“If we are in earnest about universal education, we must … recognize that our education succeeds just to the extent that we make it focus upon the real activities of life” Charles DeGarmo 1895
To me, the educational value of online mobile games and mobile social network access is that they potentially provide hardware / platform independent opportunities to offering students real world connections between technology and learning and integrating that connection into coherent / purposeful / meaningful / relevant learning experiences that are consistent with the everyday practices and motivations of students in their day to day lives. The challenge will be in controlling this technology (integrating in into lessons for example) to support effective delivery of learning outcomes whilst - as a teacher - breaking down some of my own prejudices against using such technology in the first place.
In this entry I've used a Nintendo DS Brain Training game that I'm familiar with to demonstrate the level of novelty and engagement that can be brought to a simple mental-maths type activity.
Really the challenge and opportunities hinge around the idea of integrating technology into the lessons - mobile games and mobile social network access (facebook is replete with games and add ons - an educational facebook could be very viable - and doable) offer the potential of getting the technology into the lesson and not requiring the lesson to move out into the computer room or onto the pods as such. Technology that can be instantly accessed from the students desk would be desirable from a lesson flow point of view whilst being consistent with the sort of practice alluded to by Marc Prensky by improving interest and access for ‘digital natives’ by employing familiar and flexible modes of learning through such technologies games, social networking or roleplays that mimic the real life activities of everyday life (although I can't help being a contrarian and including a quote from Clifford Stohl:
Stohl's 1995 quote neatly dovetails with much of the imagined benefits of playing games and engaging with the presumed learning habits of digital natives:
“Work sheets were such a pain […] These exercises feel like a game.”
The role of the teacher (as always) will be to mediate and guide students to contextualise the learning and not get lost in the showiness of the game. Another Stohl quote is that adult work is not always fun. Making every aspect of learning is not necessarily preparing students for some realities of adult life. I'm not sure how that conection can be addressed for getting the best value from online educational gaming / learning.
Play theory is based largely around the observation that like other animals, humans learn more through the games they play in their early years than they do in any other corresponding time in their lives (Van Eck, 2000, citing Lepper & Chabay, 1985). This idea is echoed by Piaget (1951), who called play "the work of a child", as well as Rieber (1996), according to whom "play is an important mediator for learning and sociali[s]ation throughout life" (p.44), and who also contends that "[h]aving children play games to learn is simply asking them to do what comes naturally" (p.52).
ReplyDeleteAccording to Papert (1998), kids dislike school because it is boring; not because it is hard. Games, on the other hand, can be "hard fun" and enjoyable due to their complexity. Instead of reacting negatively towards computer games, teachers and schools should leverage the technologies students already play with, to enhance their learning experiences.
Although this makes me wonder how kids are going to go as adults if they are educated / learning socialised around the concept of having fun. Not all work is (by necessity?) fun.