| Books Recommended for Educators: |
Don’t Bother Me Mom – I’m Learning: How Computer and Video Games Are Preparing Your Kids for 21st Century Success and How You Can Help! Marc Prensky’s thesis, in this “guide for parents concerned about their kids’ video and computer game playing” is that kids are learning important “future” things - from collaboration, to prudent risk taking, to strategy formulation and execution, to complex moral and ethical decisions. What are some lessons that Prensky hopes parents will pick up? First, games are NOT the enemy. What attracts and “glues” kids to today’s video and computer games is not the violence, or even the surface subject matter i.e., the shooting, the racing or the building. Instead, it’s because they are learning – learning things they need for their 21st century lives, such as thinking, collaboration and leading teams. And it’s not that they are attention deficit – it’s just that they are not listening in the classroom because lessons in classrooms are boring. Unfortunately, most of today’s teachers know little if anything about the digital world of their students – from online gaming to their means of exchanging, sharing, meeting, evaluating, coordinating, programming, searching, customizing and socialising. To quote Henry Kelly, President of the Federation of American Scientists, “The cookies on my daughter’s computer know more abut her interests than her teachers do.” Someone’s got to give – and it’s us. No matter how much we, digital immigrants may wish it, digital natives, like our kids, are not going to go backwards. Our kids know instinctively that in an age when knowledge and the technology will increase a million fold in their lifetime, the skills they need are not the ones they are being taught in the classroom. |
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