Janet Murray & Marc Prensky

Nothing crazy today, just wanted to report that I have two new sources that I am going to be reviewing.  First is Janet Murray and her book Hamlet on the Holodeck.  She has been calling for a need to appreciate video and computer games as a storytelling medium since the early 90s, so I am fairly certain I can make good use of her work!

My other source meanwhile is Marc Prensky, who I actually have two sources from.  I have already reviewed his essay "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" and am awaiting my copy of his book Digital Game-Based Learning. In his Digital Natives essay, he says that the reason students are not succeeding in reading print is because they are "spend their entire life surrounded by and using computers, video games" and are then forced to "unplug" themselves from their comfort zone (1).  I love this argument, and can honestly see this is the students I tutor at MCC.  I hate showing my age here, but my younger tutees come in with tablets, laptops, or flash drives, and want me to write comments in their Word document to help remind them. Meanwhile, the older generation of students come in with print outs, their textbooks, and will write notes to themselves all over their drafts.  It is a small example, I know, but these subtle differences are just the beginning. PowerPoint and videos have enhanced the college classroom in such a way that digital natives can succeed.  So naturally, English, the class that teaches students how to read print, will be the class that these modern students struggle through the most.

Prensky argues that video games can teach a great number of lessons in the classroom, something I have already discussed in a couple ways for the high school English class.  From Prensky's biography, I learned that he is actually an educational game designer himself!  There have been English classroom-oriented computer games since I was a child (Reader Rabbit has been around in various iterations since the 80's), but I doubt high school students will enjoy being humilated by a dancing and singing rabbit congratulating them on spelling words correctly.  Instead, we must retain that "cool" factor with modern games that students/players could see themselves purchasing on their own.  But, I think developers like Prensky could create games that adolescents would feel comfortable with, and could enjoy.  They could show narrative elements without patronizing students.  I will have to do more research to see if maybe he is already in the process of doing this.