The Joan Ganz Cooney Center has a couple of reports that might interest many of you out there. The latest is a report (Game Changer – Summary) on using games to learn that recommends:
- Implement R&D initiatives at federal and state levels to identify learning gains through games and other digital media, develop metrics and set research goals. This includes funding research into alternative assessment.
- Government should create partnerships with technology partners and game developers to develop games, using philanthropy and funding as a means to offset costs and potentially provide profit (my reading between the lines there).
- Support adult guidance through professional development for teachers on these new ideas and resources.
- Modernize public/education media (remember these are the people behind Sesame Street)
- Create a broad public dialogue on digital media and games to help educate everyone on these new literacies (they have a report on that as well – The Power of Pow! Wham!: Children, Digital Media and Our Nation’s Future).
The other paper is Pockets of Potential: Using Mobile Technologies to Promote Children’s Learning (Summary) that lists the opportunities, challenges and goals for mLearning:
Opportunities:
- Encourage “anywhere, anytime” learning
- Reach underserved children
- Improve 21st-century social interactions
- Fit with learning environments
- Enable a personalized learning experience
Challenges:
- Negative aspects of mobile learning
- Cultural norms and attitudes
- No mobile theory of learning
- Differentiated access and technology
- Limiting physical attributes
Goals:
- Learn: Understand mobile learning as a unique element of education reform
- Develop: Build mobile learning interventions
- Promote: Engage the public and policy-makers in defining the potential of mobile devices for learning
- Prepare: Train teachers and learners to incorporate mobile technologies
- Stimulate: Generate new leadership support for digital learning
It certainly is nice when there is a thinktank out there that is thinking the same way you do eh?
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