GLS02: James Paul Gee on New Paradigms
for Learning
GLS02: James Paul Gee on New Paradigms
for Learning
06/24/2005 03:27 PM
two crises that are relevant to our schools and our
society
1. “the 4th grade slump” - there are certain
ways you can teach young children to read, but by 4th grade they
can’t read to learn so they struggle after that
2.
“the college slump” – we’ve outsourced a
tremendous amount of our work, every commoditized job (everything that
can be standardized) because other countries are producing very smart
people; so we’re left with those jobs that can’t be
standardized and we hope they’ll keep doing the rest for us, but
that’s not happening anymore; instead, they’re producing
people for the non-commoditized work — everyone EXCEPT THE U.S.;
this will be very destructive to us within 20 years; we have to be
able to innovate and create, not just get a degree; that’s not
enough anymore
the solution to these crises is in our face:
it’s popular culture and games; this is where it’s getting
solved, not in our schools
the 4th grade slump is caused by the
fact that what is so hard about school is how hard the language gets;
textbooks are NOT recreational reading; unless kids, starting at home,
get ready for this language early, they will be lost; it’s like
changing the language to Greek in mid-stream; it’s not the
english you speak at home - it’s a technical
language
interestingly, this language is being reflected in
popular culture; eg, Yu-Gi-Oh cards (http://www.YuGiOhCardGuide.com<
/a>)
gives kids incredibly complex culture by age 7; eg, showed a
YGO card that had 3 straigtht conditional clause statements as
explanations of powers
as an adult, Gee would rather take physics
than figure out the YuGiOh rules! :-)
no failure rates, either
– no research has found a failure for a minority group to
understand this
where is the one place these cards are banned?
SCHOOL
cutting edge assessment: the college slump
problem
have to teach students to innovate and create; popular
culture already represents a space that is solving this problem and we
can learn from it
assessment is important - am I making
progress, and why did I just fail? a multiple choice test is not fun
and it’s useless it doesn’t tell you anything or
help you figure out what you did wrong; this is a different view of
assessment
“Rise of Nations” as an example -
showed screenshots, especially of online competitions against
others
14 pages of statistical graphs of what you did, and kids
read it for pleasure!
creates a lot of multimodal skills with
graphs and numeracy
informative assessment - tells you what
happened; helps you form strategies by telling you where you failed;
assessing to create new strategies is part of the game; gives you
ideas for how to do it better; you couldn’t get a better score
– but shows where you could do better, which is an
ideal assessment; the biggest assessment isn’t those graphs,
it’s what you did with them – did you learn from
them?
what if a kid got these kinds of assessments in school for
science?
afffinity groups:
1. common endeavor, not race,
class, gender, or disability, is primary
2. newbies and masters
share common space
3. players produce content, not just consume
it
4. content organization is transformed by interactional
organization
5. encourages intensive and extensive knowledge
6. encourages individual and distributed knowledge
7.
encourages dispersed knowledge – everyone (the help) is there
somewhere
8. uses and honors tacit knowledge
9. many
different forms and routes to participation
10. different routes
to status
11. leadership is porous and leaders are
resources
“Age of Mythology” – gets them
reading more about mythology and planning
told story about his
son in 2nd grade who said he and his friends were playing it; Jim
didn’t believe it, thought they must be playing it with their
parents; an hour later, his son was explaining to the Jim how to
play it; kids totally know it at a very early age
Jim decided he
would print out all of the information that flows through the site in
one day, but finally stopped on the 2000th page
all of this
exists because people are creating content, not just consuming
it
these communities speak to the college slump
learning
principles: consider all of this as a way to organize a knowledge
community (do this in the school!)
in schools, the kids
aren’t building content; no dispersed knowledge; only one
leader; one mode of learning and one format
incorporate the best
of cognitive learning principles
the fun of the game is
learning; once they’ve mastered it, they move on and buy a new
game
our schools no longer support these
principles
Learning in Games:
1. produce (nothing happens
if you don’t do something)
2. customize (can
totally mod the games; to your learning style; could even try a new
style)
3. identity (no learning is done without a strong
identity; games give you an identity, schools don’t)
4.
interact
5. well-ordered problems (they aren’t liberal or
progressive; the problems you face early set up good hypotheses for
future play)
6. pleasantly frustrating (which is what keeps them
coming back)
7. challenge (don’t get to move on until
you’ve solved something; “cycle of expertise”)
8. “on demand” & “just in time” (info
when you need it or can use it; don’t have to read things ahead
of time; walking up to kiosks in games)
(my side note — **
librarians!!)
9. do, not just talk
10. system thinking
(putting many elements in relation to each other)
11. encourage
risk (games don’t tell you you’re worthless at the end)
12. explore, think laterally, rethink goals (new view of
intelligence; faster isn’t necessarily better – eg, FPS
games; want you to explore everything and rethink your goals;
virtually every good thing you can find is off the beaten
path)
produces learning where you MUST innovate and have to
master what you do; you don’t get credit for
nothing
we have on the plate models that have to be transferred;
it’s not did the kid transfer it to algebra, it’s will
we?
Questions for Henry and Jim:
one way
of thinking about schools is that school is a game, too. certain
ways of thinking, certain things across each area, certain identities
– it’s just not a good game; but you’ll get
a bad game if you try to change a game quickly or arbitrarily; since
it’s already well-designed to do what it does, how do we change
the game school?
Jim: for the first time in our history, our kids
have genuine competition, which is the biggest crisis we’ve
faced; the paradigm for schooling will have more competition than ever
before; science and math is so poorly retained because you never got
the roles and meaning; have to get a new game
Henry: if current
school is a game, it’s CandyLand or Chutes & Ladders (go in
a circle no matter what color you pick or slide down if make the wrong
move by luck); poor games to prepare kids for the future;
doesn’t know if we can reprogram our schools; need to become
more open-ended; we widen the participation gap if do this outside of
the schools; there ARE teachers fighting to make this
happen
this discussion has been about what some kids do, but
it’s a minority
Jim: that’s the participation gap;
we’re not producing enough of these kids, whereas the rest of
the world is; need research on who these kids are; the college slump
is the first crisis that crosses class lines - can affect rich and
poor; now there is going to be a price when they all grow up
Henry: need statistical information about the level of
participation; our studies are asking the wrong questions – eg,
the Kaiser study lumped all screen media together and didn’t ask
what they’re actually doing; have to recognize all of the
different forms of participation (Will Wright’s chart of
participation in The Sims); invariably, there’s a parent who
cares behind these kids; plenty of roles for parents to enable and
encourage this
what transformations have you made in your own
programs to incorporate these ideas:
Jim: boomer retirement! the
new faculty being hired “get” all of this; Jim has
switched his style to teach how to enter the world, not how to read;
“I’m on my way out”
Henry: hasn’t gotten
into elementary or grade schools as much as he’d like to; trying
to break down the barriers between media at MIT; integrating a range
of media in every class (sound, vision, text, etc..); combine theory
and practice in the classroom; all students are required to do some
actual production in addition to theory; creating “creative
opportunities;” don’t teach the skills, they use what they
know for final assignments, so they don’t just make something in
isolation; integrating theoretical and participatory work; collective
problem-solving
what would a curriculum of the future look like,
and are these examples really about relevance? what does a curriculum
that addresses this look like?
Jim: liberals make the mistake of
basing education on who you are; conservatives base it on stuff
that’s irrelevant; future is giving kids strong identities;
you’ll “become an urban planner,” which helps you
learn facts and theories because that identity requires you to know
those things; if you had learned a bunch of algebra to pull off an
identity you really wanted to have, you would have learned it and been
prepared for future learning
Henry: when developing games for
classroom use, ask “what’s the knowledge used for”
– gives you roles, etc.; MIT is finishing a game called
“Revolution” now – you decide how far you will go
for your freedoms, etc.; kids struggle; each kid has a different
perspective based on their roles; kids are creating diaries where they
mash what they’re learning in textbooks, in the game, etc.; kids
are bringing things to the game to shape their interactions; told the
story of a kid who showed up at a protest and was shot by her own
side (“How could they do that to me?) – really brings home
the history; understand history much better, make choices, gain
context for them; the role of voices; these tools open up history and
make it more relevant
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