Reflecting on the class reading “Engage Me or Enrage Me”: What Today’s Learners Demand, by Marc Prensky
Word stream: stimulated, overstimulated, gaming… connects with the video we watched on Saturday about students designing games in school.
Questions: Too much of a good thing, too often- loses it’s value?
Can over-including ‘gaming’ in the curriculum become contrived and trying too hard to ‘engage’ students? Being patronized or talked-down too is far more enraging for me. Of course it depends on who you teach, maybe ES students will find gaming engaging but i can name a few MS and HS kids that would roll their eyes if I were going to give them a computer game design activity in ArtMud class. We want to get off the computers and work with our hands, get dirty and create!
Just like how we must differentiate in our classroom for different learners, technology also has it’s place and strengths in different subject matter, unit, activity- not everywhere. We can’t insist that all classes use technology all the time, it is counter productive and devalues the awesomeness of tech in the class room.
Game design is a cool project tho, Tara Barton used this activity for the Art Elements and Principles unit in ArtRageous a few years ago.
Or maybe the idea of using authentic or real-world activities is what we should really focus on…
Class enhancement: http://www.jango.com/ online radio with specific stations like: tween’s list, mommy approved pop, movies soundtrack and so on. I hate ending up the class DJ when we play music in class while we make art, I just put this on and can concentrate on teaching 🙂
Other articles from Google’ing “games in education”
Games in Education Symposium – there’s a site for “...is a multi-day symposium which focuses on the topic of using video games to supplement and inspire in-classroom education. ” it sounds kinda cool!
Playing to learn: Panelists at Stanford discussion say using games as an educational tool provides opportunities for deeper learning BY R. F. MACKAY
–“If indeed humans think immeasurably better as part of a network than on their own, then games are an obvious terrain in which to set minds free and let them wander around, interacting with whatever or whomever they encounter. “
– “Games are architectures for engagement,” Steinkuehler
– “Gamification”
– Google searches are AWESOME! (When i was a kid, we still used library card cataloques…)
Photo Credit: sashafatcat via Compfight cc
Have you ever wondered what the world would be like in 20 years? –
Photo Credit: h.koppdelaney via Compfight cc
Photo Credit: Stuck in Customs via Compfight cc
Photo Credit: {Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester} via Compfight cc
Photo Credit: San Diego Shooter via Compfight cc
Related articles
- Gamification 2 Years On: What Is it Now, Why is it Still Important? (business2community.com)
- 5 Reasons Gamification Will Help You Retain Millennial Workers (business2community.com)
- Gamification: Using play to motivate employees and engage customers (pcworld.com)
- Making the “Game” a Game! (evolvedtech.org)
Carmel 
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Carmel: I, too, feel there is a time and a place for “gamification” in the classroom. I do understand how engaging it is for students and what great opportunities for learning it can provide. Yet should kids only be exposed to learning through gaming? Isn’t this as limiting to the myriad learning styles of our students as direct instruction? When many of our students spend their afternoons and evening in front of their computers, shouldn’t they be stimulated in other ways throughout the day?
On a side note, thanks for the link to jango. I miss my Pandora and I didn’t know about this site. ☺