d.

digital natives:

Digital Games “Talk Back”

Mark Prensky's articles "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" (2001) and "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part II: Do They Really Think Differently," (2001) from On the Horizon, discuss how “students have changed radically” (1) and how educators must adapt with the times to teach effectively. Prensky labels students of the current generation as “digital natives” and teachers from previous generations as “digital immigrants.” The use of methodology and content grounded in the digital immigrant’s mode of thinking Prensky argues, to some degree, isn’t as effective as teaching the content in a methodology more relevant to the lives of digital natives.

Other theorists have engaged in the conversation of digital literacy and learning raised by Prensky, such as James Paul Gee. Gee has written substantially about games and learning. Gee echoes a point raised by Prensky about interactivity. In a piece titled “Good Video Games and Good Learning," (Gee 2003/2007; see also Gee 2005, 2007), Gee references Plato’s Phaedrus and comments on how Plato believed, “that books were passive in the sense that you cannot get them to talk back to you in a real dialogue the way a person can in a face-to-face encounter” (Gee 5). Gee says, “Games do talk back.” The point affirms Prenksy’s thinking that educators have the responsibility to establish a methodology, such as using video games in learning, to allow the content to “talk back,” so to speak, to their students.

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Gee recently visited Colorado State University and talked about schools that are using video games as the structure of the school itself. One school that uses video games for learning is the Institute of Play, which promotes “Gaming Literacy.” I agree with Prensky and Gee that as educators we must engage students on the level that most effectively and successfully reaches their needs as learners. However, both Prensky and Gee contend that the games need to be “good” and designed not only to educate, but also entertain.

Further Reading

Folkestad, James. "Professional Networking: Technological Literacy." EDUC331 -

Technology and Assessment PowerPoint Presentation. 2010.

Strickland, E. "A Win-Win Scenario: 'Game School' Aims to Engage and Educate."

Wired.

dyslexia:

Dyslexia can be understood as a "different learning ability," a topic I discussed using a PowerPoint presentation. PowerPoint presentations have become effective pedagogical tools for visual learners and visual mediums of learning can be used to teach learners with different learning abilities. Prezi is a more recent Web 2.0 tool, which is gaining popularity in education. I designed a PowerPoint presentation to discuss dyslexia in EDUC275 - Schooling in the United States in the spring of 2009 at Colorado State University. The presentation averred that, given knowledge of new literacies, responsible teachers must be prepared to teach students with a "different learning ability," such as dyslexia, in as many different modes as possible. The following presentation discusses research of dyslexia and claims dyslexia "only becomes a disability if it goes unrecognized and the teaching is inappropriate” (Pollock, Waller, and Politt).

Dyslexia