While looking up references I found Mark Prensky’s selected Game based training URLs and this new blog (Waran’s Blog) that quote Sarah Fister from Training Magazine (1999 I think?).
How are the current generation of students different:
- They are far more experience at processing information quickly than its predecessors and is therefore better at it.
- Their mind can actually process many tracks at once (multitasking).
- They have learned to access information in a random manner rather than linear (they have experienced ‘clicking around’ and hypertext.
- They absorb information rapidly by visual means (images rather than text).
- They have experience increased connectedness (mobile phones, SMS, email, instant messaging etc).
- They learn by being active.
- They expect instant feedback.
- They accept technology as a friend and are much more comfortable using computers, mobile phones etc.
I’m thinking that this is an overly optimistic view of students (maybe I’m having a more jaded day, a I think on another day I may have agreed to a point).
Many students have a hard enough time figuring out how to use a different web browser, to say nothing of being able to survive the torrent of information that they have coming at them (look at how many brainless shows there are on TV… shovelled programming if there ever was). But my guess is that this is the older generation that I’m stereotyping. These students certainly are not “active” (perhaps they are just overly set in their ways and expect programmed feedback – familiar screens and such).
I think, that if there is a trend out there is that there is one group that is high functioning “digital native” and another group that is “just enough” and another that are essentially ludites.
So why link to Prensky? Fister describes games rather well (and is linked on the URL page).
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