My last day at the TCEA conference was almost over when I started working on this article. It had been an amazing three days of some great presentations, topped off by Wes Fryer’s net safety session. The only thing left was the Blogger Meetup, which was disappointing in his mass, but certainly not it’s quality. Tim Wilson, Wesley Fryer, and I went over to Starbucks for a coffee, chai, and something with too many syllables to remember. Alas, it was a new Starbucks and they wouldn’t take my card.
While waiting for these two very smart guys and our mind boggling conversation, I sat and thought back to a blog I wrote several months ago, listing some of the qualities of the video game experience that I thought might be worth considering as points of influence as we continue to redefine and retool our classrooms. Miguel had asked me to address School 2.0 in my keynote yesterday about Millennials, so I’d revisited that list and edited it a bit. Yesterday’s version was:
- Responsive
- Sharable Rewards
- Personal Investment
- Identity Building
- Collaboration
- Value Adding
- Dependable
I got to thinking about the second quality, sharable rewards. That item came from times when I have listened to my children and their friends talk about gaming, often sharing what level they were on, or what powers they have achieved, or their digital assets. There is nothing tangible in what they are earning in these games. They can’t put it in their pockets or spend it at the dime store (uh, WalMart). Of course they may be developing characters and auctioning them off on eBay to raise money for college, but that’s beside the point. The value is in the sharing, in the conversation. It is a reward system that they want to talk with each other about. What sort of reward system might we make a part of the classroom that learners will want to talk about. I didn’t know it at the time, but an answer occurred to me several days ago at the TRLD conference in San Francisco.
I may have blogged about this already, but right after my presentation on Millennials was over, and I had packed up my computer and stepped into the hall, several educators were standing around talking about the presentation. I walked up and mostly just listened as they told stories about their students and their digital experiences. Of every story that was told, the common thread that ran through them all was audience. With MySpace, IM, YouTube, etc. All of them involved, in some way, having an audience to share to. Even as they play solitary video games in groups, usually one plays and the others watch.
It’s also one of the driving energy points of the new web, that the commodity that we strive for is eyeballs, we seek attention. Perhaps that is it. If students are learning, in such a way that they are expressing what they learn, engaged in conversations of some type, with audiences, earning attention, then that may be a useful reward. (blogging, wikis, podcasting, social networks, social media, and what ever comes next)
It’s not a new currency for the class room. It’s just a turn-around.
We ask our students to, “pay attention!”
Perhaps we should ask them to, “Earn some attention!”
Alas, time for many many many hours over the Pacific.
2¢ Worth!
Rutt, David. “Coins.” Rutty’s Photostream. 2 May 2006. 10 Feb 2007 <http://flickr.com/photos/rutty/139026809/>.
Dave:
Great post… I have been working on a ‘learner profile’ for the class of 2011, next years 9th grade class, and trying to visualize what skill set they should have when they leave high school that will allow them to compete in the world they will enter. I am trying to synthesize, mashup and remix all of the content and ideas I have encountered over the past year or so. It is a unique task, but one that I have found to be professionally rewarding in an intrinsic way, because it has allowed me to grow as a teacher and educator.
Your current list will now give me even more ammunition to jumble in my grey matter.
Thanks,
Kyle
I am so sorry to have missed the blogger meet up. I totally forgot about it until I was getting ready to go to the conference on Friday and thought it was probably too late. Oh well, you can’t do everything… next time…
One thing I want to say is how much I appreciate David’s listening. Most well-known speakers fly into a conference, do their speaking, and then fly out. I usually do not see the in ANY other sessions. I saw David in at least 4 other sessions that I attended and he was also seen talking and listening to people in between meetings.
I think audience is key and David sees it because he IS an audience, as well as a creator of very interesting content.
Janice
If you haven’t seen the article, check out the story in the WSJ (http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117106531769704150-zpK10wf4CJOB4IKoJS5anuNoi6Y_20080209.html) on the most influential users at social networking sites such as Del.icio.us, Digg, Stumbleupon, et al. The most striking thing is that, among the top 30 most influential are 3 that are under 18, including a 12 year-old! Kids CAN earn attention like never before and be more influential than ever before. Will Richardson’s presentation at TCEA shared some incredible stories of students wielding more power and reaching a greater audience than any of us would have dreamed of even a decade ago. If an educator cannot get a child excited in 2007, one or the other needs to be checked for a pulse!
Sorry about the link–I hope this is better: The Wizards of Buzz
(http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/10/digg-rock-stars/)
I read an article recently, that spoke to this. The gist of the article was that young people have lower expectations for privacy and feel comfortable sharing the intimate details of their lives online. This would seem to support your contention that this is a generation that craves attention.
Then you look at icons like Paris Hilton. What does she have to offer beyond her own notariety? Yet, that seems to be enough.
I thought this was a very interesting post, and I’m glad to see that someone shares the same views as I do. Video games and other such technology can be very useful to the development of adolescents in many ways. Why not incorporate this into the learning which occurs in the classroom. By doing so, student interest in the subject matter will significantly increase in my opinion. It’s not our jobs as teachers to hammer facts into their brains for them to memorize, and not have them know the importance of what it is we just taught. We need to be able to teach them how to apply what they’ve learned and in order to do this, they need to be able to fully express their knowledge of the content area.