Jason at Plunkers e-Learning has had a small difference of opinion with his local community library, where his effort to promote game based learning has provoked a rather close minded response. Jason's intentions were:

Following Bill Kerr’s lead I have been promoting video games and how they can have a beneficial effect on students by promoting the higher order thinking skills, provide students with a “rich” information base (how many students can give you an accurate representation of history based on the games they have played) and other such skills.

So his reward for trying to engage his net generation students? A response that seems put more stock in sensationalist journalism than academic authorship. Jason continues:

So what is our library's response to this? This evening happens to be the Annual General Meeting of the school. Our library also happens to be a community library with members of the public regularly making use of our library. This post was placed just inside the library so all members of the community would be confronted with it. Notice the highlighted section that quotes a phycologist from an Adelaide Hospital as saying the army uses games to desensitise their personnel to shooting others. Just one small aspect, without looking at all the positives.

I'm not surprised Plunkers is hot under the collar. All formats of communication have the potential to be used for siniser purposes - the music and literature of Hitler's Nazi regime is one such example of misappropriating art forms. That does not counter an argument against the book or music or the internet or mobile phones or even, yes even video games. Another example of pre-judging something without any first hand knowledge. What's your next move, Jason?

At a cluster meeting for middle school teachers tonight, there was talk not just about the typical characteristics of students approaching and in early adolescence but that every generation has new permutations on these characteristics. We were given a handout of a study by Mark McCrindle titled Understanding Generation Y. From this I can see that I just squeeze into Generation X and that the generation referred to in my blog title have yet to enter our school system. Personally, I think we are yet to discover exactly what Generation Z will be like and whether teaching in its current form will exist when they hit the middle school zone.