Metacommentary Revision

Computers and technology continually change the way we look at the world each and every day, and this is especially true for the most technologically aware demographic on earth: kids. In this current age, computers have advanced and become so user-friendly that the question is no longer whether or not computers can help children learn, but rather exactly how they can. We need to learn how to better implement computers and technology within the educational mainstream.

In a paper titled, “Video Games and the Future of Learning,” David Shaffer and others from the Wisconsin Center for Education Research answered this question by offering bluntly that the future of education lies in the distraction that teachers hate most of all: video games. They contest that epistemic video games have so much potential for learning that we are not taking advantage of because when students play games, they are required to take in the information it provides and learn how to function within the game’s system itself. They further suggest that teachers must overcome their perceptions of video games as, “move beyond the rhetoric of games as violent-serial-killer-inspiring-timewasters and address the range of learning opportunities that games present” (Shaffer et al, 2005, pg. 10). Now, this is not to say that teachers should just plop their students down in front of a tv set and just use games as their primary curriculum. Shaffer and his team suggest instead that teachers should start to use epistemic games to further engage their students. In the activity that games provide, students can further explore the worlds of academic study that are vital to their educations.

Similarly, another article called, “Computers and Technology,” by Richard Ohmann demonstrates that educators have a misperception regarding technology, but instead of just speaking of video games, he suggests that this misperception extends further past video games and into ignorance about computers themselves. He states that market forces control education and its curriculum, and schools administering harsh testing and classes that only prepare them for jobs are proof of this (Ohmann, 2002, pg. 3-4). Yes, at first this sounds like another radical's outcry against the man, but above all, Ohmann's logic rings true.

Indeed, a change education’s standard methodology is needed to provide for students an education that will enrich their minds on a deeper level. Unfortunately, this burden rests with already overworked teachers. However, educators need to view their task at hand in a more harshly critical light. They are responsible for equipping the next generation of students with the intellectual tools they need to function in society, and teachers should not just be using technology to simply shortcut their work. Students need not only to know how to use job-related skills that they are currently getting from their use of technology in school, but how to think in newer ways than in previous generations. Epistemic video games, technology and computers can definitely aid with this aspect and have massive potential for educational purposes, but not if educators continue to use computers to create mindless office-workers for tomorrow.