Don't Bother Me Mom - I'm Learning!

[this review will be published on Studies in Communication Sciences 1/2008 - www.scoms.ch] Many kids and teenagers spend a large amount of time with videogames - that is a fact, and calculations indicate that by the time they are 21, average US children will have logged 5'000-10'000 hours playing computer and videogames. Add to this that videogames are impacting the entertainment market more and more as a multi-billion industry and you have plenty of good reasons to want to understand them better if you are a parent or a teacher. If you are a researcher in media, communication or education, and aim at understanding today's media use of digital natives, your work should include understanding video games, and this book can provide assistance in that area. So, are videogames good or bad? Do they enhance learning or do they make children numb and lonely? After the hit of Digital Game-based Learning (2003), Marc Prensky comes back with a book that tries to give a new perspective to the often too polarized discussion about videogames. Prensky's voice is backed both by the insights of seasoned teacher used to talk with kids of all ages, and by the experience gained as founder and CEO of games2train.com, a company that offers "serious training in a game environment". It's a respected voice in the expanding context of the literature about education and digital games. Moreover, he is an emphatic speaker, with action movie rhythm, good arguments and sometimes claims. The book is worth reading: if you like videogames, you will understand them better; if you think they are dangerous, it will let you think about them more critically. The book is mainly targeted to parents and teachers, but researchers can find interesting data, resources and ideas in it as well. Many claims are supported by anecdotal evidence, such as interviews with children or parents, only a few with scientifically sound data. This is both the limit and the power of this book: it is effective in showing that a different take on videogames is not only possible, but existing in the experience of many "like us", parents or teachers. The task of proving or refuting many of the claims remains for researchers and their respective methods. The first point the author makes comes from the Socratic principle of knowledge: before knowing something, we must admit we don't know it. This holds for videogames too: much of the current discussion today comes from people who are not videogamers, and those who fear videogames often do not know even the titles of the big hits. Second, Prensky claims that today's kids are digital natives, while we, who were born in an age when digital media was not present of just surfacing, are digital immigrants. While we keep our "accent" (and for example print e-mails for reading), digital natives are "natural born" multitasking, online social kids. They consequently require, and like, new forms of learning, and videogames are clearly one of them. Because, and here is the

Can any good come from video games? Aren't video games the enemy? Should we believe all the negative hype about video games? Mr. Prensky, one of the leading authors in this exciting field of study, convincingly outlines what parents and teachers can learn from video games. This book is an easy and enjoyable read. As a parent and an educator, there is a lot I can learn from video game design. Mr. Prensky outlines numerous suggestions, ideas, and strategies that are applicable to both parents and teachers.

I was introduced to the author's work on Digital Natives by a very smart and unusually open-minded colleague at the National Geospatial Agency, and I am hooked as well as relieved. The greatest complement I can give this book is that my 15-year old, a master of Warlock, saw this book come in the door and immediately took it away from me and read it overnight. He gives it high marks. This is also the book that inspired me to take Serious Games and Games for Change *very* seriously. Most gamers do not understand the need to work toward an EarthGame that includes actual budgets and actual science, but Medard Gabel of BigPictureSmallWorld gets it, and that's enough for me. The list of games provided at the end by the author, to create a serious game home learning environment, is priceless. Some may be overtaken by events but the bottom line is that digital learning is vastly superior to rote learning in schools. I am a participant in three Hacker communities--Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) based in New York, Hac-Tic based in Amsterdam, and Hackers/THINK based in California. I have met thousands of hackers over the years, and I am certain that the best and the brightest are not those with straight A's in the current school system, but those that tune out the high school regime by their junior year, and start learning what they want to learn on their own. My oldest son just won first prize in the Fairfax County digital music content, representing his school, but he will not graduate because he refuses to spend time on Algebra 2. He has very high SAT scores, will pass the GED with an almost perfect score, and will take digital music and digital art courses at three colleges in the DC area as a non-degree candidate. I go on at length here because this is both very personal for me, and also a national disaster--our entire curriculum is so out of date, and taught by so many drones, the few master teachers not withstanding, that I completely understand why our national ranking in math and science is out the window, why we have fallen to 7th on the national innovation scale, behind three Nordic countries and three Asian countries. I admire this author. In a most positive manner, he is telling us the Secretary of Education is quite naked, and what we can do about it. This is a foundation book for any parent of "digital natives."

"Don't Bother Me Mom--I'm Learning!" by Marc Prensky (founder and CEO of Games2train) is a fascinating study of how computer and video games may actually be beneficial to the children playing them. Providing readers with an unique approach to contemporary games and their content, "Don't Bother Me Mom--I'm Learning!" delves deeply into the education benefits of gaming in the form of calculated risk taking, strategy formulation and execution, as well as addressing complex moral and ethical decisions in the midst of gameplay which may actually help children. "Don't Bother Me Mom--I'm Learning!" is very strongly recommended to all parents for its engaging analysis of children seemingly addicted to computer and video based gaming.

"Don't Bother Me Mom - I'm Learning!" is a vital book to read if you're the least bit worried about the computer and video games your children are playing (or would like to play). There are, however, many aspects to this book that make it much more than an enlightening and positive response to all the objections, criticisms, negative opinions and fears that surround the world of digital gaming - it's an equally important read if you want to know what's happening in the rapidly changing world of teaching and learning. Of particular interest to me as the father of a home educated boy was the mention in the book of developments in the application of games technology to the school curriculum - including a little something called "disintermediation", or 'cutting out the middleman', a subject I've written about myself. To be honest, I was practically bouncing up and down with excitement as I read of the possibilities for learning and self-development that are emanating from the most recent advances in video gaming technology. The potential now unfolding is absolutely thrilling. But, even if you're not as ready as I am to share Marc Prensky's enthusiasm for computer and video games as a means of educating and preparing our children for success in the modern world, you'll discover at the very least from reading "Don't Bother Me Mom - I'm Learning!" that what you may have been reading or hearing in the media about the games melting our children's brains and turning them into violent zombies has been both highly selective and greatly exaggerated. Something that quickly became apparent to me as I read this book was that negative opinions about computer and video games tend to come from people who don't play them! Indeed, it seems to be that many parents who are worried about the games their children are playing don't actually know what it is they're worried about. Both of my children play computer and video games. Without restrictions of any kind. My daughter started playing video games at the age of six. Her mother - yes, folks, her mother - bought her a Sega Master System II and all three of us ended up happily playing Alex Kidd in Miracle World for hours on end every day until we'd completed the game. Then we bought some more games and haven't looked back. My son Pat has been playing video games since he was three. He started with Mario the fat plumber on the Nintendo 64. We still have the N64. Pat now also has a Game Cube and a Playstation 2 and plays Empire Earth and RuneScape on the PC and various mini-games he finds on the internet. Computer and video games are the biggest passion in my son's life right now, and I think it would be most odd if I didn't know at least a little bit about every game he plays. Because I play them, too! My own interest in video games goes back to playing Pong, Space Invaders and Asteroids in various pubs I frequented in Sydney when I lived there in the mid-1970s to mid-1980s (in my pre-parenthood days). As Ma