In this blog post, Sky Hopinka tells about his experiences so far with the Chinuk Wawa group at Portland State University. For the past eight weeks now, the Chinuk Wawa language group has been meeting two nights a week at the Native American Student and Community Center (NASCC) on the Portland State University campus here… Read more »

WAYK was asked by UISHE, the United Indian Students in Higher Education, to come and present at the Native American Student and Community Center on the PSU campus in honor of Native American Heritage Month.  UISHE is one of two Native student groups at PSU and have been very supportive of the Chinuk Wawa class… Read more »

Hello friends and fellow WAYK players! I am very excited to offer some details of our upcoming event: Nov. 5th and 6th at the Native American Center, Stanford University, Palo Alto Ca. Presented by the Stanford Languages Club The cost for this event is donation based. We are unclear at this moment how the University… Read more »

The Bend Bulletin, the central Oregon newspaper, ran an article last week about the continuation of the summer language program at Madras High School.  Since the completion of the WAYK Summer Institute, several of the Warm Springs students and their teacher, Becky Dudney, were able to incorporate WAYK into their Native American Culture class:  … Read more »

Recorded September 18th, 2011 This past September Dustin Rivers and WAYK had the opportunity to present at the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival (AICLS) conference.  AICLS is a great non-profit organization that supports language revitalization through various conferences, workshops and through their Master Apprentice Program. The conference was held at the Marin Headlands Institute in Sausalito, CA… Read more »

I just want to let everyone know that there is a WAYK Chinuk Wawa gathering two nights a week in Portland, OR.  Every Tuesday evening from 5PM to 7PM and every Friday afternoon from 3PM to 5PM at the Native American Student and Community Center on the Portland State University campus.  These gatherings have been… Read more »

35 minutes and 41 seconds. [direct download] Recorded July 28th, 2011 In this episode, the overarching theme is getting everyone to manage their Full levels and really examine why we are here.  We’ve reached a point in the program where the facilitation techniques and methods of WAYK are being handed off to the students and… Read more »

Here’s an account of our recent trip to the Flathead Reservation by our very own April Charlo.  Also, expect more podcasts and blog posts to come soon, we’ve been very busy these past few weeks and are just now starting to get caught up on the nitty gritty. This is my first blog post and… Read more »

Last week, WAYK intern David Edwards finished redesigning the new “Where Are Your Keys?” website and there are some great new features he’s set-up. Under About the Game, you can find a bite sized explanation of this system starting with What is WAYK? Then, read a more detailed overview of the game in The Big Picture, which will help guide… Read more »

62 minutes and 37 seconds. [direct download] Recorded July 25th, 2011 Our discussion over dinner involves accents, talk of facilitation issues and how important it is to have a strong healthy community in order for a language to survive.  We question which comes first; the language hunter, or the language teacher.  This question goes hand… Read more »

(April Charlo, Evan Gardner, and David Edwards with Warm Springs High School student John Katchia enjoying the meadow in the background) 71 minutes and 56 seconds. [direct download] Recorded July 22nd, 2011 In this episode, we introduce the “Where Are Your Keys?” Summer Institute of Play at the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Indian Reservation,… Read more »

Welcome to the Where Are Your Keys? 2011 Summer Institute of Play! This summer the WAYK interns and I have been living and breathing “Where Are Your Keys”.  We have been facilitating an 8 week Numu (Northern Paiute) language teacher training on the Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon. Working in partnership with the Warm Springs… Read more »

In any fluency hunting environment, whether leading a game, or setting-up for a one on one with a fluent fool, you can acknowledge the human need for nutrition and comfort by feeding your mind. “Have you eaten?” – a traditional Mayan greeting, traditional Chinese greeting. Feeding Your Mind [formerly “do food“] is a hallowed human activity, a… Read more »

Join us at WAYK French Camp, in Quebec, for seven days of high-energy fun, music, campfires, good food, and accelerated French language learning on the farm with the “Where Are Your Keys?” learning game design system. For this event, we will be hosted on Claude Duhamel’s farm-land in Ulverton, Quebec, having conversations with local French… Read more »

We’re now filling intern positions at WAYK; we rely on these volunteer interns to help us carry WAYK games deeper into the community, and develop the WAYK system further. Thanks to all our interns: David Edwards (a student at Stanford, helping with our Numu/Paiute language program this summer), Sky Hopinka (Hochunk and a student at… Read more »

[vimeo=21673263] How do you apply WAYK techniques to building a video curriculum? As you know, WAYK is a design system for accelerating and improving the learning in any environment. So then how do you apply techniques obviously!, set-up, limit, and so on, to video? Video presents certain challenges – the biggest is the loss of… Read more »

Experiencing accelerated learning can be magnificent, meaningful, emotionally moving, exhilarating. And yet, the techniques and principles of accelerated learning are simple and concrete. Recently, I watched a video of speaker/author Stephen Covey talking about the power of what he called the “Indian talking stick”. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUxi-Zc45tA&w=480&h=390] By definition, self-sufficient indigenous communities have mastered creating and… Read more »

Willem (me) ran the workshop, and I wanted to try a new experiment. As my skill increases as a language hunter, I find that I need to keep upping the scale and challenge of my experimentation to “stay in the zone”: neither overwhelmed (sorry, charlie!), nor bored (heaven forfend such a thing!). This is an… Read more »

Thanks so much to SolutionsIQ for hosting us at their training center – a great space and a very supportive partnership. We had a diverse crowd at our April 1-3 workshop in the Seattle area. Some attendees came with fluency, wanting to learn more how to teach – Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, Lushootseed, Latin. Others… Read more »

From April 14th-24th, I (Willem Larsen) will be presenting WAYK at various venues in Boston, MA. For the first few days, I’ll be at Agile Games 2011, April 14th-16th. From the 17th-21st I’m available to do talks and demos on “Where Are Your Keys?” and the Fluency Hunting Model of accelerated learning. If you’d like… Read more »