“When we look at how kids are being positioned to engage, to tinker with, to explore, to represent themselves, to pursue their passions with these new media tools, and then we look at how disciplinary content of schools is being positioned – we have a real disconnect; and we wonder why when they finish school they run home, jump in these new media, where they have agency, they have consequentiality, they have people taking up what they are doing – they have a legitimate role for using these [new media].”

“What is exciting about this world [Atlantis Remixed] is ultimately what determines whether something is valuable is how the next community takes it up; not because a teacher gives me an F or an A.”

“Teachers have been really enthusiastic of finding different ways of meeting standards…the standards are set out in a way that is well-intentioned in their design; the problem is that the spaces…of the schools are very uninteresting for kids and very limiting.”

“In a game I am immediately positioned with a purpose. What are the rules of this game? When I do ‘this’ what happens?”

“In a game I am considered someone who has a really powerful role to do something significant with my time and that significance requires that I learn a bunch of things so I can do that thing even better.”
“I am told thank you for doing that.”

“The tools that teachers are provided with are not the tools that children will use outside of schools…We’re setting the teachers up for failure. I think teachers are in a hard, hard space. Teachers need to advocate for themselves and parents that there are other literacies [new media literacies]…that will be determining these kids’ futures.”
“Getting information, memorizing facts is no longer part of our current process. I can grab my iPhone and within 5 seconds I can find more than you can remember in your entire High School career.”

“…50% dropout rate in school (Chicago)… is totally unreasonable. There has to be a point where we say, “You know what? It’s not all those kids that’s the problem. It’ sthe way that we are thinking about school. It’s the way we use textbooks, it’s the resources we give the kids and ultimately it’s the kinds of things that we are allowing the kids to do, and as long as they don’t care about those things then we are going to lose more kids in our educational system.”