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Navigating New Socio-Economic Challenges: Gaming and Learning in the Digital Age

Explore the intersection of computer games, learning, and emergent socio-economic challenges. Dive into the impact on classroom responses and the evolving consumer market. Discover how the digital age is reshaping education to prioritize adaptability over consumption. Uncover the role of play in fostering lifelong learning and preparing the next generation for a knowledge-intensive future.

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Navigating New Socio-Economic Challenges: Gaming and Learning in the Digital Age

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  1. Gamers and learnersnew socio-economic challengesBen Williamson

  2. Overview • Computer games, learning and... • Emergent socio-economic challenges • Classroom responses

  3. What new & emergent socio-economic challenges? • The consumer market • The digital divide

  4. New socio-economic challenges We are placing a “lower priority on teaching children how to thrive socially, intellectually, even spiritually, than on training them to consume” - Juliet Schor, Born to Buy, 2004

  5. [We must] “facilitate learning for a generation that can live and work in knowledge intensive organizations and institutions where they will have to rely on skills of flexibility and adaptability to cope with ever changing conditions and situations” WimVeen & Ben Vrakking, Homo Zappiens, 2006

  6. Playful consumers “Play is educational, and such play is invaluable for the future; it fosters individuals’ capacity for continuous learning, flexibility and adaptability as an adult. This metaphor of constant learning, knowledge acquisition, involvement and engagement as well as the notion of open-ended results and variety is particularly appealing in the “knowledge-based” economy. ...[T]his philosophy is future-oriented. Children now are already creating the future” Jane Jenson, The Lego Paradigm, 2006

  7. “Post-industrialist capitalist economies are developing into cultures of ‘play’ in which a pervasive ‘play ethic’ is superseding the work ethic.” Allucquere Rosanne Stone The War of Desire and Technology, 1995

  8. Games are “perfect training for life in fin de siecleAmerica, where daily existence demands the ability to parse sixteen kinds of information being fired at you simultaneously” JC Herz, Joystick Nation, 1997 Games are “a sort of low-level domestic socialization for high-tech work practices” Stephen Kline et al, Digital Play, 2003

  9. Digitally native or divided? Who are the children? “digital natives” “homo zappiens” “digital generation” “net generation” “Nintendo generation” “cyberkids” • Wishful thinking? • Divisive or cohesive?

  10. Dividing the child Learner Consumer Child Player Worker Commodified

  11. Redefining/dividing the child as a consumer/learner • Play ethic vs. work ethic • Flexible and response-able • Colonisation of desires • Corporate curriculum

  12. Classroom response • Critical media literacy (egMissionMaker) • Socially responsible games (egClimate Challenge) • Curricular “wraparound” (egNintendogs) • Social creativity (egLittleBigPlanet)

  13. www.futurelab.org.uk ben.williamson@futurelab.org.uk

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