Ethan Beardsley

This isn’t a new video but it’s a great reflection on the expectation of kids for both entertainment and education. Marc Prensky, the inventor of the term digital natives, said it no differently : “Our students are no longer “little versions of us” as they may have been in the past. In fact, they are so different from us that we can no longer use our 20th century knowledge or our training as a guide to what is best for them educationally”.

There’s been a lot of talk in both the US and Europe about e-learning. The US now seems to be moving forward with lots of hardware investment but one of the issues that doesn’t seem to be particularly well thought out is the software side, particularly for the younger kids learning basic writing, reading and math skills. Videogame producers and educational publishers still haven’t made much investment in this area. Family entertainment specialists like Viacom or Disney have some initiatives which focus on preschoolers but most of the product out there isn’t rigorous enough to truly support an integrated e-learning process. There’s a strong opportunity in this area that some companies like Dreambox are looking to seize.