Participants:
Alan Gershenfeld (E-Line Media)
James Bower (Numedeon/Whyville)
Sara DeWitt (PBS)
Provided Summary
"Textbooks published on trees are on the way out in Texas, California and the rest of the country and world. The Textbook industry is hoping they will be replaced with on-line versions spruced up with animated graphics. However, it is likely that on-line textbooks will be no more successful than magazine advertising that morphed into banner ads. Linear content with multiple choice answers at the end of each chapter, won't work. And as with banner ads, on the Internet you can measure that they don't work. What does work? Socially networked GAMES. The question for this panel is whether games will replace traditional educational media, and what those games look like. What will the teachers manual look like? How will learning be assessed? What happens to the classroom, or the school itself, when on-line learning is available 24/7? What does the PTA look like if parents can play along with their kids? What happens to the distinction between vocational and instructional if playing games is equivalent to performing a virtual job or service? And what happens to the college admission process, if instead of taking a standardized aptitude test, students have been playing a complex game for years. In fact, what happens to colleges and universities where lecture halls still reign supreme? There is a revolution underway, driven by kids and the games they play. Will the educational system adapt or die? We will see (and discuss)."
Got in late on this one, but was immediately interested. This panel was focused more on k-12 kids (as are the majority of education panels), but Bower was discussing how the technology of the printing press has dominated the structure of education for hundreds of years. Books, he argued, are the driving force behind having distinct disciplines, departments, and prerequisites. Because books are a fixed medium, textbooks are most efficient when they deal with one topic. Classes develop around the textbooks and a student has to master one issue before they can move to the next. Kids in classes have different skills and experience levels, so many likely know much of the content and have to sit there while others are behind. The teacher has to move through the textbook in a linear way because that is the nature of the book. This is at least how I understood his basic argument. Could be off a bit.
If his explanation is correct, what does this mean for the university? We are certainly more fixed in our disciplines than elementary school teachers. We are rewarded for focus on 1 area and while there's a buzz about interdisciplinary work, there is little reason to work with faculty in other departments and the tenure process actually discourages it. WAC is all about bringing folks in from across the disciplines, but our focus is pedagogy. While most profs are very interested in having discussions about what happens in their classrooms, everybody knows that good teaching is not highly rewarded from the top.
The focus of the panel was how online games can challenge the textbook paradigm. The speakers were involved with the PBS website and Whyville, which are two of the major online educational sites for kids. Whyville sounds particularly interesting. It is the longest running virtual world for kids. They form online communities and can explore the world on their own (heavily guarded and monitored though). There is an economy based on "clams" and "pearls". They earn this money through playing educational games. There is a newspaper that is produced by the kids in the community and many of them create products and set up stores. There is also a government. Because the world has existed for a long time there are a lot of kids who have been there for years and some participate in structured mentor programs for younger kids.
Some of the major issues the panel discussed:
1. How to create a curriculum partially based on games. Part of the power of these sites is that it is relatively not structured. Kids learn at their own pace and can move on when they are ready. They are less likely to get either bored or discouraged. But in a school setting how would this work if games played a major role instead of just a small part. Who would develop this curriculum? How would it be paid for?
2. What role the teacher will play. Teacher training would have to be drastically restructured. One of the panelists argued that the curriculum should be free and all of the money saved should go into professional development.
3. "Assesment should not be episodic but continuous." games are excellent tools for assessment. On the back end teachers, developers, administrators can see when kids are struggling with material or when the work is too easy. This is essential to creating games because kids get either bored or frustrated and will stop trying. This is true for standard education too, but games are much easier to fix than creating a new textbook
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