SLS_buch_neu021208
08.01.2009
12:57 Uhr
Seite 76
„GAMES MAKE BETTER …“ SOME IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF 21ST CENTURY LEARNING KEYNOTE Bildung – interaktiv
MARC PRENSKY I’d like to start by making a couple of comments on the discussions earlier – as I understood them, so please forgive me if I didn’t fully understand them. Most of what I talk about these days is not games per se (although I do talk about that and I will in a minute). I talk about learning and thinking about how learning should change in this century and in this time of change which is really what the discussion here was about. One of the things that I observe is that a lot of what we do, and have always done is “top down”, and that’s really a part of the problem, because we really need in the future to balance the top down with the “bottoms up”, that is to say, with input from the the people we are educating. We were lucky to have some students here in the very beginning and a few of you saw them and they were wonderful, and they ran around and played the games that were available for them, but I think that we really need to go much further. If you have this session again next year, my recommendation would be that you should all come and bring with you the smartest kid you know, because if we don’t have this discussion here with the students in the room, so that they can participate and they can tell us their opinions, so that they can say: “Well, you may feel that way, but we, as young people feel this way”, we’re going to miss out, and we’re not going to be able to get where we want to go. So that’s a strong recommendation. Wherever I have done it, it has worked. I almost always have panels of students in my talks and I interview them and have the audience back and forth and we learn enormous amounts from each other. A second thing, and I think this was starting to be alluded to, is that in this huge time of change that we’re going through---and the change is only going to get faster-- we are moving quickly from a new paradigm of students being taught (and this is not everywhere but I think it is happening, and everywhere there is more or less agreement on what it should be) – from, “the sage on the stage” as we say, to the students teaching themselves with our guidance, and with their peers. In this model the “sage on the stage” becomes the “guide on the side” -That pedagogical model is much more engaging for the students. We don’t know exactly how to get there as yet, but it’s pretty much what Einstein, your colleague and compatriot meant, when he said, “I never tried to tech my students anything, I only tried to create an atmosphere in which they can learn”. Of course in that quote we also have all the issues that you alluded to before in your question, about what to teach. And, we have no idea, right now. That is totally in flux, it’s changing, and we need to figure that one out. But as for how to teach, we’re slowly getting there, evolving to a new pedagogy. I call it “partnering” – I just met Miriam from Microsoft who is here from their “Partners in Learning” – I call it “partnering” with your students, because I totally agree with –Pro-
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