electro-textual

Recently, David was looking for networked games, to reward the students for doing their work effectively. He couldn’t install software directly, so we went looking for web-based “learning games”, and found this list from “mission to learn”.

The hit of the day was the McDonalds Videogame. It’s challenging in its literacy and numeracy demands, as well as the ethical / critical literacy considerations. The goal is to boost company profits by razing rainforest, exploiting workers and corrupting officials.

David came back in saying, “They’re all taking it seriously, i’m worried now.” .. raising the issue :

• that if people do not critique the position they are placed in,
• as players of the game,
• they will gain plenty of enjoyment
• from exploiting workers and decimating rainforests.

The ethical nature of the game is presented in an ironical way, that assumes people will naturally oppose such “evil” practices. This is not always the case.

Teacher Intervention Required!Â

ps: i enjoyed the game, but didn’t learn it as fast as the people in the group. i bankrupted the company within minutes. And yes, you do start bull-dozing rainforest as soon as you realise that’s how to win the game.

Some very good “video bites” in this short piece about how schools need to change. i like the way the video is put together – short, snappy and sharp; with plenty of good ideas about how young people are learning more outside of school these days, via the social networking sites – which are all blocked inside schools.

But 21st century learning will need to dig deep into wider educational networking possibilities, say these talking heads.

i spoke recently with someone from one of the bigger TAFE colleges .. who explained why places like You Tube are blocked. There’s only a certain amount of bandwidth available, and if students are using it all watching music videos in the break (or in the classroom), that creates a huge problem.

Others of us, from the smaller community centres, were asking why they didn’t use “bandwidth shaping”, so that You Tube would get eg 5% of the bandwidth or even less at certain times of the day.

The TAFE people probably though we were know-it-all smart-alecs who just didn’t appreciate the difficulties of working with huge institutional information technology departments.

i remember Robyn and Alex’s enormous frustration last year during their NSW Learnscope travels; when they would arrive to find many of the social software sites blocked by The Department. It was so enjoyable to find people working within the system voicing their frustration publicly .. i wonder if their blogging had an impact on the people in the department (?).

(via Betch @ edublogs)