globeandmail.com : Better living through video games? (Via Remote Access.) Carolyn Abraham: “Now young people who play video games are showing this similar pattern of high performance in resisting irrelevant impulses.”
As I’m playing catch up after the remodel, this article has already been linked to many times elsewhere. (Academic Gamers, for instance, has a brief post summarizing and reflecting on the article.)
I blog it to save it here, but I’d also like to contribute to the conversation by focusing on the quote above. Many teachers have said to me that they feel that students who play video games have a more difficult time paying attention in class. Perhaps we ought to be exploring why students are resisting their classes and teachers as sources of “irrelevant impulses.” When a class is relevant, engaging, and challenging, the students are there.
They may chose to multitask, by IMing their friends or searching the web at the same time, but they’ll be into their work. ;)
Maybe Prensky’s “Engage Me or Enrage Me” is a bit off the mark… a bit too harsh. It’s not quite so catchy, but perhaps it would be more realistic to be thinking in terms of “engage me, or be ignored.”