Student Blog: Generation G and the 21st Century (Richard Van Eck)

Dr. Van Eck begins with an introduction:

    Slides are online, but I don't know how to blog except to excerpt as we go.

    Generation X, Y, played Adventure back in 1976, programmed a Heathkit running CPM

    Designs serious games - Digital Game-Based Learning (DGBL) is his usual talk, but
        today...going to talk about "old learners" vs. "new learners"

       why games teach the kinds of skills students will need in this century

       Greek word for school is the same as the Latin word for leisure

       Renaissance - learning is situated in the "Real World"

       Some say technology is whatever was invented after you were born...
   
       For those born in the 80s - computer games, Internet, iPods are technology

       For those born in the 90s - none of our current buzzwords are technology to them

       "Flynn effect" IQ scores keep going up - perhaps mass entertainment is doing this (idea from Steven Johnson in his book:  Everything Bad Is Good For You)

       Brain is plastic:  NIMH shows brain structure in children changes just around puberty

       Schools are not changing, even though learners are

       Gen G: awards for 8th place - kindergarten graduation
   
       "The most rewarded, recognized, and praised generation in living memory"

        Older folks expect: need to work hard or get fired, boss is probably cheating
        Gen G expects: environment will adapt to them, promotion after 6 weeks

         Beck and Wade "Got Game" - looks at attitudes of gamers vs. non-gamers in workplace
                Common across age groups: they value the organization, want pay per performance, value
                teamwork, comfortable with multi-dimensional world. 

       Impractical and dangerous to dismiss Gen G - as big as the baby boom generation
      
       Gen G are not slackers, but 30% dropping out of high school, up to 50% for some minorities
       90% of drop outs had passing grades, place blame on themselves, 70% say they could have
       stayed on if they were more engaged or interested.

       Gen G does not make a distinction between work space, play space, P2P and social networking span them all.

       Why are games good for learning?

             Principle 1: Engagement, interaction
             Principle 2: Problem Based Learning
             Principle 3: Situated cognition and learning
             Principle 4: Questioning, cognitive disequilibrium (revise foiled expectations), scaffolding, ZPD
            
    Look at examples of games for some examples:

             Gabriel Knight 2 - Film clip, sped up 8x.  Takes a minute to see a set of actions to solve mystery
             Everquest: Trailer showing combat scenes mostly
             Lost Planet: FPS shows, HUD - heads up display, attend to multiple channels of info
             Machinima - Halo Red v. Blue game-based movie, tells stories beyond Powerpoint
            
    Old games, new games: So far...these are all old games
    Social networking, games, virtual presence
    Even this week's Business Week has a special focus on how this is all real now
   
    Moving toward haptic control - force feedback

    Alternate reality game: I LOVE BEES - promo for Halo, used real world pay phones, networks across the world

    Now this next presenter ought to be just AWESOME...some dude from NC State, Computer Science department getting his Ph.D. in A.I. - oh, it's me:

    http://www4.ncsu.edu/~jmthoma5/