Dr. Sasha Barab is a professor of Learning Sciences at Indiana University. He offers some great insight into the power of gaming within education and how it can be applied to challenge traditional practice.
He is also the “principle investigator” of the Atlantis Remixed project [formerly known as “Quest Atlantis”] – a 3D educational experience (ie. avatar-style video game).
For my final project, I will be exploring the role of new medias, specifically gaming, and how it is being used by indigenous cultures and why it is important to engage today’s learner.
I believe that some of his most salient points regarding gaming and education are:
“Instead of treating these kids when they come in as people who are ignorant and our job in education is to get them smart enough to demonstrate some sort of high score on a test. Our goal is to position them as really empowered kids who get to feel what is it like to try on the role as scientist and to see themselves as people who could possibly have that future….in a game we can create a storyline where they are the hero. They get a chance to see why the stuff we’re learning in school could matter.”
“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.”
“Failure is motivating. I am allowed to tinker. I am allowed to try being something that I couldn’t normally be. And if we limit kids in schools to being just ignorant children – vessels to be filled with things – we’re not creating futures for them at all.”
Sasha Barab speaks about textbooks and current resources:
“We are in a different time. We are at a point where its not so much about getting information; it’s about using information to accomplish particular ends.”
“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.”
“I would really like to see teachers start to appreciate the power of what game has to offer and then work with parents, administrators, and local companies to start to use that to develop resources that they can use to prepare kids for the 21st century.”