“Don’t Bother Me Mom – I’m Learning By Marc Prensky Carol Ann LeMoine

Agenda  The Videogame World According to Marc Prensky:  Introduction  Games are Not the Enemy  The Rise of the Digital Native  What’s Different About Today’s Games?  What Kids Are Learning (On Their Own)  How Parents, Teachers and All Adults Can Get in the Game  Marc Prensky’s World… real or imagined?

Forward James Gee writes… “ Marc knows that game designers have learned to harness deep and powerful learning- learning in the sense of problem solving, decision making, hypothesizing, and strategizing – as a form of fun, pleasure, engagement, even “flow”. They’ll be able to accelerate their children’s language and cognitive growth and prepare their children for their high-tech global world they will live in.” (p xvii)

Introduction Goals of the Book  Give kids a voice  Addresses the concerns, frustrations, and fears of parents and teachers  Describe the benefits of playing games  Provide ways for parents to deepen their understanding of and develop their relationships with their children

Games are Not the Enemy What are Kids Doing and What are They Learning?  Visual Selective Attention  Complicated Reasoning  Logical Thinking  Situational Awareness  Computer Literacy  Multi-tasking, Parallel Processing  Collaboration with Others

Games are Not the Enemy And it gets worse as students progress up the grades. Most of today’s teachers know little if anything about the digital world of their students – from on-line to their means of exchanging sharing, meeting, evaluating, coordinating, programming, searching, customizing, and socializing. As a result, despite their efforts, it’s often impossible for these adults to design learning in ways their students need and relish.” (p10) “Today’s game playing kid enters the first grade able to do and understand so many complex things – from building, to flying, to reasoning – that the curriculum they are given feels to them like their mind is being put in a straight jacket, or that their milk is being laced with sedatives. Every time they go to school they must, in the words of one student, ‘power down’.

Games are Not the Enemy What About Violence? “Studies generally show that violent video games can have short term or momentary effects on children, but there is little evidence of long-term changes. Anahad O’Connor, Science Editor, NY Times, (p16) “The question of whether playing violent games is causing any individual child – yours, for example – to become more violent is actually too complex a question for any researchers to decide – at least in the kinds of projects that are currently possible.” ( p16)

The Rise of the Digital Native “Kids think and process information in a fundamentally different way, which leads to different brain structures.” p28 “…the single biggest problem facing education today is that Digital Immigrant parents and teachers, who came from the pre- digital age, are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language.” p29

The Rise of the Digital Native Digital Natives have changed the way they:  communicate, buy and sell, exchange, create, meet, coordinate, evaluate, game, learn, evolve, search, report, program, socialize, grow up!

What’s Different About Today’s Games? Types of Games:  Complex games vs mini-games Reasons to Play:  Levelling up  Flow  Adaptivity  Gameplay

What’s Different About Today’s Games? Five Levels of Learning… How… What… Why … Where… Whether What Kids Learn from Complex Games… improved eye-hand coordination better problem solving skills increased performance in math and language

What’s Different About Today’s Games? Criticisms….What About… Addiction Aggression (inciter vs diffuser) Isolation Role of Parent… provide frequent and strong counter messages guidance selecting age-appropriate games

What Kids Are Learning (On Their Own) Kids are learning about… economics, business, health, sports, etc. cooperation (clans, guilds, etc.) ethics (with guidance) making decisions and seeing and feeling the consequences modding… game modification technical skills and abilities being successful in life!

How Parents, Teachers, and All Adults Can Get in the Game! What Can You Do? Educate yourself Ask kids open-ended questions Educate your family Look over your kid’s shoulder… with permission Go game browsing together Play! Help organize a LAN party or game club

How Parents, Teachers, and All Adults Can Get in the Game! Curricular Connections… Game Designer: “As soon as you add an instructional designer to a [game design] team, the first they do is suck the fun out.” (p183) Console Manufacturer: “We are interested in titles that sell a million $50. An educational title, if it’s really good might sell 300 $30.” (p185) Learning Games available…??

How Parents, Teachers, and All Adults Can Get in the Game! “… there are many lessons and probably whole subjects that don’t have to be taught by a person at all in order to be learned. In fact, if they are presented right, students will learn them more quickly, efficiently, and, I think, happily on their own.” (p 196) “What If we created a school with no teachers at all, as we know them today, but rather with the same number of empathetic learning counsellors – people who have no required academic training in subject matter, but have great skills at understanding and helping kids?” (p 200)

Final Thoughts… Marc Prensky’s World… real or imagined?

Thank you for your interest!