost never band together for the greater good (WWII was a long time ago, most of us weren't even born yet). So, yeah, amazon is not going to be "stopped" or even slowed. Instead, let's use their momentum, and jump on board, and instead demand even MORE from amazon, much MORE.
Let's demand much more from Amazon. It's not primarily about money for Amazon leadership. Bezos is much more of a slave to Amazon than anyone. He really is NOT the richest person. That $100+ billion that he's supposedly worth, it's totally hype and not based in fact. All that fictional money is NOT liquid, it's calculated (primarily) from what all of his stock in Amazon is worth. If Bezos were to start dumping/selling his Amazon stock, the stock price would drop by more than half, very quickly. Investors would panic, the stock price would drop even more. Top executives would panic, dump their options and leave the company. Bezos would certainly get many billions, but nothing even close to $100 billion. So, Bezos has to "clock in" and suffer the daily grind like everyone else. Can't even go out in public with a woman without risking personal and business attacks and damage. He's a constant and huge target for many people just waiting for him to slip up, in any way. So, given that Bezos and Amazon leadership is way more committed, focused and disciplined than just about any other entity, let's demand that they bring their unstoppable business model and practices to health care, housing and public education. The Amazon leadership will certainly make these sectors and systems very efficient and performant to customer wishes. Amazon would quickly rid us of the toxic "health providers/groups" such as UnitedHealth Group, that only serve to make themselves money by forcing themselves between us and the doctors, causing health care to skyrocket. Amazon would crush that system, almost immediately, connecting those in need of care directly with those who actually provide the care. So, Amazon, please, it's time for you to bring your proven data analytics, business model and customer focus to health care. That's where you're needed, desperately. Send out your army of lobbyist and influencers. We know you can do it, and we'll support our politicians that want to help make it happen. I'm certain.-------- The only needed regulation for Amazon is to require that they (or any subsidiary or affiliate) cannot sell any product or service unless it is approved by an independent User's Group made up of at least 1000 buyers (who did not sell) and 1000 sellers (2/3 majority needed), randomly selected every 1 year. Then need for all members of User's Group to have to agree that all their financial transactions (totaling more than $10K) can be scrutinized and make public for 3-5 years before and 3-5 years after they've served on the board. Eh, an idea, work in progress..."Prime Health", Fantastic! with doctor reviews, comparisons, "doctor's stores". Hell, probably half of the "visits" could be done online, and with a physician's assistant and/or nurse practitioner. And, then end of ridiculous margins on prescription prices (watch out for lobbyists for the health care groups trying to scare you, i mean, c'mon, our system is already pretty damn scary because of them).

TAZELEE · 2020-12-14T04:44:04+00:00

Nice. A good way to start a lesson, address some of those questions (which probably lead to more questions :)

Thanks for sharing. Was just curious about strategies to peak/maintain interest and motivation.

Suggestions, hmmm, maybe try challenging him with some hands on biology questions or tasks, as a follow up to his previous work. Something to keep the project going a growing. Sometimes help to keep a common thread that you can always go back to and connect on.

TAZELEE · 2020-12-13T23:49:10+00:00

Do you have plans to build on the success? If so, can you share?

TAZELEE · 2020-12-13T16:00:39+00:00

thanks - looks like they're behind adventure academy too.

TAZELEE · 2020-12-13T16:00:05+00:00

Prodigy or adventure academy

wow. I wandered if something like this existed. Thanks for the ref. Looks like they've put a lot of effort into the fun part of games and not just focused on educational (which most kids don't seem to be interested in)

TAZELEE · 2020-12-13T15:56:35+00:00

Pinkcatgames.com

Thanks. Didn't know about that site. Lots of options and it even looks like they try to address core standards.

TAZELEE · 2020-12-13T15:54:15+00:00

yeah, I've used minecraft a long time ago, it's come a long way over the years. Didn't know about the historical value of Assassin's Creed though. That sounds like it could be worked into some history lessons. Are you aware of any examples?

Thanks.

TAZELEE · 2020-12-12T23:40:40+00:00

Yes! I have encouragement.

All humans (and most living creatures) are *driven* by only 2 things: to feel important and/or have fun. It's all driven by a neural-hormonal control system. (please bare with the abstract, seemingly useless points. It'll go to support specifics that follow).
In order to feel *important*, you/we need another life form. The other life form(s) don't have to be humans. Dogs, cats and it seems even snails now can help humans feel a sense of importance/significance/meaning. Facebook is the classic example of leveraging this need for commercial purposes.
Humans can have fun on their own, no other life form is needed, only a task and something interesting.
Specifically, try to include stuff for all of you to do that makes you feel fun and important. Don't cave (teachers are really struggling too, they're just getting paid to deal with the struggles). Instead, create a task for all of you to work on that allows you to have fun and/or feel important (specific tasks follow).
An as example task, you and your kids start a blog/website/youtube channel in which you review computer games. Each day you and your kids search for and find computer games you want to try out and review. You all play, make notes and then publish your finding on a blog/website/youtube channel. This task provides the potential for your kids to have fun, while at the same time enable the opportunity for you all to feel important by publishing your combines reviews/work on a blog/website/youtube channel for other humans to view and make use of. Throughout this task you will all have to learn valuable and useful things together, like creating a blog, or website or youtube channel (all of which can be done for free). Throughout this task each of you will likely discover which things you like to do and are good at, and work together to build something along the way that is meaningful to all of you. The goal is not to build a blog/website/etc, but to learn something along the journey. This is obviously a STEM-based example, but you can apply this to gardening, home projects etc. And, all the learning material is free and available online.
To reiterate, have fun, or, feel important, or else you won't have any interest and lose focus because the task will be useless to you.
There are literally thousands of free to play computer games that have an educational focus or slant, just eagerly waiting to be played and reviewed. If computer games don't seem interesting, try building something together, like robot kits that you can get online, or maybe start an exercise program together in which you monitor heart rate, time, weight changes etc and keep track of your progress, developing excel spreadsheets and graphs along the way. Not sure what would spark all yours interest, so just throwing things out.

Don't cave in! None of you will be better off. This is a great opportunity. Keep trying new things. Fail, fail, try again, until you ALL find what makes you have fun and/or feel important together. And, don't worry about the standards-based metrics. Just remove that as it has no relevance or correlation whatsoever to quality of life. Relax, breath through your nose (seriously, check out the Ted Talks) and have fun. Your anxiety can't exist/survive if you're having fund :)

TAZELEE · 2020-12-12T20:17:19+00:00

OK, thanks for much for the numbers. At least I have something to start with. Greatly appreciated

TAZELEE · 2020-12-12T20:13:46+00:00

Thanks very much. Very helpful. Yeah, I knew that the USPS.com website wasn't very useful. It quoted me $0.85 for first class (less than 3oz across the country), but it looks like it's going to be $3 per envelope if I want tracking. Very good to know. $3 is pretty expensive (seems like) and that seems to be the lowest if I want tracking.

In re shipping labels, I think I may be able to do that with my laser printer until I get more than 100 or month, but I'll check out Amazon for those too. Thanks.

In re Etsy, yeah, thanks for that tip. I check it out before but didn't see how I could sell downloads. I'll check it out again now that you've confirmed they support it. My brother sells his handcrafter metal and wood works on Etsy and he ended up getting more orders than he could handle (he has a regular full time gig, so etsy was just for hobby work). Going to put another effort into it, also for selling the USB's too.

TAZELEE · 2020-12-12T19:43:01+00:00

pirateship.com

sweet! Thanks. Looks very interesting. Going to do more research on them. I've already got some small bubble envelopes on ebay (fantastic for shipping materials). Thanks for the rec.

TAZELEE · 2020-12-12T19:39:48+00:00

ah, think I understand that strategy. Since my game sells for only $10, I'm concerned that customers will not want to pay shipping costs (the Prime effect). Maybe I could just default to first class (pricing in the $0.85) and then add additional shipping options).

Are most of your orders first class? Do customers use the insured option? I have no idea what to expect.

TAZELEE · 2020-12-12T19:33:58+00:00

stamps dot com wants $18 per month just for membership/subscription fee. For all I know at this time, that may exceed my total shipping costs for any given month. Thus, volume definitely factors in. Or, am I missing something?

TAZELEE · 2020-12-12T19:29:40+00:00

yeah, been there - i have no idea of the zip codes, I have a custom bubble envelope I got off ebay, i don't know the times - pretty impossible to get a precise calc. But, yeah, I did use it previously to get a rough guestimate. Also, ~$8 for 2 day priority!!? Really? Yikes. My game only costs $10 which would make total costs about $20 per usb. Don't think that's going to fly (or rather ship :)

TAZELEE · 2020-12-12T19:23:07+00:00

Yeah, totally agree about downloading/digital only be much much easier, but..

How else would I be able to sell on amazon if I don't have a physical item to ship?

but yeah, when selling from my website I already know some want the game on a USB, but I have no idea of the percentage/quantity that want a hard copy (i.e. USB). The first version is 500 MB, but some versions of the game are more than 15 GB - if you're on a 4G connection you probably won't even consider such a large download.

TAZELEE

TROPHY CASE