Just Sharpening My Pencil

Having a few too many thoughts to have them in my head, especially with one assignment to go.

I have read just a little bit by Tomasello and need to do some more. I wonder were ICT will lead us. If, as Tomasello says, the speed of human evolution is now measured in historical time, rather than evolutionary time because we have developed speech which allows us to communicate and we use this to communicate cultural knowledge which speeds up evolution. Then with the advent of ICT we have learned how to communicate many different ideas from many different people quickly and we can learn many things quickly. Is there any fear that we will evolove in a particular way (to do with knowledge, creativity) but not in other ways (don't know what that would be, I'm thinking physically, morally, practically) and the problems that might cause?

I'm also trying to work out where sprituality come into this? I've just been writing about how our urge to understand the communication intentions of others drives us to acquire language, assuming, as I do, that we are not built with Chomsky's Universal Grammar. We are obviously built with an urge to listen and understand and then to talk. In short, for our species to evolve we must learn, which is something most other animals do not do. I when I move to (in ever decreasing frequency) spiritual thought, I always think about what it is I need to learn by being in this situation. Something to go on with there.

Also, I was doing work regarding developing an online game to improve language acquisition and I was writing about how learners can choose different preferences, then I remember reading 'somewhere' that learners engage with the program more if they are part of the program, then as one of the preferences I noted avatar. Then it hit me like a freight train. I was trying to develop something like a book on a screen, which is how I learn literacy. But it doesn't need to be like that. So I remember reading 'somewhere' about education in one of those life simulation games (can't remember the name of it, SecondLife, maybe) then I think about I topic I found for my kids MMORPG and so I did some quick research (and I hope none of my lectures/professors read this), which in times of stress means 'Google Scholar' and found this article, "From Digital Game-Based Learning (McGraw-Hill, 2001) by Marc Prensky Chapter 1 The Digital Game-Based Learning Revolution" (I got the PDF online, I'm sure you can too) and I saw I could make an online game like the MMORPG and develop something along the lines of Prensky's first case study. I thought about havomg the learners be agents who are given some background info first and then must read the book, that has the clues, to solve the problem. Then I thought about a few more senerios, a cat burgalar, thuggy type theives, and then another one of those things hit me. I could try to get the big image makers, I don't know their names, but I'm thinking transformers, Ironman, Disney stuff maybe, and seeing if they would like to move into the gaming education thing. They probably already do, but a well designed (pedagogically I mean) game would earn in credence with mums and dads, and if they are letting their kids play educational games, then it's great exposure/branding for their product. A was just reading Carla C. E. Fisher's post and I guess the field of fiction would be cool. That relates to my last assignment too, but way more enhanced than I suggested.

I'm my teaching in Taiwan, I have always found games useful in teaching, because if you want kids to do the most mind-numbingly boring things, as dedicated by boring textbooks, in classes they take after school, they are going to hate it. But if you ask them to do the same things so that they can play a game (as simple as throwing the dice), they love it, they practice a skill, and if they don't know what to do, the other kids in their team try to help, and they try to learn, because they don't want the other kids giving them a hard time because they cannot play the game.