Patricia's ETEC Portfolio for 2012

Reflecting on what Dr. Willis would have in the way of comments in regards to transactive memory is a bit difficult. I took the time to read some more of her blog posts and watch a few videos and she is really quite the neuroscientist-teacher-lecturer-authoress-winemaker. Her primary focus seems to be on helping teachers support 21st century children and empowering children to understand their own brains, and also to learn the skill sets to make their brains as functional and resilent as possible. She also highlites what changes occur in the brain’s processing when it is trying to function in a sympathetic response state. How the prefrontal cortex gets turned off and the “rat brain” gets turned on in these situations (caused by boredom as well interesting enough) resulting in very little knowledge absorption and some rather destructive behaviors.
I could see her wanting educators to acknowledge potential changes in memory systems due to the advent of a need for digital transactive memories. However, I couldn’t see her changing her own underlying modus operandi which is to make learning attractive, desirable, curiosity-peaking and engaging for youth. I find it difficult to draw strong parallels between the Sparrow, Lui and Wenger research and Dr. Willis’ own. Perhaps if Dr. Willis focus was on using computer games in the classroom I could make the linkages, but she only uses the elements of the video games and not the actual games themselves in her practice.

For those of you who are not familiar with expansion packs (anyone miss the WOW commercial’s for mists of Pandaria?) It is simply the newest component to the gaming program that needs to be added in so that you can achieve higher levels, get more gear, have more daily’s for gold and basically ignore your wife for several weeks.

And yes, I live in a gaming household.

I am not a gamer myself. They have some term for people like us, it’s not derogatory, it’s just a sign that we are outsiders and potentially don’t understand the draw to games. I cannot fathom what eleven million people find so enticing that they are willing to pay a monthly subscription for it, and have been on a personal quest to resolve this. I’ve thought about it, and discussed it, and researched it and I think I have the answer.

Dopamine

If you really boil down the details for any activity that completely hooks a percentage of the population – It has to be the release of dopamine and the subsequent feelings of success, confidence, elation, belonging, and achievement. It just so happens, I get the same results from canning and crocheting so who am I to judge :]

What I saw in Dr. Willis’s blog is that she has effectively extracted the portions of gaming that are most instrumental in securing this dopamine release and applied them to education. A clever move – keep them excited and enticed… as curious and desperate as Christmas morning…. and they actively seek participation. Cover a student in worksheets, while you lecture from afar and assign readings from boring textbooks and your result is a disruptive or sleepy crowd? Doesn’t seem like rocket science.

The question is, how do you keep coming out with expansion packs for teaching?

PC

Even as I have finished writing this, I can also see a potential downside to such prescriptive practice. It might prevent teachers from challenging students to try something outside of their comfort zone… I have read other literacy research that has said 95% of the time you should be working within your ability level and then 5% of the time you should approach something that is really challenging to increase ability. What if this never happened? Would this potentially slow down your learning? Definitely, gives us some food for thought.