Group items tagged

The sorts of hardware and software that were purchased had to meet those needs — the needs and the desire of the administration, not the needs and the desires of innovative educators, and certainly not the needs and desires of students.

we must stare critically at the belief systems that are embedded in these tools.

The mainframe never went away. And now, virtualized, we call it “the cloud.” Computers and mainframes and networks are a point of control. Computers are a tool of surveillance. Databases and data are how we are disciplined and punished. Quite to the contrary of Seymour’s hopes that computers will liberate learners, this will be how all of us will increasingly be monitored and managed.

The 3 P’s It all comes down to what researchers call “explanatory style.” When bad things happen, what kind of story do you tell yourself? There are three important elements here. Let’s call them the 3 P’s: permanence, pervasiveness and whether it’s personal. Pessimists tell themselves that bad events: Will last a long time, or forever. (“I’ll never get this done.”) Are universal. (“You can’t trust any of those people.”) Are their own fault. (“I’m terrible at this.”) Optimists, well, they see it the exact opposite: Bad things are temporary. (“That happens occasionally but it’s no big deal.”) Bad things have a specific cause and aren’t universal. (“When the weatheris better that won’t be a problem.”) It’s not their fault. (“I’m good at this but today wasn’t my lucky day.”) Seligman explains: The defining characteristic of pessimists is that they tend to believe bad events will last a long time, will undermine everything they do, and are their own fault. The optimists, who are confronted with the same hard knocks of this world, think about misfortune in the opposite way. They tend to believe defeat is just a temporary setback, that its causes are confined to this one case. The optimists believe defeat is not their fault: Circumstances, bad luck, or other people brought it about. Such people are unfazed by defeat. Confronted by a bad situation, they perceive it as a challenge and try harder. And when good things happen, the situation reverses: Pessimists think good things will be short-lived, are rare and random. Optimists think good things will last forever, are universal and of their own doing. What’s the ultimate result of this? Pessimists often quit. Life feels futile. And when life feels futile, you stop trying and frequently get depressed. So now we understand the kind of thinking that underlies these positions… but how do you go from one to the other? Research shows you should act like a crazy person… Okay, I’ll be more specific.

Kathy Sierra, a popular technology blogger, author and game developer, believes that incentivizing learning-related behaviors poses risks. Sierra says rewards should be left at the classroom door. She is critical of the way gamification is practiced in the classroom, and believes well-intentioned educators may be missing the mark.

“A well-designed game only deploys certain mechanics to support an intrinsically rewarding experience,” Sierra explains. “When you remove that experience but keep the mechanics, you are now working from an entirely different psychology than actual games, and it is one that, in essence, uses mechanics to drive mechanical behaviors.”

Matthew Farber is not keen on the term “gamification”