Reblogged: An innovative dog needs a creative tail
This piece was originally published by the Macarthur Foundation on their Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning blog (original link).
How we measure learning helps determine how we teach. So to help children prepare for life in the digital future, we need better tests in the digital present.
I want to start this final entry in my brief stint as guest editor on the Macarthur Spotlight blog by thanking the Foundation for the invitation to join this important conversation, and more important, to thank the readers of the blog for their thoughts and comments.
I look forward to the continuing the discussion here, but also would like to invite those interested in these issues to my research group’s blog at epistemicgames.org, where some of the topics we’ve touched on here (and many others!) are examined in more depth.
I’d like to close this part of the conversation about what we know with a few thoughts on one of the critical issues for research on digital learning: figuring out how we assess what we think children (and adults) are learning from playing games and interacting with other digital tools.
Our current assessments – the standardized tests we read and hear so much about – focus on students’™ knowledge of basic facts and basic skills.
But here’s the problem:
To get good jobs in the digital age, to be informed citizens, to contribute to society, to express themselves, and to lead happy and fulfilling lives, young people need more than basic facts and skills. They need to learn to think in innovative and creative ways about complex problems and issues.
So if we assess games and other new digital tools for learning using standardized tests, what we’ll wind up building are better and better tools to teach the wrong things.
About the book…
The definitive work on epistemic games…
A must read for anyone who cares about learning.
–Seymour Papert
Like Dewey, Piaget, and Papert before him, Shaffer challenges us to rethink learning in a new age.
–Kurt D. Squire
Beautifully written…. A tour de force.
–Deborah Lowe Vandell
This groundbreaking book… will benefit educators, school administrators, policy makers, and, most importantly, parents.
–Yam San Chee
Reblogged: Science, literacy, and the internet?
This piece was originally published by the Macarthur Foundation on their Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning blog (original link).
Young people already use web search services, wikipedia, blogs, and online news to learn about their world and complete their school assignments. When it’s easy to find thousands of hits on just about any topic – some fascinating, some irrelevant – with a simple Google search, it is not surprising that they report learning far more from the internet than they do from school, and enjoying that learning more. But are they getting accurate information from the explorations that they do on their own?
Reblogged: The power of authenticity
This piece was originally published by the Macarthur Foundation on their Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning blog (original link).
One of the things we know about creative thinking is that creative thinkers these days use sophisticated tools: graphic designers use Photoshop and Illustrator, architects and engineers use CAD (Computer Aided Design) software, urban planners use geographic information systems, managers use gantt charting tools, accountants use spreadsheets, and everyone uses word processors, Web browsers, and email.
So it makes sense that to learn innovative and creative thinking, you need to use these tools and you need to learn to use them.
Continue reading »
Reblogged: Thinking like an engineer
This piece was originally published by the Macarthur Foundation on their Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning blog (original link).
In an earlier post on the Macarthur blog, Edward Miller, a senior researcher at the Alliance for Childhood, was quoted as saying: ‘There is no evidence that video games are good at teaching problem-solving or ‘higher-order skills.’
Sadly–or perhaps I should say, happily–that’s simply not true.
In the game Digital Zoo, players become biomechanical engineers and design creatures of the kind you might see in an animated movie. And it turns out that, yes, by playing as engineers they learn to think about problems the way engineers do.
