Engage or Enrage

I would suggest having a look at Marc Prensky's blog at http://www.marcprensky.com/blog/. For those of you who do not know, Marc is an advocate for technology in the classroom. Essentially, he mentions that we as educators should apply technology to all levels of the curriculum to make the learning as engaging as possible. He advocates for the use of educational video games as such a tool. I did read his August 08 update (yes, it has not been updated in a while), and mentions that educators are sticking to what worked in the past i.e. the rote memorization of facts. Good old fashion 'drill-n-kill' ignores the reality of how things are done. Would we ask someone to tell us the time without a watch? No. Would we ask an electrician to repair a fuse panel without consulting some form of documentation? Of course not. However, we do have our kids practice rote memorization all of the time. Prensky noted that this hearkens to a time when knowledge was much smaller and information was harder to find. Today, students can surf information on their desktop, laptop, phone or hand held gaming system. Yet we do not let them use their day to day tools in education. Perhaps, we as educators should jump on these tools and engage the students.