I've been working for my paper and I've found a lot of interesting information. I would like to share Mark Prensky's ideas with you.
He supports DIGITAL GAME-BASED LEARNING and argues that learning can be fun and encouraging. Honestly this is really interesting and from my point of view a challenge for all of us!!!
If you find it as interesting as I do have a look at:
http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Ch1-Digital%20Game-Based%20Learning.pdf
http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Game-Based%20Learning-Ch5.pdf
Digital Game-Based Learning. is precisely about fun and engagement, and
the coming together of and serious learning and interactive entertainment into a newly
emerging and highly exciting medium — Digital Learning Games.
It is based on two key premises that are still not fully accepted in the training and adult
learning community. The first is that the learners have changed in some fundamentally
important ways — the bulk of the people who are learning and being trained today,
people who in the year 2000 are roughly under the age of 36 (the median age of the US
corporate worker) 11 , are, in a very real intellectual sense, not the same as those of the
past. As a result, while there is a great deal of discussion about “how people learn,” there
has been relatively little focus on how these people learn, with the exception of snide and
generally unhelpful observations that often they do not (or at least not what some think
they should).
Computer and videogames are potentially the most engaging pastime in the history of
mankind. This is due, in my view, to a combination of twelve elements:
1. Games are a form of fun. That gives us enjoyment and pleasure.
2. Games are form of play. That gives us intense and passionate involvement.
3. Games have rules. That gives us structure.
4. Games have goals. That gives us motivation.
5. Games are interactive. That gives us doing.
6. Games are adaptive. That gives us flow.
7. Games have outcomes and feedback. That gives us learning.
8. Games have win states. That gives us ego gratification.
9. Games have conflict/competition/challenge/opposition. That gives us
adrenaline.
10. Games have problem solving. That sparks our creativity.
11. Games have interaction. That gives us social groups.
12. Games have representation and story. That gives us emotion.
But what about adults – the workers we are supposed to train? Do adults play? Is there
any value in it for them? And what is play’s relationship to “work”?
Of course adults play – they play with their children, they play games, they play in many
of the senses of the above definitions. But unlike children, adults also have a “serious,”
“work,” or “real life” side that is often construed to be in conflict with, or even the
opposite from, play. The definitions cited above define play as “outside of ordinary life,”
not serious,” and “unproductive.” Some authors attribute this work/play distinction to
industrialization or to social-class distinctions. We speak of executives who “work hard
and play hard.” But are play and work really that separate?
What do you think? Can we learn through games?
