I’ve recently been thinking about real life compared to school… This was spurred on by a YouTube clip about learning through games. The tipping point for me was the statement made by James Paul Gee that we trust learning through games more than we trust learning through school. This was explained by the example that children learn algebra a school and then we test them to find out if they learn anything however children will spend hours learning to play Halo (or any computer game for that matter) and we don’t give them a test on Halo to find out what they learnt. We trust they learnt it because they finished the game. Where else in life do we shut the the book or turn off the internet to prove we know what we are doing or to complete a task.
Here is my look at how school is not real life
- Test vs Learning
- Set break times vs chosen break times (doesn’t apply to all life situations)
- Due dates set by others vs negotiated due dates
- Repeating tasks even though you know how to do it vs mastery and only repeating as required
- Learning occurs in 70 minute blocks vs life long learning
I’m sure there are many others feel free to add the in the comments…
