Altilab2005 - Distance Education Blog

I’ve just been thru a few blog posts which explore and extoll the possibilities of tinkering as a tool for education in the digital age.  Schools and formal educators are considering the possibility that giving the kids some time to read what they want would help them learn to read.  Others are taking this idea and wondering if we could teach science by giving kids some tools and time to tinker. 

The discussion started with a post by Dr. Stephen Krashen called 88 Generalizations about Free Voluntary Reading. My reaction to this is that he has just built a case for unschooling.  A few points:

1. My reaction is that about 3% of the Americans  have opted to homeschool their children. And a significant  percentage of them are UnSchooling.
2. I have no particular idea how Kashen’s approacho f giving space and time and the right environment fits into the context of large scale public schools. I do know that  if you restructure the institutions and swtich to homeschooling or much smaller institutions that UnSchooling is successful in case after case after case.
3. A definition for you: Many homeschoolers, when they start, go thru a “deschooling” phase. Again, you can check a homeschool glossary to get a real definition but essentially, it’s the time when students and parents try to shed the school mentality. Kids tend to veg out watching TV and playing video games. Most kids, after a few weeks, start showing interest in learning and then the family starts to layer in a homeschool education program.
4. But, the electronic game world and the net in general is so durn full of so many interesting things, some kids start learning and immersing themselves in  a single narrow direction.

A second point that I’d like to make is following up Stephen Spaeth’s post about  tinkering  (OK, I might be getting confused trying to listen to him talk and write this at the same time between meetings. I wish that were more hours in the day). His point reminds me of my core beliefs about education which were formed in my years producing video games.  They are, as relevant to this discussion:

Video games  are  the single biggest success in education today.  Kids not only spend hours and hours and hours learning to master detailed skills and strategies, they do it on an ongoing basis. That is, they keep playing and learning. They do it of their free choice.  And they PAY for it.  Pretty cool, huh?  Contrast the video game phenomenon which a school system which labels all the kids ADD since they won’t sit still and focus and listen in class to the teacher talking talking talking talking…

Of course, I’m being a little glib. What the kids are learning in video games are to predict complex patterns, build strategies for resource allocation, build analytic and hand-to-eye skills, and figure out probabilities.  They need to walk around a corner, encounter a monster, and then hypothesize on the probability of that happening.  Was the death due to going around the corner or was the monster released when I rang the bell a minute ago.  Huh, need to create and test hypotheses. Professional educators, uninvolved with gaming might initially say that video games have nothing to do with education.  Others (ie What Video Games have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy by James Paul Gee), have written and documented in some detail how video games are the future of education.

My point is that games are closely related to the future of education, expecially in science and math.

Stephen’s post made me smile when he say that faced with feedback, most students “shrivelled when critiqued.”  Of course, in the paradigm of learning by gaming, children don’t get critiqued, they get fragged (killed).  Which doesn’t destroy them, it helps them build data on what works and what doesn’t. 

He also talks about learning from the master.  He should spend a few days in an online game world to see the respect and authority and impact that a True Master can have.

Humbly, John