What an interesting idea Seth Priebatsch has. Make everything seem like a game and people become involved in it. I had to take some time to think about what he was saying, especially when he admits that this stuff can be used for good, bad, and in between. Why do we want to promote something else that can be used for bad. Hmmmmm..... I have to admit that I am not quite sure that I agree with his ideas, but they are very interesting.
Priebatsch points out that the past decade has been focused on social connections, i.e. Facebook. I do not have a Facebook page, but I know that I am in the minority on that one. I know people who spend every free minute they have checking in on Facebook. It is a good way to stay connected to people and to get information from and to people. He then points out that this new decade is going to be one of gaming influence and he talks about the top four levels of gaming, which he calls the appointment dynamic, influence and status dynamic, progression dynamic and communal dynamic. All of these things he is connecting to games and how involved people become in them.
Listening to Preibatsch's presentation got me thinking about my students. There is the boy who convinced his mother to take him to the video store at midnight to purchase the newest video game and then convinced her to let him miss school the next day to stay home and play the game. Maybe he will become a member of Congress who will be able to convince the rest of Congress to pass laws that he is interested in. There is the boy who wrote the best paper he has ever written describing how to get from one level of the game "world" to the next level. Describing this strategy somehow improved even his grammar and mechanics skills. There was the group of students who used the particulars of a video game to create a video for a project they were working on. Their project was set in the 1940s but they used the theme of the video game to relate their ideas to the rest of the class. There are the students who, in a video game of strategy, compete with one another and come up with strategies to beat the other players. Will they be the next CEO of a major company because they were able to out-strategies their competitors?
I have to admit that I think that if some of my students spent as much time studying as they did playing video games, their grades would be a lot better. Having said that, maybe they are learning something from these games that gives them skills that they can use in the real world. I used the game "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader" to work on some vocabulary with my students. The game was on a CD, complete with applause and booing, that I projected to the class. It was the most engaged my students have ever been when working on vocabulary. I think this says a lot about how our teaching has to change in order to keep up with the changing world that our students live in and in order to be able to keep their attention. We are competing with video games.
I agree with you Gayle. I know how excited my students get when I say, I have a new game for us today. At first I was not sure where Seth was going, but as I listened closely, I see how games can make learning fun and challenging and be used for good to teach many skills. I find games on the promethean board, make up games like memory or around the world, games about money and vocabulary. My most difficult students to keep on task are the ones that I have no problems with during gaming activities. We are competing with video games and technology. I try to find a balance between traditional methods and games, because I feel it is important to for students to have experience in situations where sometimes learning takes place formally and other times games can be used to enhance learning. It is a great concept and I am looking forward to the next decade.
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