“Don’t Bother Me Mom – I’m Learning
By Marc Prensky
Carol Ann LeMoine
Agenda
 The Videogame World
According to Marc Prensky:
Introduction
Games are Not the Enemy
The Rise of the Digital Native
What’s Different About Today’s Games?
What Kids Are Learning (On Their Own)
How Parents, Teachers and All Adults Can Get in the Game
Marc Prensky’s World… real or imagined?
Forward
James Gee writes…
• “ Marc knows that game designers have learned to harness
deep and powerful learning- learning in the sense of
problem solving, decision making, hypothesizing, and
strategizing – as a form of fun, pleasure, engagement,
even “flow”. They’ll be able to accelerate their children’s
language and cognitive growth and prepare their children
for their high-tech global world they will live in.” (p xvii)
Introduction
Goals of the Book
 Give kids a voice
 Addresses the concerns, frustrations, and
fears of parents and teachers
 Describe the benefits of playing games
 Provide ways for parents to deepen their
understanding of and develop their relationships
with their children
Games are Not the Enemy
What are Kids Doing and What are They
Learning?
Visual Selective Attention
Complicated Reasoning
Logical Thinking
Situational Awareness
Computer Literacy
Multi-tasking, Parallel Processing
Collaboration with Others
Games are Not the Enemy
“Today’s game playing kid enters the first grade able to do and
understand so many complex things – from building, to flying,
to reasoning – that the curriculum they are given feels to them
like their mind is being put in a straight jacket, or that their milk
is being laced with sedatives. Every time they go to school they
must, in the words of one student, ‘power down’.
And it gets worse as students progress up the grades. Most of
today’s teachers know little if anything about the digital world
of their students – from on-line to their means of exchanging
sharing, meeting, evaluating, coordinating, programming,
searching, customizing, and socializing. As a result, despite
their efforts, it’s often impossible for these adults to design
learning in ways their students need and relish.” (p10)
Games are Not the Enemy
What About Violence?
“Studies generally show that violent video games
can have short term or momentary effects on
children, but there is little evidence of long-term
changes. Anahad O’Connor, Science Editor, NY Times, (p16)
“The question of whether playing violent games
is causing any individual child – yours, for
example – to become more violent is actually too
complex a question for any researchers to
decide – at least in the kinds of projects that are
currently possible.” (p16)
The Rise of the Digital Native
“Kids think and process
information in a fundamentally
different way, which leads to
different brain structures.” p28
“…the single biggest problem
facing education today is that
Digital Immigrant parents and
teachers, who came from the predigital age, are struggling to teach
a population that speaks an
entirely new language.”p29
The Rise of the Digital Native
Digital Natives have
changed the way they:
 communicate, buy and sell, exchange, create,
meet, coordinate, evaluate, game, learn,
evolve, search, report, program, socialize,
grow up!
What’s Different
About Today’s Games?
Types of Games:
 Complex games
vs mini-games
Reasons to Play:
 Levelling up
 Flow
 Adaptivity
 Gameplay
What’s Different
About Today’s Games?
Five Levels of Learning…
How… What… Why … Where… Whether
What Kids Learn
from Complex Games…
•
improved eye-hand coordination
• better problem solving skills
• increased performance in math
and language
What’s Different
About Today’s Games?
Criticisms….What About…
• Addiction
• Aggression (inciter vs diffuser)
• Isolation
Role of Parent…
• provide frequent and strong counter messages
• guidance selecting age-appropriate games
What Kids Are Learning
(On Their Own)
Kids are learning about…
• economics, business, health, sports, etc.
• cooperation (clans, guilds, etc.)
• ethics (with guidance)
• making decisions and seeing and feeling the
consequences
• modding… game modification
• technical skills and abilities
• being successful in life!
How Parents, Teachers, and All
Adults Can Get in the Game!
What Can You Do?
•Educate yourself
• Ask kids open-ended questions
• Educate your family
• Look over your kid’s shoulder… with permission
• Go game browsing together
• Play!
• Help organize a LAN party or game club
How Parents, Teachers, and All
Adults Can Get in the Game!
Curricular Connections…
Game Designer: “As soon as you add an
instructional designer to a [game design] team,
the first they do is suck the fun out.” (p183)
Console Manufacturer:
“We are interested in titles that sell a million
copies @ $50. An educational title, if it’s really
good might sell 300 000 @ $30.” (p185)
Learning Games available…??
How Parents, Teachers, and All
Adults Can Get in the Game!
“… there are many lessons and probably whole
subjects that don’t have to be taught by a person at
all in order to be learned. In fact, if they are presented
right, students will learn them more quickly, efficiently,
and, I think, happily on their own.” (p 196)
“What If we created a school with no teachers at all,
as we know them today, but rather with the same
number of empathetic learning counsellors – people
who have no required academic training in subject
matter, but have great skills at understanding and
helping kids?” (p 200)
Final Thoughts…
Marc Prensky’s World…
real or imagined?
Thank you for your interest!