“Forty percent of students lack basic reading skills, and their academic performance is dismal compared with that of their foreign counterparts. In response to this crisis, schools are skilling-and-drilling their way ‘back to basics,’ moving toward mechanical instruction methods that rely on line-by-line scripting for teachers and endless multiple-choice testing. Consequently, kids aren’t learning how to think anymore – they’re learning how to memorize. This might be an ideal recipe for the future Babbitts of the world, but it won’t produce the kind of agile, analytical minds that will lead the high tech global age. Fortunately, we’ve got Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Deus X for that….Game designers don’t often think of themselves as learning theorists. Maybe they should. Kids often say it doesn’t feel like learning when they’re gaming – they’re much too focused on playing. If kids were to say that about a science lesson, our country’s education problems would be solved.” James Paul Gee
—High Score Education: Games, not school, are teaching kids to thinkWired)
Interesting argument — and also typical Wired technotopia. Sorry… at this point in the semester I haven’t the energy to muster more response than that.
Creating textures for background buildings in a medieval theater simulation project. I can always improve…
Nothing in this stack is pressing, but they do include rough drafts of final papers,…
Here’s the underlying problem. We have an operating image of thought, an understanding of what…
Representing the Humanities at Accepted Students Day.
The daughter opens another show. This weekend only.
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[I'm being spammed daily by "c h a t dot h e x b o t dot com." I tried the site out, asking it about how evil spam is, intending to post the transcript in my blog. But there's no way to get a transcript -- the whole page loads each time it posts a reply, causing it to display another ad. The site isn't even worth linking to in order to deride. --DGJ]