But what we need is "the enlightenment that we hope
for". Otherwise we are essentially giving cave people nuclear
weapons and beyond.
"Engagement" is important for learning anything, but it also
has no particular effect on enlightenment (cf programmers again -- huge
percentages of them are certainly highly engaged -- and so are lots of
gamers, etc.).
One of my favorite critics -- Neil Postman -- pointed out that it is
essentially not possible for schooling to compete with television in
areas of attraction, ease of use and intrinsic motivation. Real education
requires "hard fun", much of which is learning to deal with
ideas and forms that are not well prepared for in normal human
brain/minds -- for example, seemingly dull forms which require developed
skills in imagination as opposed to medai that tells and shows people
visualizations. The whole point is to get human brains to be better, to
supply amplifiers, but not prosthetics (the healthy organs then
wither).
This is why powerful ideas are rare.
The underlying principles here are quite invisible to most people, though
a fair amount has been unearthed in the 20th century.
Cheers,
Alan
At 04:55 PM 8/30/2007, Tony Forster wrote:
Thanks Alan for an insightful
view on "gaining enlightenment" through game
making.
Exposure to a complex thinking environment does not of itself lead to
deep
thinking or enlightenment. You mention "Zen and the Art of
Archery" , a
similar argument was put in ON THE COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF LEARNING COMPUTER
PROGRAMMING, ROY D. PEA and D. MIDIAN KURLAND 1984
http://scil.stanford.edu/about/staff/bios/PDF/Cog_Effects_Prog where
Pea
quite successfully argues, I think, that the case for Logo had been used
many times before in other domains: "This belief, although new
in its
application to this domain, is an old idea in a new costume which has
been
worn often before. In its common extreme form, it is based on an
assumption
about learning - that spontaneous experience with a powerful symbolic
system
will have beneficial cognitive consequences, especially for higher order
cognitive skills. Similar arguments have been offered in centuries past
for
mathematics, logic, writing systems, and Latin"
What this analysis overlooks is engagement. The levels of achievement are
quite astounding for kids who are offered a relevant and authentic
challenge
and the right tools. Then the "powerful symbolic system" does
have
"beneficial cognitive consequences" . Maybe not the
enlightenment that we
would hope for but at least an understanding of mathematics, logic,
kinematics, also social skills, affective benefits "I like
school" and
metacognitive or self regulatory benefits.
I think it essential that etoys is at least as motivating as Game Maker
and
at least as easy at the entry level. I think there is a lot to learn from
teachers like Bill who have a long track record of successfully using
such
tools and getting exceptional results from them.
_______________________________________________
Etoys mailing list
Etoys@lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/etoys