בקשר למקצועות ההומניים(ספרות, תנ”ך, הבעה והייתי מוסיף גם היסטוריה):
לדעתי הם חשובים, אבל לא צריך להכניס בהם כל כך הרבה חומר, לפחות לא למי שמתמקד במקצועות ראליים.
העיקר שאנשים ידעו לכתוב.
אני דיסלקט, ובכלזאת מאוד מפריע לי כשאני רואה פוסטים והודעות ברשת מלאים בשגיאות. אנשים שאני מחשיב אותם כגאונים בתחומים שונים ומתנסחים כמו ילד שרק למד לכתוב, זה ממש מפריע לי.
ועכשיו כשחלק גדול מהתקשורת בין האנשים היא באינטרנט – זה ממש מפריע.

אז שילמדו פחות תנ”ך, שילמדו פחות היסטוריה(בכל מקרה אלו מקצועות שכרגע אתה משנן בהם דברים לפני ומבחן ואחריו שוכח), העיקר שילמדו לקרוא ולכתוב כמו שצריך ושילמדו הבעה.
כשרוב התקשורת מתבצעת בכתב – זה חובה.

ובלי קשר, מקצוע שהייתי מתחיל להנחיל מגיל צעיר – כלכלה. זה היה פותר המון בעיות חברתיות שיש היום

A very sad post Ortal…. and it seems we have chosen to do this to our children all over the world!

This is adults who have confused-

“harder” with “better”—-
“longer”— with “deeper”–
“school” with “work”—-
“memorization” with “understanding”
“rigor” with “more”

I spend a great deal of my time attempting to teach my children that this…and many other cultural messages are not “TRUTH”!!

This is the behavior of “frightened” adults….. and is really of very little value.

The question for me…. how much of this will i participate in and at what level of concern?

I buffer my kids from this nonsense as often and as much as possible…. we will play the game, but at a level that is of my ( the parents ) choosing.

What i try to focus on is healthy human development….

We and our children are finding that we are living in “toxic cultures”….

What might be done to push back against a system that sees chilren and education as only preparing for ecconomic growth…………

It has taken America a very long time to spread a “bill of rights” to ALL of our citizens… we are still working on it!

Here is a list i found- The Student Bill of Rights-

http://mrpullen.wordpress.com/2008/08/29/the-student-bill-of-rights/

1. All students have the right to learn from a teacher who deeply understands her subject matter and who deeply cares about each individual student in her classroom.

2. All students have the right to be safe throughout each school day.

3. All students have the right to meet their own physical needs during school hours (e.g. bringing a snack, getting a drink, being allowed to use the restroom, etc.).

4. All students have the right to enjoy an unstructured recess time at least once a day.

5. All students have the right to be taught by someone who is not reading from a script.

6. All students have the right to be assessed based on improvement, not just raw performance.

7. All students have the right to be appropriately challenged across all subjects.

8. All students have the right to have some measure of choice with regard to at least some of the topics they will study and the assignments they will complete.

9. All students have the right to receive cutting-edge instruction and to spend significant in-class time focusing on current technologies.

10. All students have the right to maintain a vibrant life outside school without being burdened with large quantities of homework.

Not a bad start…. what would you add or subtract?

Wondering…other parents out there…. what do you think?

be well…. mike

What would happen to your second grader if he just didn’t do some of the homework? Would he flunk second grade? I do tend to limit how much my grade school kids do, because sometimes it is just too much.

As for external reinforcement – sure, the ideal situation would be if any students could find his or her internal motivator. But the reality is different. It could be because students are not interested in the particular material presented to them, or because the fail to see the relevancy of a curriculum to real life, or because it’s difficult for them. There could be many reasons. That’s when external reinforcement can contribute. Depending on how and what this reinforcement is, it can translate to an internal motivator in time. Sometimes it justs serves as a kick start. It should definitely not take the place of internal motivators.

At an industry conference, one of the original EverQuest designers gave an insightful overview of how to make an addicting online game.

He cited research done with lab mice to teach them how to navigate a maze, and that the principle for the pacing and magnitude of rewards was the same. You give the user little crumbs in the expected path at a pace of roughly once a minute – this holds their short term attention. You also have medium sized rewards (medium chunks of cheese) interspersed at roughly once every hour or two – this serves as a near-term goal. Finally, you have rare, but attainable, big rewards that can take a week or more to reach – the prospect of those big rewards keep the player playing even after they have collected one of the medium rewards. You could think of it as a more refined “carrot in front of the horse” design theory.

If you look for it, you can find this design pattern everywhere you look in modern online games. While I think this is a very effective approach at retaining customers and getting a usage fee every month from them, I’m not sure that the model of constant external reinforcement is something that we should be conditioning our students with. Many jobs and hobbies have “gruntwork” phases where we have to persist without the benefit of constant validation, and we need to give students a safe place to practice struggling and learning with only their internal long-term goals as motivators.

The social world of online games (or even chat/messaging) can be a double-edged sword in my opinion. I don’t always see virtual in-game confidence and bravado translate into a sustained healthy self-image of players in the real world. If the game is an escape or avoidance of coping with non-virtual social situations, then parents and teachers still need to encourage students to grow in their handling of face-to-face situations. The self-esteem boost of an in-game accomplishment can turn out to be hollow when faced with un-met demands of college applications, dating relationships, or job preparations.

As for the learning in existing games, my view is that the amount of learning from a given game situation can vary greatly from group to group and from person to person. Lucas mentions the group challenges and problem solving in online games in the video you posted, but the amount of learning is often much greater for the groups who first attempt a game challenge than it is for those who follow. Many guilds wait for strategy guides to come out before attempting challenges, and are following a pre-written recipe, with the main remaining challenges being coordinating timing and hand-eye coordination. Think of the difference between a true inquiry-based lesson and an old-school lab where students follow step-by-step and just concern themselves with “doing it right” and “getting the right answer”, without developing understanding. You can get both situations in the same game challenge depending on group dynamics and the availability of guides or cheats.

I used to think that anyone playing a game would automatically develop an instinct for the underlying mechanics, or the “laws of physics” if you will. Now I think I was projecting. In my experience, many players do not develop an understanding beyond “this is how everyone does it” or “this is the best way” (without being able to explain why).

This is not to say that I don’t believe that games can enhance the classroom, just that like every previous technology that has come to the classroom, they aren’t a miracle cure. Successful programs will have thoughtful planning, careful implementation, and open-eyed reflection / evaluation.

Great video – great post.

I reckon we need to get past the ‘are games educational’ question. Most with (a) gaming experience (b) high-school classroom experience can be convinced that there are dozens of commercially available games that would be of ENORMOUS educational benefit.

The real question is how to convince the Faculty Heads and the Gaming Industry to let it happen.

Faculty Heads (usually, at this time) are going to be slightly older than the general age of gamers – on average. They will likely see games as a frivolous activity. They are not 100% resistant, to be sure, but are going to be VERY hard to shift on this issue…and thats before you start talking about the unseemly subject of money. Oh, and before you start talking about which particular game.

The games industry rarely (if ever) offer an ‘education licence’ on the broad range of games. And why should they? If they can sell 30 units for a class, well, that is something they would have been aiming for in the design investment process. I’ve been looking into the older ‘bargin bin’ games for my school – around the $20 mark – bt even still, our faculty budget would bust just getting enough for 1 between 2.

Are games going to be designed JUST for the education market? Well, in my opinion, not good ones.

Here is a great interview and related info.
http://www.iear.org/iear/2009/5/13/sylvia-martinez-show-47-and-interview-6.html

Again, great post!