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Jane and Harold

Saint David's faculty were asked to read Howard Gardner's book Five Minds for the Future two summers ago. In it, Gardner identifies the five minds (habits of mind/ways of thinking) he sees as essential for success in the future. As I watched Jane McGonigal's TED Talk below, I couldn't help but reflect on Gardner's work. Gaming taps into all of these minds--the disciplined, creative, synthesizing, respectful and ethical--and it ads yet another dimension. Gaming takes content that we have traditionally viewed in linear structures, two dimensional perspectives, to 3-D. Our older boys are already playing World of Warcraft and other games like it. Gaming just may be at the forefront of the development of life-like virtual worlds. The third generation of the web will probably embed us all in a three dimensional virtual world transforming social interaction online from what we understand it to be today--lineal--to fully engaged, three dimensional, dynamic social settings. It's already begun and the implications for education--teaching and learning--have the potential to be profound. Our challenge will be to keep pace with the quickly evolving technology and to sort out how these "new tools" can best be used.


Or maybe they will change the paradigm completely!



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