Klaatu Barada Nikto

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Our students today are a different species from the students we were 10, 20, or 30 (or more) years ago. They have a grasp of their world that would have seemed superhuman as I watched Lost in Space during my early teens. These children are smarter, more technologically sophisticated, media savvy, and by accounts more grounded than any generation before. If we are going to successfully meet the needs of our students and their future, we must understand the ways that they are different, their unique strengths, and weakness.
Much of the answer, I believe, lies with video games, that aren't our daddy's video games. Dr. James Paul Gee says, in What Video Games Have to Teach Us
..video games are what they are, an immensely entertaining and attractive interactive technology built around identities. I have made but one claim for them here. They operate with --- that is, they build into their designs and encourage -- good principals of learning, principles that are better than those in many of our skill-and-drill, back-to-basics, test-them-until-they-drop schools. It is not surprising that many politicians, policymakers, and their academic fellow travelers who think poor children should be content with schooling for service jobs don't like video games. They say they don't like them because thy are violent. But, in reality, video games do violence to these people's notions of what makes learning powerful and schools good and fair.

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Some Quotes from Growing up Digital, by Don Tapscott

  • I do think my favorite thing about the Internet is making friends. You can see the world through other views if the people you know can only tell you how they feel and not show you or explain out loud. -- A 13 year old
  • Students are encouraged to think openly and think for themselves, only after memorizing everything they are told by the teacher or made to read in a textbook. By this time, if you think for yourself, question things that don't seem right or question things that don't seem relevant, you go away emplty handed, ridiculed for "not paying attention to the teacher." -- An 18 year old
  • I think that technology has changed the way adults treat me. They seem to take my opinions more seriously because they realize I just may know something they don't. -- 16 year old
  • I do think my favorite thing about the Internet is making friends. You can see the world through other views if the people you know can only tell you how they feel and not show you or explain out loud. -- a 13 year old
  • I do think my favorite thing about the Internet is making friends. You can see the world through other views if the people you know can only tell you how they feel and not show you or explain out loud. -- a 13 year old

Quotes from Writings & Presentations by Marc Prensky

  • "When I go to school, I have to 'power down'" -- a high school kid
  • "I don't want to study Rome in high school. Hell, I build Rome every day in my online game (Caesar III)." -- a high school student
  • "Players are producing as much as they are consuming -- perhaps more." -- JC Herz
  • "We have learned to "play school." We study the right facts the night before the test so we achieve a passing grade and thus become a successful student."
  • "It's not attention deficit -- I'm just not listening!" -- a tee-shirt
  • "The cookies on my daughter's computer know more about her interests than her teachers do." Henry Kell, President, AFS

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