Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Cross-Post: Henry Jenkins, Games and Learning, Media Literacy & Quest to Learn School in NYC



Henry Jenkins will be moving from MIT to USC Annenburg School of Communication and the Cinematic Arts School. He'll be teaching courses such as "Transmedia Storytelling" and "New Media Literacies".

"...there is a learning ecology now, one that takes place outside of the classroom in the after school world...and right now, schools are cutting themselves out of the learning ecology by blocking games, by blocking YouTube, by putting filters on the computers. They block off ways the students are technologically connected, from the best ways of learning..and they leave those students who are trapped behind the participation gap from having access to the experiences that prepare the technically literate for the future."

"..Good teachers are fighting a valiant battle just to be able to access the materials of YouTube .. the other day we discovered that students could not access online resources about Moby Dick, the great American novel, because it had the word "Dick" in it."


My high school blocks websites about games. TeacherTube is blocked, too!

In the above video, a school that integrates the use of games within the curriculum is mentioned. The school is Quest to Learn, scheduled to open for the 2009-2010 school year. It is known as "New York's school for today's digital kids".

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3341/3328403307_a55563628d_m.jpg

"Quest supports a dynamic curriculum that uses the underlying design principles of games to create highly immersive, game-like learning experiences for students. Games and other forms of digital media also model the complexity and promise of “systems.” Understanding and accounting for this complexity is a fundamental literacy of the 21st century."




Institute of Play (A partner of the Quest to Learn school)
Quest to Learn Press Links

A Win-Win Scenario: "Game School" Aims to Engage and Educate
Eliza Strickland, Wired 8/6/07

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