Engage or Enrage

What is your belief and understanding of the nature of today's learners? Is there substance to the "engage or enrage" argument?

The technical knowledge of today’s learners is far more advanced than previous generations. More recently the revolution of social media in the realms of face book and twitter has changed the way people interact with each other again. Learners generally are very comfortable with the use of technology and this goes down the scale to learners that have very little knowledge of technology, they may not have a computer at home. So when thinking of ways to improve learning techniques, the whole understanding or the learners technical literacy needs to be taken into account.

Engage or enrage..

This is a very interesting subject. According to Prensky here are 3 types of students.

      The students who are truly self-motivated

These students are great learners. The use of technology can enhance their education and needs to be implemented.

      The students who go through the motions

They learn because they are good kids that are incouraged to learn and see the benefit in it. These students would benefit greatly from being engaged more. They are willing to learn and if they are engaged more could excel.

      The students who “tune us out.”

Students who tune out are of great concern and if they can be engaged could greatly enhance their education. If they are very negative to education, it may be hard to get through to them no matter what is done.

Prensky is really pushing the development of gaming to engage the students that tune out, there are issues on a number of levels with this theory.

Students that tune out may not like gaming and this would also not engage these students.

I come from a background of gaming, I owned a gaming retail store before starting this course. There are a lot of games that come out most are not very successful and there are a lot of development houses that have gone broke. Games that are successful commonly engage the user in a fantasy world where they are a hero, for a game to be a successful educator to these students it needs to compete with the likes of Halo, COD and WOW. Millions and millions of dollars went in to the development of these games and the subject matter is much easier than education.

In my opinion good teachers that are flexable to the needs of their students will beat an educational game anyday.