I was just visiting with the director of a nonprofit in Edmond last night about an idea for a Scratch summer camp for kids. We definitely need to promote tinkering with ‘real stuff’ as well as in digital environments. My 14 year old has been creating some pretty cool buildings in Minecraft lately. So much problem solving and learning can happen when we build stuff!

We ARE teaching CS in U.S. Schools. Our Scalable Game Design project has explored how to bring CS education to middle schools in inner city, remote rural and Native American communities in the USA. The results are overwhelmingly positive with an average of nearly 50% girls participating. Have a look at our results. It can be done. We even have early indicators of evidence of transfer between game design and simulation building activities. Here is a video showing some of the teacher training:

http://www.9news.com/news/local/article/202987/222/Teachers-play-video-games-for-science-

Technology is continuously changing. New uses are coming out on a daily basis. The landscape is changing. If we look at these changes as a landscape or a frontier (rather than an enclosed space like a country or a state), then we are not immigrants or natives of one place, but instead we are digital nomads. We are tribal- iPhone tribes and Android tribes, Twitter tribes, gApps tribes, blogger tribes. We are hunters- we find tools and adapt tools to solve problems. We are gatherers- we bookmark, we aggregate, we download. The items and skills that we acquire ultimately make us more flexible and better prepared to handle today’s challenges. As nomads our tribes sometimes join together and break apart. Our hunting is sometimes fruitful. And, we gather what we need (and sometimes more– although carrying more than what is needed is laborious and counterproductive).

If we change the metaphor from a digital native / digital immigrant split to a tribal, nomadic metaphor, the focus changes slightly. We and our students suddenly have new literacies that must be acquired and managed effectively. How do we navigate this frontier safely? Which tribes are the most beneficial to travel in? How do you keep peace and productively negotiate with members of other tribes? How do you hunt efficiently? How do you protect the items that you hunted once you have them? Do you share? How do you assess the quality of the different items that you are hunting?

With this metaphor, the focus is not on using video games to teach in the classroom. It is bigger than that. Instead, it is more holistic. It focuses on how we are going to help our students learn how to navigate this changing frontier. It is crucial that these skills be taught explicitly to students so that as new technologies develop and new opportunities arise, they are able to make the best use of the tools available to them to solve problems. And, these skills need to be embedded in the activities in the classroom so that students can see how those skills can be beneficial in different settings.

I came to this conclusion because I am too old to be considered a digital native, but I can quickly understand new concepts of technology when I am introduced to them. My children are not as quick to ‘get it’ as I am.