This gal is grand. She writes enough content to keep all libraries on their toes. And since she's at the
"Gaming, Learning and Culture" Conference in Madison, WI this week, she's blogging her session notes. This was fascinating.
(from the Shifted librarian blog:)
GLS02: James Paul Gee on New Paradigms for Learning
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)
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
(--Jenny)
... and there's more. Find her and her session notes at her blog
http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/ this week.
