So we have to invent, but not necessarily from scratch. Adapting
materials to the language of Digital Natives has already been done
successfully. My own preference for teaching Digital Natives is to
invent computer games to do the job, even for the most serious content.
After all, it's an idiom with which most of them are totally familiar.
Not long ago a group of professors showed up at my company with new
computer-aided design (CAD) software they had developed for mechanical
engineers. Their creation was so much better that what people were
currently using that they had assumed the entire engineering world would
quickly adopt it. But instead they encountered a lot of resistance, due
in large part to the product's extremely steep learning curve - the
software contained hundreds of new buttons, options and approaches to
master.
Their marketers, however, had a brilliant idea. Observing that the
users of CAD software were almost exclusively male engineers between 20
and 30, they said "Why not make the learning into a video game!" So we
invented and created for them a computer game in the "first person
shooter" style of the consumer games Doom and Quake, called The Monkey
Wrench Conspiracy. Its player becomes an intergalactic secret agent
who has to save a space station from an attack by the evil Dr. Monkey
Wrench. The only way to defeat him is to use the CAD software, which
the learner must employ to build tools, fix weapons, and defeat booby
traps. There is one hour of game time, plus 30 "tasks," which can take
from 15 minutes to several hours depending on one's experience level.
Monkey Wrench has been phenomenally successful in getting young people
interested in learning the software. It is widely used by engineering
students around the world, with over 1 million copies of the game in
print in several languages. But while the game was easy for my Digital
Native staff to invent, creating the content turned out to be more
difficult for the professors, who were used to teaching courses that
started with "Lesson 1 - the Interface." We asked them instead to
create a series of graded tasks into which the skills to be learned were
embedded. The professors had made 5-10 minute movies to illustrate key
concepts; we asked them to cut them to under 30 seconds. The professors
insisted that the learners to do all the tasks in order; we asked them
to allow random access. They wanted a slow academic pace, we wanted
speed and urgency (we hired a Hollywood script writer to provide
this.) They wanted written instructions; we wanted computer movies.
They wanted the traditional pedagogical language of "learning
objectives," "mastery", etc. (e.g. "in this exercise you will learn...");
our goal was to completely eliminate any language that even smacked of
education.
In the end the professors and their staff came through brilliantly, but
because of the large mind-shift required it took them twice as long as
we had expected. As they saw the approach working, though, the new
"Digital Native" methodology became their model for more and more
teaching - both in and out of games - and their development speed
increased dramatically.
Similar rethinking needs to be applied to all subjects at all levels.
Although most attempts at "edutainment" to date have essentially failed
from both the education and entertainment perspective, we can - and
will, I predict - do much better.
In math, for example, the debate must no longer be about whether to use
calculators and computers - they are a part of the Digital Natives'
world - but rather how to use them to instill the things that are useful
to have internalized, from key skills and concepts to the multiplication
tables. We should be focusing on "future math" - approximation,
statistics, binary thinking.
In geography - which is all but ignored these days - there is no reason
that a generation that can memorize over 100 Pokémon characters with all
their characteristics, history and evolution can't learn the names,
populations, capitals and relationships of all the 101 nations in the
world. It just depends on how it is presented.
We need to invent Digital Native methodologies for all subjects, at all
levels, using our students to guide us. The process has already begun -
I know college professors inventing games for teaching subjects ranging
from math to engineering to the Spanish Inquisition. We need to find
ways of publicizing and spreading their successes.
A frequent objection I hear from Digital Immigrant educators is "this
approach is great for facts, but it wouldn't work for 'my subject.'"
Nonsense. This is just rationalization and lack of imagination. In my
talks I now include "thought experiments" where I invite professors and
teachers to suggest a subject or topic, and I attempt- on the spot - to
invent a game or other Digital Native method for learning it. Classical
philosophy? Create a game in which the philosophers debate and the
learners have to pick out what each would say. The Holocaust? Create a
simulation where students role-play the meeting at Wannsee, or one where
they can experience the true horror of the camps, as opposed to the
films like Schindler's List. It's just dumb (and lazy) of educators -
not to mention ineffective - to presume that (despite their traditions)
the Digital Immigrant way is the only way to teach, and that the Digital
Natives' "language" is not as capable as their own of encompassing any
and every idea.
So if Digital Immigrant educators really want to reach Digital Natives -
i.e. all their students - they will have to change. It's high time for
them to stop their grousing, and as the Nike motto of the Digital Native
generation says, "Just do it!" They will succeed in the long run - and
their successes will come that much sooner if their administrators
support them.
Next issue: The scientific evidence behind the Digital Native's
thinking changes, and the evidence that Digital Native-style learning
works!
Marc Prensky is the author of Digital Game-Based Learning (McGraw-Hill
2001) and Founder and CEO of Games2Train.com. The Monkey Wrench
Conspiracy CD can be purchased for $10 at www.games2train.com/site/html/tutor.html
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