Techophilia and Social Progress

This article really speaks to what I believe is the case. Kids do know more than us about technology. In the traditional classroom this is pretty scary for teachers. But teachers can’t learn all the technology that they need. So the answer really lies in tapping into what the kids can do. We can’t be afraid of what the kdis can do. Check out the article for some suggestions.

Mark Prensky
Originally uploaded by PhillipDjwa.

BCEdonline conference
Live Blogging – keynote speaker Mark Prensky

Thinking about youth – where are the kids at this conference? Only because kids have no voice thst they are not represented.

One problem is kids are not the kids our systems were designed to teach.

Kids have absorbed massive amounts of technology. But brains alter profoundly to fit the technology. What are some of the behaviours?

1) Make decisions more quickly. Twitch speed.
2) Random access – not starting from the beginning – learn on demand Parallel processing – multitasking – continuous partial attention is ‘good enough’
3) Graphics first – using images
4) Play oriented not work oriented
5) Takes connectivity for granted. It is part of their brain.

Students use technology in a completely different way in approaching life.
Speakup Day – netday.org

Who are we? Digital immigrants. What our are our “accents”?
* Printing out email.
* Using email instead of IM.
* Thinking offline is Real Life.
* Learning means work.

Key of what Prensky is talking about? Engagement. How can we get motivation in our kids? Remember learning comes from passion not discipline.

Does learning take effort? Yes but sometimes it can feel like fun. Engagement = motivation and passion. Kids today understand this.
And yet so often our education is boring. Going to school is “powering down” in one kids opinion.

Kids today are very empowered. They have tools – they can program. They embrace complexity. They love hands-on. And they look for fun. But fun is mastering a problem mentally.

Not ADD but EOE (engage me or enrage me). PRensky shosed a t-shirt with the words “It’s not ADD I’m just not listening.”

The pace of change is also rapid. But what will the discontinuity look like to students?

One example is that IT power will be a billion times more powerful when our kids grow up. What will that mean? It could mean very piece of written content ever made put on a chip embedded in our brains. It’s that kind of magnitude of change.

Yet teachers don’t get this but students do. They use it with new reasons.

Teachers need to not master tools but learn about them.

For example, here are some tools he briefly presented:

1) Wikipedia – we can teach search vs. Research, fair use vs plagiarismm

2) Podcasting – Tell the kids to go make a podcast. We can teach them the importance of Oral vs. Written.

3) IM – We can teach them the importance of informal vs formal communication

4) Phone based cameras – pix vs words. Appropriate vs inappropriate, truth vs manipulation

But also, as teachers, put what you do on the web. Through the power of GOOGLE, this is what will allow others to share and learn.

Lastly, what can we learn by “listening to the natives?”

One big thing is that disrespecting is a big issue. Parents disrespect teachers and students disrespect teachers.

So we need to have respect – Remember this mantra “In some situations we are all learners, and in some situations we are all teachers.”

Another aspect of respect is respecting games. Games are something that kids play to master intellectual challenges. Plus game system is really important – game system is all the blogs, websites, IM’s around gaming.

Today’s games are complex and take significant time. Games that we grew up with like card games etc are “minigames”.

What do kids learn from games? Significant things. Here’s what we can learn as well from gaming for teaching:

* Use complex rules
* focus on engagement
* limit eye candy and instead go for gameplay – create goals important – be a hero
* add continuous importatnt decisions w/feedback employ leveling up – to encourage practice
* adapt on the fly
* try and iterate

I thought overall Prensky was right on the money. I wished he would talk a little more about the global context. Also, many games of the first person shooter variety don’t provide much of a moral or ethical compass. Quick note to say though that I had a good talk with Dr. Cyprien Lomas about Second Life and he says that it is different in that game. Another reason for me to try Second life.

Hey, cool, Prensky is doing another keynote. I’ll see what it is about. He is talking about games – what is the “game” system that makes it work. Games means for him is an intellectual pursuit. For example, “Dark Age of Camelot” as a complex game. However, the idea of gaming is

Butch Rosser – MD – laproscopic surgery – Super Monkey Ball – he found that doctors that played video games had 37% fewer errors.

Today’s education is bifurcated – they go to school and they have After School – which is where they go to get learning in the 21st century. The feeling that teacher’s have is “I just can’t compete with what is out there.” For example, video games have sophisticated graphics. So how can we compete? Well according to Prensky it is not a war of graphics, it is a war of ideas.

For example, in 2004 some top selling games were a lot around “heroic” aspirations. For example, Rise of Nations is “Entire Span of History is in your Hands.” Or in 2005 they are getting to “mix genes” after school. Is this what we offer in school?

Complex ethical questions arise in games. For example, bashing heads with a baseball bat – should they do this? The games requires it… but maybe they don’t feel good about it. This is the opening to discuss ethics.

Kids become leaders and learn how to capture the castle is a major deal. One good teacher in games is not being afraid to fail. Kids persist and they can succeed.

Continuing to respect games – what about doing a game report instead of a book report?

So, continuing on to discuss Games and instruction.

1) Use commercial games – COTS games
2) Use Custom Games – made for education
3) Use complex game design principles
4) Use questions from games

Game designers – effective, pragmatic engaging pedagogy – unlike the way ID works.

Some questions -
“Gender differences?”
Yes they exist, but in MMPG girls and guys are starting to blend roles.

Very cool!
Check out http://www.socialimpactgames.com/

Technorati Tags: nptech, education

Here are some thoughts on developing some thoughts on working with Not for profits although many of these things apply equally to for-profits as well.

1) My clients love sending email 1-to-1 or 1 to a specified list of people they have added. They don’t participate much in listserv’s and feel nervous about “who they don’t know” when using listserv’s. They like to send MS word docs to everyone because it is the easiest way to reach everyone.

2) There is a big difference in the confidence and posting frequency of people that can write vs. people that don’t write as well. Blogs favour the articulate. Rarely hear from people whose first language is not English for example.

3) Univeral buy-in is tough. Usually we work with evangelists in the company but it is them pushing for something that is not always accepted or valued by others ***even when they say it is***. Yet as the “web guy”, it’s hard to say, “are you sure your VP/ED/CEO is really behind this?” We do workflow analysis for almost every project, but so often our final analysis is way off the mark. Why? Because what people say is often a reflection of what they **want** to be the case, not what actually happens. And the difference is very significant for clients.

4) CMS programs like Drupal are completely different that “traditional” websites. It’s hard for people to wrap their head around the differences. For example, the notion of chronological blogs is much different than the traditional “about us” brochureware. Maybe a lot of clients would be happy with brochureware.

5) People don’t understand taxonomies and categories that exist in CMS’s like Drupal. The idea that a webpage can be “two places at once” is confusing. In drupal, a piece of content can have multiple categories. Hey, I don’t even get the difference between a “story”, “page” and “blog”. Aren’t they all pieces of content on a page? Don’t even get me started on synonyms, related terms etc.

6) Liability seems to be a big issue. No one is leaping on the bandwagon of forums, wikis, blogs or Drupal accounts without seriously thinking about what would happen if some nut bar got online and posted something profane or worse, insulted funders. This is a real concern and has stopped many in their tracks. Let’s face it, a small NGO has enough to do without spending hours reviewing a wiki for spam attacks from some idjit in another country (personal example!!)

Technorati Tags: nptech, notforprofit