by: Lynette Webb
Click image to enlarge.
Image from Flickr CC www.flickr.com/photos/good_day/110559381/ thanks to Today is a Good Day.
Quotes from www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/wright.html
There’s that old anthropologist’s quote that goes along the lines of “show me how the children played and I’ll tell you how the society worked”. The point being that play is a form of learning and the forms that play takes are intertwined closely with the way society/culture functions. The Wired article here www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/wright.html makes this point in the context of videogames, and I think the impact can’t be underestimated. People who grew up playing videogames have a far more sophisticated and ‘hands-on’ approach to problem-solving than those who didn’t. Learning as you go in a complex and ever-changing situation; and increasingly (thanks to the rise of online games) collaborating with others in teams. The experience of this are developing very different skills and mindsets. I’ve had to bastardise the quote a bit to make it fit on the slide (although the gist is still the same). The article is worth a read in full, but here’s a few more quotes:
“An entire generation has grown up with a different set of games than any before it - and it plays these games in different ways. Just watch a kid with a new videogame. The last thing they do is read the manual. Instead, they pick up the controller and start mashing buttons to see what happens. This isn't a random process; it's the essence of the scientific method. Through trial and error, players build a model of the underlying game based on empirical evidence collected through play. As the players refine this model, they begin to master the game world. It's a rapid cycle of hypothesis, experiment, and analysis. And it's a fundamentally different take on problem-solving than the linear, read-the-manual-first approach of their parents. In an era of structured education and standardized testing, this generational difference might not yet be evident. But the gamers' mindset - the fact that they are learning in a totally new way - means they'll treat the world as a place for creation, not consumption. This is the true impact videogames will have on our culture.”
“Like the toys of our youth, modern videogames rely on the player's active involvement. We're invited to create and interact with elaborately simulated worlds, characters, and story lines. Games aren't just fantasy worlds to explore; they actually amplify our powers of imagination”
“More games now include features that let players invent some aspect of their virtual world, from characters to cars. And more games entice players to become creative partners in world building, letting them mod its overall look and feel. The online communities that form around these imaginative activities are some of the most vibrant on the Web. For these players, games are not just entertainment but a vehicle for self-expression”.
Quotes from www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/wright.html
There’s that old anthropologist’s quote that goes along the lines of “show me how the children played and I’ll tell you how the society worked”. The point being that play is a form of learning and the forms that play takes are intertwined closely with the way society/culture functions. The Wired article here www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/wright.html makes this point in the context of videogames, and I think the impact can’t be underestimated. People who grew up playing videogames have a far more sophisticated and ‘hands-on’ approach to problem-solving than those who didn’t. Learning as you go in a complex and ever-changing situation; and increasingly (thanks to the rise of online games) collaborating with others in teams. The experience of this are developing very different skills and mindsets. I’ve had to bastardise the quote a bit to make it fit on the slide (although the gist is still the same). The article is worth a read in full, but here’s a few more quotes:
“An entire generation has grown up with a different set of games than any before it - and it plays these games in different ways. Just watch a kid with a new videogame. The last thing they do is read the manual. Instead, they pick up the controller and start mashing buttons to see what happens. This isn't a random process; it's the essence of the scientific method. Through trial and error, players build a model of the underlying game based on empirical evidence collected through play. As the players refine this model, they begin to master the game world. It's a rapid cycle of hypothesis, experiment, and analysis. And it's a fundamentally different take on problem-solving than the linear, read-the-manual-first approach of their parents. In an era of structured education and standardized testing, this generational difference might not yet be evident. But the gamers' mindset - the fact that they are learning in a totally new way - means they'll treat the world as a place for creation, not consumption. This is the true impact videogames will have on our culture.”
“Like the toys of our youth, modern videogames rely on the player's active involvement. We're invited to create and interact with elaborately simulated worlds, characters, and story lines. Games aren't just fantasy worlds to explore; they actually amplify our powers of imagination”
“More games now include features that let players invent some aspect of their virtual world, from characters to cars. And more games entice players to become creative partners in world building, letting them mod its overall look and feel. The online communities that form around these imaginative activities are some of the most vibrant on the Web. For these players, games are not just entertainment but a vehicle for self-expression”.
Original Post: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynetter/234874912/
I agree, etali. The thing is that when we "grow up" and get to the analysis stage, we can't remember that's how we learned. It seems foreign to us because of the new angle that we are looking at it from - new, and fresh, even.
As adults, there is an overwhelming tendency to want to pass on what we have learned through our own arduous processes of trial and error. Problem is, we are only passing on our conclusions - what we learned, not how we learned it and why we know it to be true, and thus it is not embedded so fully in the mind of the child. We are passing on boiled down versions of how we came to the conclusion in the form of instructions. This is why people are so surprised when they leave a kid alone with an activity for an hour without telling her how to do it, and they come back and she's mastered it - or possibly tried something they hadn't ever thought of.
Kids all learn in moderately different ways, but it's the same basic idea right down to how they learned to learn. Nothing has really changed. We're just seeing it packaged in new formats now.
Wow. Try making content someday.
WOw this is a great thing, world would be beter!!!
I've been hearing this 'the new generation is learning in an entirely new way' stuff for several years now, and I'm not convinced. Before computer games (and kids that don't play games now) people used to just rush ahead and build Airfix models without reading the instructions, or make up rules for games instead of reading the rulebook (thereby creating their own content with existing tools).
To me its nothing new, its just the way younger minds think. The creativity goes, and passive consumption becomes habit, around about the time school becomes a rigourous and boring thing that tries to cram junk into their heads with rote memorisation.