Do video games have to be non-social, violent, or mindless for users to want to play?

The gaming center Games+Learning+Society doesn’t think so. Their role playing game Crystals of Cador is an action packed and engaging game that helps young people develop empathy, self-control, and other “non-cognitive” skills that are needed for success in school, career, and life.

“Why not build games that actually save people. Save the world,” said co-director of Games+Learning+Society, Constance Steinkuehler. In Crystals, you, the player, are a space travelling robot who gets marooned on a foreign planet. The goal is to enlist aliens to help you put your spaceship back together only using nonverbal cues. The game not only improves students’ social and emotional abilities through virtual interactions, the it is also fully equipped to assess the player’s progress while they play, making the playing of the game and the assessing of the player one in the same.

Watch the creators explain how their game is taking social and emotional learning into the 21st century in the video above.

Millenials have it rough. Not only are these 18-25 year olds struggling to complete college, land a job that requires a degree, and start a family, they get criticized for all these shortfalls, and on top of it, get called narcissistic, lazy, and lecherous.

Matt Bors is one Millenial whose “rage” over the headlines about his generation lead him to create the opinion cartoon below, “Can We Stop Worrying About Millenials Yet?“. Our own summer intern, Sarah, a college senior who works, has an internship, goes to school full time, and lives with her parents, also had something to say in response to the TIME magazine article “The Me Me Me Generation” with her article, “Long Live the Twixter!”

Check out the Cartoon below (via @CNN), and let know what you think.  Can we stop worrying about Millenials yet?

The ability to write well is meant to evolve naturally from a few simple sentences on a first-grader’s notebook to the polished draft of a senior paper, and when it does the entire school experience tends to proceed naturally as well. In the workforce, good writing is the hallmark of a professional that can express himself clearly and display one’s company/product in an attractive way. This has only become more true in today’s world, where email, text messaging, and social media have taken over many of the communications that used to be performed by phone or in person.

In fact, the changing role of writing in the world today has many teachers wondering how they should adapt their teaching to make it more relevant to today’s writing needs, personally and professionally. Susan Lucille Davis, a writing teacher with over 30 years of experience, expresses this question in her blog, “Teaching Authentic Writing in a Socially Mediated World,” but admits that she herself doesn’t have the whole answer. She and many of her colleagues agree, however, that the answer would need to address and prove relevant towards improving writing in the following categories:

• Text messages to friends/colleagues.
• Captions for photos that express important information.
• Questions that probe and dig for what matters.
• Status updates that share a mood or point of view.
• Comments on interactive websites that continue the conversation.
• Product reviews that are convincing and detailed.
• Emails written with the appropriate tone and length.
• Collaborative documentation online, which requires more than simply dividing the work.
• Tweets that add valuable insight to an online conversation.
• Blogs that allow ideas and information to percolate over time.
• Citizen journalism that is current and relevant.
• Storyboards and scripts for the many different types of videos being made today.
• Proposals to make, do, or change something.
• Process analyses that help examine the way things work.
• Syntheses that help organize disparate resources and media.
• Reflections that share transparently and probe thoughtfully.

This rather daunting list points out a clear gap between traditional writing education and the evolution of writing needs in the world today. At the same time, it makes clear just how important writing skills have become in a world where every individual is a user and a maker, a consumer and a producer. The role of writing has expanded to the point where there’s hardly a place left in American society for someone who isn’t fluent in text.

Recent statistics support this idea. According to various studies cited by Gene A. Budig in his article, “Studies Show the Importance of Writing Skills,” 8 out of 10 parents believe writing is more important now than it was 20 years ago. 86% of teens believe that good writing predicts future success, and 82% express a wish to write better and for teachers to address the topic more in their classrooms. The highest percentage of teens who believed this came from minority and low-income groups.

We don’t need a study to know trends in technology have expanded the role writing plays in our lives. People of all demographics and ages text, instant message, and email every day — many times a day. We’ve hung up on using verbal communication, and turned to the more convenient, efficient, and, arguably, most unsocial mode of communication: writing.

That doesn’t mean we are all better writers for it. We’ve seen the birth of textlish, like LOL, BRB, YOLO, which has become so standard in the English language that it crossed over into verbal communication. Twenty-first century writers come with autocorrect, which knows what you want to say faster than you can type it (sometimes). Social media has unveiled our friends that don’t know the difference between there, their, and they’re. Writing may be more prominent in our daily tasks, but it doesn’t mean the art and craft of writing, critical thinking, grammar or self reflection has become more prominent with it.

Over the past two days at the 2012 Schools of the Future conference, I had the opportunity to meet a variety of amazing people whose ideas are already making impressions on learners today and are bound to create new opportunities for learners of the future.

One of the highlights of the conference was hearing John Hunter’s keynote speech. John is a public school teacher who took his background in religious and philosophical studies and applied it to the 4th-grade classroom. In his quest to engage 4th-grade students in a lesson to become change makers and critical thinkers, he created a plexiglass real-world simulation game that exercises students’ critical and creative thinking skills, compassion, and strategic thinking. The World Peace Game is a complex game that stands at 4 feet x 4 feet x 4 feet, has hundreds of pieces, a 13-page crisis document, a classroom of 4th graders versed on Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, and much more.

The quote he shares in his bio illustrates his game’s philosophy: “Accepting the reality of violence, I seek to incorporate ways to explore harmony in various situations. This exploration would take form in the framework of a game – something that students would enjoy. Within the game data space, they would be challenged, while enhancing collaborative and communication skills.”

With his game, students are in control of the lesson and the world’s outcomes.

 After all, these students are the ones who we will hand the world to; ripe with environmental problems, warfare, ethnic tensions, and economic disparity. Though John has been using a version of this game in his classroom since the late ’70s, his philosophy that learning should be in the control of the student and the teacher should act as facilitator is the future of learning. Flipped classrooms are asking students to be in control of their learning at home and to bring questions to class; computer software can customize learning for an entire classroom of individual students with different needs while the teacher stands by; individuals are in control of advancing their learning around the world with MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses); and the list goes on.

It was a great experience to be among leaders who were driven by a similar mission as LifeBound. My book Critical and Creative Thinking for Teenagers also addresses the need for students to solve the world’s biggest problems through real-world experiences, exploration, and learning about innovative trailblazers before them. Leadership for Teenagers: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century asks students to create a vision, become an influencer, and take action to create change in their life, school, community, and one day, the world.

John’s book World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements is due out in 2013. You can also find out more about watching the documentary of the same title via his website, worldpeacegame.org.

Watch John’s TED Talk, Teaching with the World Peace Game, which shares the journey he took to create the World Peace Game and clips of his students speaking passionately about their roles in this political simulation.

I’m at the Fourth Annual Schools of the Future Conference this week being held at the Hawaii Convention Center. The conference brings together leaders in education and technology to address the need for a paradigm shift in education. Over this two-day event, among many topics, we will explore how to create a 21st century learning environment; explore new roles for education publishers, teachers, and librarians; and how to blend, flip, and mobilize the classroom.

Yesterday morning I attended Dr. Mark David Milliron’s keynote, “Emerging Insights on Learning, Technology, and the Road Ahead in Education.” In his speech, Milliron outlined a few trends that we are seeing as education and technology converge in the classroom, and as more research is available on the pros and cons of the digital classroom:

1. Learning must be augmented, game based, contextualized, and simulate real situations. The digital classroom demands that education publishers catch-up to the changing classroom and offer students assessments that show their achievement. Instead of memorizing facts, students are learning skills and concepts in a context that can easily be applied to the real world.

2. Educators are building, buying, and sharing. Technology hasn’t only changed the classroom, it’s changed the role of the teacher. Websites like Teachers Pay Teachers allows teachers to share their best lessons and make money off of them. With the advent of more data tracking tools and software, we also have more possibilities for tracking the value of mobile, blended, and interactive learning and using it to improve the classroom. In the digital classroom, “resources” stretch beyond books and other traditional learning tools, and the act of everyday learning and creating — when recorded and analyzed — becomes a resource in and of itself.

3. There is no one size fits all. Technology is not a single answer. In the digital age, there is a vast “ecosystem of learning” that will draw from a variety of learning methods. Different schools have different student populations, challenges, and environments. Within each classroom, students have different needs, teachers have different backgrounds, and the classroom has its own limitations. Because education is not one-size-fits-all, there are many different learning options emerging, such as: School of One,  Florida Virtual School, and P2PU.

4. What students learn and do in the classroom will change. Teachers will help students curate their credentials, focus on liberal arts, and learn socially and courageously. School will be a place where students aren’t taught to take a test, but to prepare for the rest of their lives by being introduced to college courses, social networking, and interpersonal competence skills. Most importantly, for any real change in learning to take place, the student will be an active participant. Milliron goes into more depth of the key learning responsibilities students have in his article “An Open Letter to Students: You’re the Game Changer in Next-Generation Learning.”

This is a pivotal time for education and we can expect to see many changes as demands shift in the workforce, technology and innovation grow, and tech savvy students and teachers enter the classroom. Technology can open learning opportunities to learners all over the world.

For more examples of how technology is changing the world, watch the short film, “The Future of Learning,” released this week.

“Teach kids to solve interesting problems, not to memorize answers to problems we’ve already solved,” Seth Godin, The Future of Learning.

Achieving Student Engagement in the Digital Age

How will technology change the college-going experience over the next decade? Can the plugged-in generation harness their proclivity for technology in ways that their professors can understand? Can professors move from teaching and telling to coaching and facilitating? Can faculty across the disciplines understand enough about technology to give their students the reigns they need to craft and deliver their own interactive learning? Can students have the self-reflection, judgment, and personal discipline  to create the boundaries they need to aggregate and create the content from which they can learn? Can they resist the temptations to camp on Facebook or play video games to join on-line class discussions and make meaningful, thoughtful contributions to their fellow classmates while juggling reading and other self-paced class responsibilities?

Seton Hall University Gives Smartphones to their Freshmen Class

At Seton Hall University in New Jersey, each student in the incoming freshmen class is receiving a free smartphone at orientation. The school wants to provide students with a device that they are likely to keep with them at all times, so schools can stay connected with students even when they leave campus. The Seton Hall University also hopes freshmen will use the app that was developed for them to connect with other freshmen and academic advisors. Seton Hall University should be congratulated for taking the risk to explore this learning option. Colleges who sit still without risking in these new realms can lose students over time simply because they are not investigating the learning alternatives that technology provides.

The smartphone decision is receiving mixed reviews from officials and faculty at Seton Hall University. Many officials support the move, while some faculty argue the phones will be a distraction that could potentially do more harm than good to student engagement in class. However, other faculty members see the value of giving smartphones to students to use in school, saying that it will teach them how to use the devices in a professional setting. Without exploring this option, how will professors and students ever know?

It’s no question that technology is making its way into colleges, whether its using a smartphone as a learning tool, an ebook for a class, a laptop to take notes, or participating in an on-line or hybrid class. However, as unavoidable as the infiltration of technology is in schools, workplace, and home, there are still skeptics that think it is taking over too quickly and without merit.    We can’t stop the river from flowing, but we can ask ourselves how we can facilitate the opportunity which technology affords us at a time when many would argue we are not serving most college students, especially those from minority and disadvantaged backgrounds.

Technology Is Here, But Not Well-Received as a Learning Tool 

In a recent survey by Pew Research Center and Elon University, sixty percent of 1,021 surveyors said they believe technology will have a “powerful influence” on education in the next decade. Thirty-nine percent predict technology will be included in higher education without any change in educational paradigms. Across the board, almost all those surveyed believe technology will have some influence on education, but that doesn’t mean they’re embracing the digital classroom. What are the costs to faculty and colleges who are slow to harness this opportunity?  What are the costs to students, their learning and their future job options?  In the Pew study, no matter how respondents thought technology would effect the college classroom over the next decade, they were “doubtful” technology was best for students. Interesting.

For many, whether parents, professionals, students, or educators, technology still elicits “experimental” when spoken in tandem with education. A lot of new technology-based initiatives will make it into the classroom that don’t come with the same sense of security we get from using tried-and-true – though often outdated and some would say ineffective — methods of teaching. Just because we have technology doesn’t mean we can’t teach students the judgment to avoid hiding in technology—avoiding a difficult conversation by writing an email, avoiding a connection with a classmate by being efficient on-line at the expense of the relationship, developing a virtual life and world without the courage to show up in the world.

Technology can be distracting, mind-numbing, and addicting. It can also be engaging, inspiring, and motivating. Like most opportunities in life, technology has its pros and cons and needs creativity, imagination, and interaction to make meaning of individual and group learning whether in isolation on the computer or as a springboard for the personal interaction which cannot be replaced.

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Sources:

“Free Cell Phones for College Students,” by Ryan Lytle. 19 July 2012. U.S. News. Accessed on 31 July 2012. http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2012/07/19/free-cell-phones-for-college-students

“Experts Predict More Remote Learning, Despite Concerns About Its Effects,” by Beth Mole. 27 July 2012. The Chronicle. Accessed on 31 July 2012. http://chronicle.com/article/Experts-Predict-More-Remote/133177/

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The flipped classroom model has begun to pick up speed in classrooms around the country, allowing students to watch lectures at home and teachers to spend more one-on-one time with students in the classroom as they complete work that would typically be done at home.

Khan Academy is an open-source website that has attracted many followers, from teachers creating a curriculum that require students to watch a Khan Academy video to students looking for online help to complete their homework. Many experts in education believe the flipped classroom, with the help of Khan Academy or websites like it, will change the traditional classroom for the 21st century student. However, Khan Academy and the freedom that comes with learning behind a computer doesn’t come without its critics.

The New Argument Against Khan Academy 

A video of two math teachers critiquing a Khan Academy video has gone viral bringing negative attention to the often heralded educational website. The two teachers sarcastically comment on the quality of the video and the poor examples Sal Khan uses to teach his math lesson, even with millions of dollars from Bill Gates, they jab. In his article “The Trouble with Khan Academy,” mathematician and educator Robert Talbert defends his friends and stars of the viral video. However, Talberts own “criticisms of Khan Academy are more at the top level than in the specifics of any one video.”

He sets up his argument by defining what Khan Academy is and what it is not. He says: Khan Academy is a demonstration of mechanical processes. It is not a substitute for a class, a live teacher, or a complete educational resource. Talbert believes learning cannot happen on a deep enough level for the students to achieve mastery of a subject when using these mechanical videos to learn on their own time. A Khan Academy video doesn’t ask students to use “higher-level thinking skills” needed to apply mathematics to the real world.

The New Role of Teacher in the New Classroom

As math teachers these three critics have a different perspective on the abilities of a Khan Academy video than us outsiders. However, these teachers are approaching the videos with the expectation that the video has the power to do all the teaching. In his article Talbert says the videos are “not enough” — and he’s right. The higher-level thinking skills he longs for his students to gain from watching an instructional video will not come from the video. It is the role of the teacher during regular class hours to facilitate deeper-level thinking, while the role of the video is to teach the mechanics of math.

A flipped classroom that uses video instruction also gives students more control over their education, which rather than scaring them as Talbert suggests, gives them more of a buy-in. In another recent article, “Three Things to Unlearn About Learning,” Will Richardson, a veteran educator author and consultant, is quoted saying the number one thing educators need to unlearn is how they deliver knowledge. The article paraphrased Richardson saying educators will need to hand more control over to the student and realize there are many ways for students to learn.

Is Khan Academy the be all, end all of education? No. Khan Academy is the beginning of a new way to look at the classroom and the 21st century student who has new demands of their education. As more classrooms adopt the flipped classroom model, I’m confident more attention will be paid to the quality of each lesson and many more options will be available to those teachers who don’t want to jump on the Khan Academy bandwagon.

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Sources:

“The Trouble with Khan Academy,” by Robert Talbert. 3 July 2012. The Chronicle. Accessed on 13 July 2012. http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2012/07/03/the-trouble-with-khan-academy/

“Three Things to Unlearn About Learning,” by Tina Barseghian. 9 July 2012. Mind/Shift. Accessed on 13 July 2012. http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/07/three-things-to-unlearn-about-learning/

The world of work is ever- changing. However, new graduates will experience a heightened level of change over the span of their careers, as technology becomes more integrated and new software, tools, and gadgets make their work more efficient and far reaching.  Add to that the entrepreneurial and innovative spirit of today’s young people who will be launching many of the new businesses which will fuel our economic growth over the next several decades in areas that don’t yet exist, and it could be hard to predict what the workforce will look like in 20, or even 10, years.

All industries use technology, but that doesn’t mean all students or current workers have been trained or prepared for demands of the digital workforce. Older workers are finding they need to return to school to keep up with technology changing their industry, even with twenty-plus years on the job¹. Graduating youth may be at an advantage now as they exit college with know-how to succeed in today’s job market, but must adopt the mindset of a lifelong learner to stay ahead of the curve.

Technology hasn’t only changed the way we organize, communicate, and entertain, it’s also opened the doors to a global market and started a conversation between workers around the world. We are moving toward a complete reliance on technology to communicate, which is infiltrating dialogues, local and international, and requiring professionals have stronger communication skills than ever before in order to converse with the diverse workforce. In his commencement speech, David Calhoun, CEO of The Nielson Co. also highlighted the need to “keep learning throughout life,” not solely because of technology, but because globalization causes the world to change so fast that we can safely bet that our skills will become outdated at a fast pace².

Have you used Skype to talk with your parents while away at college? Have you used your filters on your Gmail account to separate your personal messages from your school messages? Have you learned how to close a professional email? Have you learned how to effectively write a negative message and close it in a positive way? All of these skills of diplomacy and negotiating will help you to launch your business ideas inside a small start up, a mid-size company, or within a department of a Fortune 500 company. Some colleges offer basic computer literacy classes that teach you how to use basic computer programs like word processors, spreadsheets, and some online organization tools, but much of the skills students are expected to bring to the world of work are self taught.

Consider the following reality of the new workforce:

• A Skype commissioned survey estimates that 62% of firms employ workers remotely³.
• Miscommunication can be a common problem because new hires lack of verbal and nonverbal skills.
• Immediacy may take away from the quality of computer mediated communication, as writers who feel rushed may not proof their emails, instant messages, or text messages for errors before sending⁴.
• Technology is everywhere, making a finer line for workers between personal time and work time.
• Currently, 57% of employers offer flexible working hours, due to the large amount of remote workers⁵.
• A lot of companies spread their employment across borders, which may pose language and cultural barriers between workers from different countries.

Today’s working world has fewer jobs and more expectations for its workers. The economy is one reason employers have become selective with their limited positions, but another factor involves the speed in which technology is taking over certain jobs–all or part–to save both time and money. However, people who can bring something extra to the table, who can do something more than technology can, are still in demand. Thomas Friedman says this is why “everyone needs to find their extra — their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment. Average is over.”

But, average isn’t only over in the world of work; average is over in the education as well. We need strong principals, unique teachers, and ambitious students. More than higher test scores, we need students who want to learn, teachers who want to teach, and principals who are prepared to lead. We are in a point in education where all the players need to be reinvented with the idea that average isn’t good enough.

I recently read an article by Geoffrey James who interviewed some of the most successful CEOs in the world to find out what sets them apart from the rest. He was able to breakdown their leadership  styles into eight core beliefs, and under each core belief, he listed how an “extraordinary” boss carries out these core beliefs versus an “average” boss.

It got me thinking, how much different is the business culture than the education culture? This framework could also be used by principals, teachers, and students to set the achievement, interpersonal, and academic standards higher. The “average vs. extraordinary” frame of reference can help professionals and students measure their success by allowing them to look at themselves, no matter their postion, and have the self-awareness to asses where they stand in the spectrum.

Imagine the outcome if principals, teachers, and students dumped “average” from their vocabulary and replaced it with “extraordinary”.   What would be possible for learning if teachers saw students as powerful co-creators in the educational process?  What if teachers understood that their students, if given the opportunity, could teach and inspire them if given the chance to really assert themselves in class and out? What if the whole educational model really can be turned upside down the way Kahn has inverted the model for math learning, getting students to study at home and come to a teacher facilitated class where the students lead small groups in refining and crystallizing in a small group what the began at home?

The step between extraordinary and average doesn’t have to be a big one. An extraordinary boss or teacher sees individuals, respects their ability to get things done on their own, motivates, changes, and supports and approaches their own mission with the same aplomb.  An average boss or teacher sees only the group, commands and demands, feels superior, uses fear as a motivator and stays within familiar confines.  If employees and employers fear that technology will take over our jobs, they can slow down the “get things done” robotics of business or teaching by bringing the humanity back to leadership.  If students, principals and teachers are willing to consider new models which will promote extraordinary outcomes, everyone will be inspired by the intrinsic motivation which keeps us all curious, contributing, interested and committed to contributing at the highest levels. And that  can change the game for all players.

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