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Teach the world to twitch
An interview with Marc Prensky, CEO & Founder, Games2train.com
By Clare Richards |
Marc Prensky
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Attending Marc Prensky's talk was like experiencing a computer game demo. Sound effects whizzed and hooted throughout his address and his slides were punctuated with quotes from philosophers and physicists, jokes and quirky cartoons. Like the games he designs and promotes, Prensky knows how to engage your attention.
"Today's students are not the ones our systems and teachers were designed to teach. Kids have changed," he says. |
Prensky draws the line at 1974 - born after it you're a Digital Native - immersed in the culture of digital technology. Born before it and you're a Digital Immigrant, with a foot in the past, and a persistent 'accent' revealed through peculiar behaviour such as printing out e-mails.
Prensky believes, and this is backed up by scientific evidence, that inputs such as computer games, television and mobile phones change the way we think and behave. Digital Natives make decisions faster - at 'twitch speed' - and they can parallel process and multi-task, simply because they've been practising. For hours. "The average American has played 10,000 hours of video games by the age of 21 compared to 2 or 3,000 hours of book reading," he says.
Prensky has observed that Digital Natives, who are empowered in their personal lives and immersed in interactive technology, find old teaching methods "horribly boring" and have to "power down" at school. He believes that the best way to ignite the 'spark' of learning is to bring computer games into the classroom. His assessment of their value is not modest: "Well-designed games are the best learning tool that we've ever invented," he says.
Why does he believe this? Firstly, he says, they're incredibly engaging. "That's something that games designers have figured out because they have to keep people in their seats for 20, 50, 100 hours", he says. Techniques such as letting the player make lots of decisions and keeping them close to the edge of their capabilities creates motivation. Secondly, they're very effective learning machines because they involve interactivity, constant feedback and practice. Thirdly, people can use them not just to play the game but to create their own games. And lastly, says Prensky, "Games are the language that most kids know and they're a very powerful language."
But how do teachers fit in to his vision? "I like the saying that any teacher that can be replaced by a computer - should be," he says, provocatively. "The main thing a computer can't do, in my view, is focus in on a particular individual and understand psychologically what's going on with them and how to help them. That empathy side of teaching is to me the most important thing," he says. And as a former maths teacher he speaks with experience.
Indeed, what engaged the listeners of his presentation was not the 'eye and ear candy' of the sound effects and cartoons (though they certainly helped): it was the passionate individual speaking eloquently about a subject he understands and believes in. I would dispute his claim for computer games and suggest that perhaps even now the most effective tool for learning is still a passionate teacher, which Prensky obviously is at heart.
He finishes his address with a big idea, in fact an enormous idea. He wants every school, college and university in the world to pick a topic and maintain a website with everything good in the world on that subject. "The idea is to get the whole world working together and not to have to wait for a group of people to do it in 10 years. We can get a million people to do it in less than one year. This is what open software is about." And with that final flourish, he finished his presentation accompanied by the theme from Star Wars.
Meeting him afterwards, I felt a bit like Dorothy encountering the Wizard of Oz. I asked him whether computer games only appealed to boys. "That was probably true at the very beginning when many games were about shooting - that was one of the easiest things to do on a computer. Now there's a much wider range. There are games ranging from Neo Pets to Tetris to games like The Sims, which have more than 50% female players," he explains.
And what did he think was the potential for using existing games for educational purposes? "Many of the commercial off-the-shelf games can be used exactly as they are, as learning tools. There's no reason why historical simulation games shouldn't be used in every class that's dealing with that period in history. Resource management games - such as Sim City - all contain important things that people can learn. If the teacher doesn't know how to use the game they can ask a kid to demonstrate it and then the teacher can facilitate a discussion and involve the class in that way," he says. "There are also modifications where you take an existing game and make it look and feel more like the subject you're talking about and most kids who are gamers know how to do that," he says.
But can you spend too much time playing computer games? "You can do anything too much. You can eat too much, you can spend too much time reading. Balance is important in life," he says. I ask him whether he still plays the lute (he used to be a professional musician), fully expecting him to say that he's sadly too busy for that now, but refreshingly he tells me he doesn't play the lute much these days because he's more into the classical guitar.
And how would he answer critics of his vision? "I'm interested in people learning and being motivated to learn and I don't really mind how they get motivated. In school and in the corporate world, there are lots of things that you have to learn that you don't particularly want to. Either you're capable of forcing yourself to do that or we provide you with some help along the way."
I had been reluctant to reveal to him that my last computer gaming experience was Astro Wars at the age of 10 (which incidentally came into my life as a result of being confiscated from my dad's school), but eventually I came clean. He did not laugh as I had feared but patiently recommended several games that I might like to try. With Christmas coming and moving house I haven't found the time yet, but I am willing to give them a try. Job done, Mr Prensky.
Links
www.marcprensky.com
www.games2train.com: Marc's company website
Digital Game-Based Learning, by Marc Prensky, is published by McGraw Hill (2001)
www.digitalmultiplier.org: Marc Prensky's organisation, which aims to help eliminate all the various societal digital divides
www.socialimpactgames.com: Marc Prensky's database of games for purposes other than entertainment
December 2003
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