Growing up online.

Thu, 11 Sep 2008
1 min read
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On the subject of protecting the young on the Internet, Frontline’s documentary Growing Up Online tries to explore the Internet teen culture and the gap between parents and teens in the US. If you are interested in these issues, I recommend you watch it. Some thoughts after watching it…

Read On…

— g, Daily SG: 10 Sep 2008.

An interesting read which I thought this tied in very well with what we’ve been learning so far about online literacy in terms of educating and creating awareness in students about the Internet.

Reflections: Session Five.

Fri, 5 Sep 2008
3 min read
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  • K: What I already KNOW about this week’s topic.
    I’ve always believed that for teaching to be applicable to students in this day and age, teachers have to move rapidly away from paradigms of the past e.g. video games are bad and learn to embrace practices of the present e.g. the increasing popularity of video games and how to incorporate it into classroom teaching. I guess this article has helped to articulate some of my thoughts and has exposed me to new ideas too, such as those detailed in the ‘L’ section.

  • W: What I WANT TO LEARN.
    I’ve long recognised that video gaming does teach certain skillsets that are relevant to anyone in the ‘real’ world; I dabble in a bit of multi-player gaming myself, so I’ve encountered situations of conflict caused by a lack of communication, and I’ve also learnt the idea of scarcity and trade-offs from role-playing games, where using a game character with certain strengths also means that the character will have certain inherent weaknesses that are correlated to its strengths. Nevertheless, what I want to learn are the specific and general skillsets needed in English Literature and English Language – my teaching subjects – and games which also provide that fit. So far, I’ve thought about the idea of narrative in Warcraft, and how it might be applicable to teaching composition writing to fans of the game series. But beyond that?
  • L: What I LEARNED this week.
    I’ve learnt that I’m not alone in my beliefs with regards to the idea that “Education has been remarkably resistant to change for [the last] 100 years“! Personally I think it’s possible to move faster, in terms of embracing the technologies of tomorrow for lessons today.

    Also, I’ve realised from this:

    …the fact that they don’t think of gameplay as training is crucial. Once the experience is explicitly educational, it becomes about developing compartmentalized skills and loses its power to permeate the player’s behavior patterns and worldview. (Brown and Thomas, 2006)

    that it’d be good to start thinking about how to get students to similarly stop thinking about curriculum lessons as ‘training’, but rather, as something they enjoy, much like ‘gameplay’, in order that they may also learn at the same rate as game players.


  • Q: What QUESTIONS I still have.
    My most fundamental question is this: how do we get everyone on the same boat? That is, how does one convince others who are resolutely resistant to change that technology really is the way to go in teaching pedagogies of the future?