Hi Helen et al. Check out Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. We need to educate our kids for the future for sure.

You left out the Khan academy from your list. i know it's an american site following their systems but it is revolutionizing online learning for school kids by letting kids learn at their own pace, tracking their progress and rewarding points based on completing modules.
http://www.khanacademy.org/

http://freerice.com/ also from the world food programme, it's a vocab game where every right answer donates 10 grains of rice to the world food programme. It's quite distracting though...

Daniele, I think Helen is saying that certain computer games can be more useful than what kids are currently doing. You can't argue with that. And these games aren't necessarily instant gratification devices but of value to the child because of what they learn when they doing the game. In particular she points out that certain concepts in computer games, for instance where there is no losing only accumulating, are very valuable.

I don't know if the future will see us all frolicking in green grass with tattooed French nymphets but it appears quite a few will be using computers in their workplaces.

As a teacher who has used computer games to successfully teach children to im[prove their writing, I can attest to the power of computer games to help children learn.

However, the sort of learning involved in the type of computer games advocated in this article is little more than rote learning dressed up with an element of competition. Children need to learn creatively and to be creative. This is just old ways of learning dressed up in new clothing.

When I used computer games to teach writing, it involved a lot of pair work, group work and imaginitive writing, it empowered the children rather than simply steering them through a predetermined route, and it enabled them to be successful in their own terms rather than on someone else's. It also required a great deal of teacher input and intervention, but was spectacularly successful.

If you want to see how computer games can REALLY be used to teach, rather than as simple behaviourist rote, which is controlled, pre-programmed and totally uncreative, then go to;

www.tinrylands.com

This is learning which is social, creative and empowering, unlike the examples shown under the article

Dorian, I'm surprised that you had any respect for me in the first place for it to be lost. Now that I have found that you did have I'm determined to regain it! Respect by peers .. who the hell are you talking about? Some academics? Some academics don't have respect.

Alf Ford, the chairman of a workers syndicate, said, "Everyone wanted to be the boss. Nobody wanted to do the dirty work'

Chomsky's workers coops .. give me a break. It shows you just how impractical and unwordly wise some academics are. No idea what people are like. No practical experience of work outside education. They just look at it from the outside. Read Alf Ford's, 'Corrugated Gold' to wake yourself up from anarcho-syndicalism. He tells you what happens when the workers take over ... everyone wants to be the boss. Respect for the right people.

I'm continuing this piss take of Chomsky and his sneaky quiet ways on the Penny Red Beyonce article. Why not follow me Dorian seeing as he's a hero of yours?

Chomsky knows jack shit. He's another bookworm with his nose superglued in a book. Get outside you dickhead Chomsky.

I bet this is the last of you Dorian. No way you'll come after me shitting on yer hero.

How old are you Dorian ?15?
This kind of school have been tried in the 60's.. and they have failed.
A child needs boundaries and told how he is expected to behave by the community.He also needs to be taught what he needs to know to function in that community. He needs clear directions and role models he can look up to.The rest is just utopic tosh I'm afraid.

Dorian, Got to agree with non-nymphetic Daniele on this one. The Socratic approach is already in evidence in many classrooms, the main question being, 'why the fuck do we have to do this crap?'

Actually I agree with your reservations about too much computer games in schools. I would like to see more hands on education in schools like agricultural and 'home handy' studies.

I think Germany and Japan are leading the world in some respects due to their recycling and emphasis on alternative energy. Germany will be nuclear power free by about 2022. The future is in this direction so schools should be educating kids in this area.

Aren't you French Daniele?

What worries me more than slightly with that kind of approach to education is the emphasis on FUN FUN FUN.What happens when those kids get confronted with some hard work which just needs to get done like hard studying for exams or boring tasks as in..a job.
How are we preparing our kids for the real, hard and often boring world of work and life in general when every learning activity is fun. I am not against the occasional game or fun presentation but if that's all they get, their expectations will be raised and they will switch off anything challenging or boring. What then? How does that approach teach them discipline, determination and , let's say it "work ethics".
At the moment in schools the work ethic has all but disappeared as kids are reluctant to do anything which isn't presenting an immediate reward of FUN. This is a problem. So what you propose to solve this problem is to give the kids what they like and ignore the problem.
Like the mother who has given up trying to feed vegetables to her kids and give them chocolate and declare the problem solved.
I worry about what kind of people you will be creating with this kind of education.If you "remove the sting of failure" as you say for example, how is the kid going to learn how to avoid failure? What does it teach him? Failure is OK?
I am aware that many people will be dismissing me as a dinosaur.But what if I am right?

Divine:
I am a Brit with French origin but I must tell you that I am no tattooed nymphet.
i was surprised you liked the idea of computer games for education. It didn't fit in with your vision of a self sufficient back to basic society.

Interesting article. Have you watched this
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/3167-Gamifying...
by any chance?

Hardly, it's just made me lost respect for you, not that you'll care. I just place those that are against Chomsky in the 'idiot' box in my mind.

He is widely regarded as an excellent linguist and philosopher by his peers. I don't really care about the opinions of the select few who do not understand him.

I try not to look through a Marxist's eyes either, I do however think Chomsky is an excellent philosopher and critic.

I mix maybe a good idea, but I really do think that the best learning is done off of your own motivation, not learning so you can have a piece of paper at the end and some letters after your name. I think the fundementals of education need to be debated and changed before we talk about specifics.

@Daniele;
'But what if I am right?'
Then pigs would fly.

Seriously you do have a point. A lot of work is very dreary and it lasts for hours on end. If school is a preparation for life then paying games on the computer all day is probably not the best way to prepare kids. But that's assuming that life is going to involve dreary work and that school is a preparation for work.

Going back to the article. What the author advocates is in fact to get our kids addicted to instant gratification (which a lot of them already are). There is enough of that already in their spare time, now if they get the same fix at school, I can't help thinking this society will soon hit a wall.
I read an article recently from a university professor of English who advocated the study of very short books or just short stories as opposed to long boring classics like Dickens or Thomas Hardy because...our students nowadays are busy with other things like U-tube, Face-book etc.. and have no time to read..Students of English literature..What next?medical students not having to learnt all this stuff about the human body because it's hard and boring, doctors could just Google your symptoms and see what comes up?

rommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmeeeeeeeeeeeeee total war

Actually a really really radical way to inform education policy would be to have TEACHERS and other EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS contribute to policymaking.

That way, instead of MPs, who think they know everything about education because they have been to Eton or some posh grammar school, telling teachers what to do, and invariably getting it wrong, teachers can tell the government what children need.

I know this is way too radical an idea ever to be considered, however, everyone knows teachers are just drones, to be bossed about and told what to do by people who obviously know better.