The Play Ethic

Eternal Students

Travel piece from MSNBC on the phenom of the campus holiday - where adults return to that time when "your days stretched on without limit, it seemed, and there was time for everything: discussions lasting hour after hour, a movie at night, the stillness of library and lab, your mind pulsing with new ideas and challenging thoughts." Lord! Will these kidults stop at nothing to retrieve the playful energies of their youth! You'd think there was something wrong in the state of working adulthood! (Irony jag now over. Blogger lies down carefully).

What Games Can Teach Us

Faintly disappointed review of James Paul Gee's book on the relevance of computer games to traditional ideas of education. But it does do the job of outlining the six teaching priorities that computer games might enhance:

Semiotic Domains (c-games are a literacy worth learning)
Learning and Identity (c-games help you imbibe info because they immerse you in an environment)
Situated Meaning and Learning (c-games allow for educational innovation)
Telling and Doing (c-games can help you understand other domains of knowledge)
Cultural Models (c-games help you see the value frameworks of entire worlds and societies)
The Social Mind (c-games help peer learning and sociability)

All Play, No Homework

One scary lady... Eye-popping column from Tech Central Station from a 'charter-school' blogger, who is complaining that parents are too busy leisuring their kids to have any time to build foam molecules with them at home:

Is soccer really more important than studying? Should teachers eliminate math homework so kids can spend more time practicing karate kicks? Intelligently assigned homework of reasonable difficulty is worth the effort. In elementary school, a little homework develops good work habits, though it doesn't boost achievement. Middle and high school students learn more, especially in math, when they study more. They also prepare to learn independently - if Mom and Dad back off and let them do their own work. Limit after-school activities. Turn off the TV. There's plenty of time for homework - if it's the top priority.

If you really want more, she has a blog.

A new learning landscape

Been meaning to put Nesta's Future Lab site up here for a while - a branch of the UK govt's innovation fund Nesta, providing money for people who want to put interactive technology at the service of learning. There's an evocative taster for the project in this video-poem by Sophie Hannah, 'The Plan'. .

Pupils 'need far more' play time

Says Professor Pat Broadhead of Northumbria University: "During the last eight years or so, the emphasis on training early-years teachers has changed. This is having an impact in the classroom. Play-based learning gives children a sense of independence. It's a chance to explore and investigate the world. Children also determine the ways in which they work and use their experiences to solve problems."

Prof Broadhead said activities such as sandpit games, playing with model figures and using building blocks, had been ignored because of growing emphasis on literacy and numeracy targets. She added: "Play contributes to all aspects of development. I hope it regains its prominence in future. All the changes in primary schools have pushed back the amount of play for the younger children. If they are allowed to play, children can participate in building the curriculum themselves."