Pointed to this article in Chronicle Careers, on the effect of modern distractions in the lecture hall, by yet another post on the Second Life Education Mailing list. For a short article, it covers a lot of ground - and some of the points are quite thought provoking. More below.
I do believe that games are a useful addition to the educators armoury of tools and techniques, but I also don’t like any implication that they should become the automatic tool of preference. There are many ways to engage students, such as detailed in this recent news piece from the BBC:
Pupils who have worked with creative people such as writers and fashion designers are more punctual, better behaved and work better, Ofsted says.
A nice little summary of some of Prensky’s writing is to be found on the online Encyclopedia of Educational Technology. It includes the joke that Prensky makes about ADD. This is part of the ‘Engage me or Enrage me’ theme he presents. Basically, he claims, the problem is not that ‘kids’ have problems with attention, its just that they don’t want to - or that this is only a problem for the old-fashioned methods of teaching. Kids are so used to operating at ‘Twitch Speed’ that anything less just doesn’t cut it.
Well what if it turned out there were ways of improving childrens attention at school without any need to convert the curriculum into a series of digital games? If instead of pandering to the need for constant visual stimulation, it were possible to help children learn the discipline required for concentrating, listening and thinking without flashy graphics? It appears that there may be one fairly simple solution that can lead to dramatic improvements: it’s called food.
