(05-27-2013 08:32 AM)Tad Carlucci Wrote: My thinking is that teaching breeding should be more about teaching to breed effectively and less about all the possible ways things COULD go.
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I stand by my recommendation to first proceed under the assumption that the box and it's mother bother hide something recessive to White whisker color.
The learning outcomes for this project were posted in the introduction and were quite clear; I'm not sure how we can rephrase them for you in a different way other than that which is clearly stated?
At work, when I teach my students how to problem solve in various courses, I do this by giving them an actual problem to solve. Going through the problem solving process gives them not just knowledge, but also the skills and experience required in order to solve similar or more complex problems.
Similarly, the goal of this on-going project is to demonstrate how to solve various "problems". Today we're breeding a starter with a cat that we know something about (but not everything - new breeders don't often have access to "perfect" breeding cats, so doing a project with such cats would not be a very valuable learning experience for them). This is one common scenario in which many new breeders find themselves. Next round, we may do the same with a cat showing fewer non-genesis traits, and maybe in the round after that we might take a cat with fur trait X and a cat with eye trait Y & tail trait Z and demonstrate how to get trait X, Y, and Z onto one cat. Who knows... we'll try and tackle various problems that newer breeders often encounter. They already have access to the knowledge (e.g. Saga's charts); this will help them gain the skills and experience needed to solve their own breeding problems, and with hope, make them better breeders so they can develop fabulous lines of cats that the rest of us can admire and enjoy.
Making assumptions is dangerous. There's another recent post (in this or other topic, I can't recall) that mentions certain sellers making and advertising "assumptions" in their cats that can throw off inexperienced breeders. This project will NOT teach people to make such assumptions, as one our goals is to teach people how to determine with CERTAINTY what a cat is hiding. Maybe this will cut back on the number of these assumptions found in the market.
Regardless, let's turn the thread back over to discussing the thoughts and concepts behind the actual process of breeding and leave the discussion about the project logistics behind. If you wish to discuss our project's goals and methodologies further, I suggest you do so in private message or in-world IM to any one of us (or all of us, if you wish), as I feel it doesn't lend anything to those who are following this thread with the purpose of becoming better breeders.
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Reminder to everyone that the next kitty box is due sometime tomorrow! We'll post another entry about the new kitty tomorrow night or Wednesday.
Don't forget to visit the site in-world for a tutorial on breeding basics and to review the pedigree of the breeding kitty!
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/At...73/189/127