The Learning Game of the Decade

This will be the main place for the publication of the Leaderboard and challenges for the 2020s Learning Vision Programme, and the main Group for ongoing communications and discussions about this Programme as well as registration will be here

This is a call for your registration to be part of the Learning Game of the Decade, called the 2020s Learning Vision programme.

Like the old 70-day challenges which were published here, the unit of measurement here is the number of lines done using the GoldList Method of learning. That is because this method enables comparison across different levels of learning and different projects (except pure auditory learning, using audio-only materials, which by the way you should not neglect), and that means comparison first and foremost of a person’s effort and achievement in one time period with another time period, comparison against a numerically defined target for one person, and also comparison between friends.

This programme, like the old seventy-day Challenges on facebook’s “GoldList Method User Group” now called the “2020s Learning Vision” group, leverages the Method’s facility for use as a friendly competitive tool.

Now here are the Notes that explain the items in the above table, which I need every new participant to fill out, and more besides:

Note 1: Name
Normally this will be the name you use on Facebook and in the Group. It is also possible to take part in this without being on Facebook or in the Group and you can use the email 2020LV@quoracy.com for reporting result for inclusion in the table or to register for this mentoring program. If you do not wish to use either your real name or your FB name it’s OK, but the name should be consistent and the organisers should be aware of it.

Note 2: Houses
The Houses idea is inspired of course by the HP series, but I have used the house names from my own old school, and you can see more on https://www.hhs.herts.sch.uk/information/house-system/ – you can state a preference but it is ultimately the sorting hat who gives the house and transfers from house to house are very rare. It is a privilege given to those who exceed 200,000 lines and have the grade of Cognitor or higher, to select their own House and overrule the sorting hat, but even they can only change their minds when achieving the next grade after that (see levels of scholarship, or grades, in Note 9 below). By the way, I know of no greater compliment to pay to the School to which I owe so much than to borrow its House titles and colours for what I hope will be one of the biggest adult learning projects in history, if YOU the participants make it so, by keenly participating and sharing this Game and the GoldList Method itself with all your friends and family.

Note 3: House colours
The House names and colours are: Ashridge (green), Chalfont (purple), Flaunden (orange), Gaddesden (white), Latimer (blue), Nettleden (red) and Pendley (yellow). The abbreviations are A,C,F,G,L,N and P. If anyone would like to know more about these House names the best place to look might be Google maps. They are all villages in the area of the Chiltern Hills, near Hemel Hempstead, in England. The best known of these may be Ashridge, home to a highly reputed Management College.

Note 4: Thematic Teams – gender
The houses should be a mix of genders and so when House competes against House it is not a gender-based competition. For fun, we will also have Thematic Teams and there are three of these, each with three active options and an opt-out option. The first of these is gender-based Teams and you can pick one of the options, Male, Female, Other and Not-Playing, (M/F/O/N) the last being, clearly, the opt-out option and the first three being the Active options. You pick your own Team as far as this goes but you can only change the Team when you advance to a new academic level. If you pick N for “Not playing” then your cell remains blacked out for this competition and you score will not go to any of the three active teams. Points won by active Teams go to all the members of that Team, while Not-Playing participants in any of the thematic Teams won’t get any points for that thematic area. See Note 11 for more about how the points work.

Note 5: Thematic Team – your Geography
The Geography thematic Teams are Americas, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and Asia Pacific. You can also pick ‘Not-Playing’ or “N” as with the gender thematic competition. The Geography Team choice ought to be based on your current place of living or your origin, as you prefer, but you pick your own. Again, you can only change Team when you go up one level, or you can remain in your own Team, which is the preferred option, as it’s less work for me. The Houses themselves are not selected by geography and each should ideally contain a mix of geographies as this is a world-wide game. The sorting hat has been told to pay attention to that, which is why you might not get your first choice of House, as indeed it was at the school itself.

Note 6: Thematic Team – Philosophy
This may be controversial, but again you can pick any team, change it only when you go up one grade or level, or you can sit it out by choosing “Not Playing”. The teams are Abrahamic (if you want to play for Christianity, Judaism or Islam – I thought it would be nice to have us three on the same side for once) Non-Abrahamic (if you want to play for religion, but not one of the Abrahamic ones) or No Religion, if you want to play for John Lennon. It doesn’t matter again if you are a practicing member of the chosen group or not, and again you can choose to change when you go up one grade. Houses ought to be a mix of people from each of the various philosophies, and the sorting hat will be trying to take that into consideration as well.

Note 7: Total Line Number – Opening Balance
Your Total Line number is the most important part of this challenge and determines your grade or status. At the start of the first challenge, namely at the New Year of 2020, you should report your life-time total lines made while learning using the GoldList Method. If you are relatively new and want this to be a fresh start, you can report zero, but this cannot be subsequently changed, so think carefully. Reporting zero as your opening balance when you do in fact have some lines in hand will just make it take longer for you to advance to the higher grades. The person with the highest grade in a House is House Captain, and remains House Captain until someone else in the same House beats them on total lifetime lines. Captains will be asked to liaise with their Houses from time to time on items such as strategy, devising a new Latin motto for the House, etc. etc.

Note 8: 40 Quarterly Challenges over the decade, without let-up (instead of 16 seventy-day challenges which we had before)
Every calendar quarter is a new quarterly “Term”. The Winter Term is Q1, from 1/1/XX to 31/3/XX. Then we have Spring Term from 1/4/XX to the end of June. The Summer term includes July-September and the remaining Autumn Term is obviously 1st October to 31st December. At the beginning of each term, players are invited to state their personal targets on the Facebook Group “2020s learning Vision” (was “GoldList Method User Group”) but if you do not do so, it doesn’t prevent you taking part. You can also start to take part in the middle of a Term, but the best way to get a good personal score of Lines is to make a consistent effort over the whole of the 13 weeks. Unlike in the 70-day challenges we don’t have any scheduled breaks. Breaks are now all up to you, but don’t make a habit of them, or you will lag behind your own long-term learning targets.

Note 9: Grades, or Levels of Scholarship
The following grades exist, determined by your lifetime total of lines using the GoldList Method, regardless of whether these are lines of HeadList, first Distillation, much later distillations, etc. It also doesn’t matter what the topic was, it could be language learning or it could be history, science, you name it. I began with this as a Language Learning Method but over time I started to use it for many other learning objectives.

0 – 3999 = Beginner, untitled.
4,000 – 11,999 = Pupil
12,000 – 23,999 = Scholar
24,000 – 39,999 = Academicus
40,000 – 59,999 = Academicus Superior
60,000 – 79,999 = Baccalaureandus
80,000 – 99,999 = Baccalaureatus
100,000 – 124,999 = Magisterandus
125,000 – 149,999 = Magister (first certifiable level)
150,000 – 199,000 = Cognitorandus
200,000 – 249,999 = Cognitor
250,000 – 299,999 = Cognitor – Master
300,000 and onwards = Cognitor – Grand Master

 

Note 10: Optional Certification
Certification works by someone who is already certified as at least one grade higher than the grade you are applying to be certified for reviewing your learning projects (can be in person or Skype or by emails of a sample of scans) and satisfying himself or herself that the candidate for certification has the lifetime number of lines in all projects and levels of the use of GoldList. Then this certifying person should report to the organisers of the 2020s Learning Vision that they are satisfied and a certificate will then be issued to the candidate and they will be shown as certified on the Leaderboard. if they are not certified their status will be shown but without the word “Certified”. It’s not obligatory to be certified and it’s not obligatory to request a postage of the certificate to your home. Certification is not available for levels below Magister, at 125,000 total lifetime lines. The initial certificates are awarded without testing and reviewing by dint of longer acquaintance in the course of 70-day challenges or the Polyglot community.

Note 11: What happens at the end of every Term or Quarter?
Every Quarter, or Term, at the end of the Quarter, we ask participants to give their results, which can either be their result for that quarter only, which will be added to the person’s lifetime total, or the new lifetime total and then the quarterly result will be the result of subtracting the previous total. The winners are those who have the highest lifetime totals, which will determine their position on the leader board. But also there will be honorable mentions for the person who got the best result for that quarter, the House with the best result for that quarter, and the teams which got the best results for that quarter.

The House with the best result for the quarter earns 7 points, the second best gets 6, etc so the worst performing House gets only 1 point. And then everyone in that House gets that number of House points. The gender thematic Team with the best result for the quarter or Term gets three points, the second best gets two, the worst of the three active teams gets one and people Not Playing get zero points. Each person in the team gets the sum of points. The same process applies to the geography Teams and the philosophy teams. This way if an individual player happens to be in the winning House and all three winning thematic teams, they can obtain a maximum of 18 points for that quarter.

Likewise, if someone decides they are Not Playing in any of the thematic Teams, and also their House is the worst of the seven, then they would only get one single point for that quarter. In the event of a tie for a place, both Teams or Houses have the higher number of points applied to all their team members. Points are then summed up for the year and for the whole decade as a running total. They don’t, however determine the player’s place in the leaderboard. In this way, your learning effort benefits you in first order, but also others of your House and each of your teams, as long as you don’t sit out any of the thematic Teams.

Note 12: What is this going to cost me? Probably not one cent.
A word about costs. Participation is free. If someone wishes to reward me for time spend on running the system, there are buttons on http://www.huliganov.tv which work on either a one-off or a recurring basis. Some of you have already shown amazing generosity and given my family situation this is appreciated. As many of you know, there was a time I even refused offers of donations for many years but circumstances have changed. Now nobody is obliged or expected to make such donations as a condition of being included in this 2020s Learning Vision programme, and that’s a guarantee for the whole decade-long game. There may be merchandise prepared and offered for sale by me and nobody but me or appointed persons have the right to make merchandise around this.

The main reason being that if I am not making money from this, there’s no reason why anyone else needs to be. There are no financial prizes for the challenges and Competitions. There may be meet-ups and they would be paid events, based on cost and a small mark-up. Attendance wouldn’t affect status in the Leaderboard, and would be of a social nature or an opportunity to get questions answered by other learners.

Certificates are free but you are expected to cover the cost of postage. if you lose your certificate and want a duplicate or you want multiple certificates then I also will expect the coverage of printing as well as the postal cost. If any of this offends you, please compare it to the revenue models of most leaders in the polyglot community. Not all of these are transparent and most don’t offer as much for those who cannot or don’t wish to pay. For me it’s cool – you don’t want to pay, you get practically all the benefit anyway. If you do want to donate it’s your free will and it delights me then on not only the material but also the emotional level.

Note 13: Getting Kicked Out or Leaving in a Hissy Fit
You can get kicked off the Leaderboard and/or out of the FB Group for poor behaviour such as spamming, scamming in the group, victimising any member in a way which most people would describe as cyber-bullying, and also for intentionally making false representations (lying) about your performance (Honest mistakes not included – these should just be corrected at the first opportunity after you found you made a miscount, or something, which is easily done). As there is no financial reward there would be no point in doing this, but you never know what nutty stuff people dream up, thinking it is all a joke, and if someone makes claims which are not believable and are unable to fend off reasonable suspicion that they have been not honest about their attainments, then I reserve the right to kick these people off also.

You can also deregister of your own volition at any time by giving me notice. Either this can be done on the FB group 2020s Learning Vision or it can be done on by mailing 2020LV@quoracy.com information provided by you to the organisers with the intention of inclusion in the Leaderboard is deemed to have been allowed by you for publication on http://www.quoracy.com and/or http://www.huliganov.tv until notice is received of a retraction of such permission, at which point we will endeavour to fulfil your wishes as soon as practically possible. Readmission is possible if the person who left didn’y show poor class, but all admissions and re-admissions are at the discretion of the Organisers who won’t discriminate against any learner who is of good will.

Note 14: Decade Long Project – but what if I die?
The Project runs from 1/1/2020 until 31/12/2029. If I don’t survive that period in good health, then anyone willing to take over may do so and preference belongs to the person or persons with higher points in the Leaderboard.

Note 15: Don’t lose sight of the point – we make learning fun. (And we don’t have to tell you we’re not the only one)
On a more positive final note, never lose sight of the fact that this is to make learning fun, to provide targets and motivation for you as an individual learner, as well as to foster alliances and friendships in learning. Your teams and the overall success of the project will gain much by your effective recruitment of your language or other topic learning friends to the programme, which means as well to the delights of the GoldList Method which is explained in full on https://huliganov.tv/goldlist-method/