Week 4: TED video

Gaming to re-engage boys in learning

This video is of a talk given by Ali Carr-Chellman about how educators can better involve and motivate most boys in school. She says that there is always a higher percentage of boys who are suspended, expelled, dropped out, placed in special education classrooms, etc. than girls. She says that girls have always been known to struggle more than boys with math and science and that we have implemented programs and plans to solve that problem but that we haven't developed anything to help boys be more successful in school.

Ali points out that part of the problem boys have in school is that it has been designed to hide or atleast prevent the appearance of typical boy interests - students can't be rough on the playground or talk about violence in their poetry or even mention owning a knife or gun. Gaming, a typical boy interest, is what she focuses on for a possible solution to the problem of boys being disinterested in school. She says that teachers should try to change their attitudes about gaming and that they should incorporate more games into the classroom in order to capture boys' interests and abilities more.

I think her statistics are great at showing how boys are negatively impacted by school although I also think that the percentages are higher because there are more boys in school in general. I think that girls are becoming more interested in gaming and other things that have traditionally been deemed "boy activities" and that they, too, are struggling to find meaning in school. I think that all students are crying out for a more "modern", technologically-based classroom environment that is more interactive and attention-getting than before.

Personally, I try to incorporate games as often as I can. It's not possible to make EVERYthing a game but when reviewing or practicing a concept, I like to create or find a game to do it with. ALL of my students, not just the boys, seem to enjoy games over simply writing or reading anything; games keep everyone engaged and participating. I also give my students a list of websites where they can find games that will help them practice their Spanish so that when they're studying or struggling to grasp a concept, they have something a little more engaging and interesting to help them than just flipping through the book. If I had time to weed out all the really helpful games from all of those websites, I would try to incorporate them even more often than I do... there are just so many!! :-)

PS - Could we write our blogs about this kind of stuff more often? Or are we tied to the ISTE articles?