Education, Games, and Peer Learning

I was on Amazon.com this weekend looking at some reading material and in my recommendation area pops up Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us from Dan Pink. It’s out toward the end of December. That visual prompt made me bop over to Dan Pink’s website, just to see what’s up. There are several good entries on the blog but one really pulled me in. It’s a video of James Paul Gee, a professor at Arizona State.

A program called Edutopia asked him to speak on several topics on the future of education. He describes many of the ideas that I run through this blog: kids aren’t necessarily falling behind in education, reading and writing are increasing, and adjustments can reap huge returns (the kids are ready for it). But Edutopia was new to me. It’s a George Lucas (Star Wars fame) foundation which provides many great resources to teachers and students. I’ll check it some more and share any unique ideas. In the interim, check out this video of James Paul Gee.

http://www.edutopia.org/media/videofalse.swf