Arlene worked in the Delaware City School System of Delaware, OH. After retirement in 1995, she continued to teach communications and English classes at Columbus State Community College and Marion Technical College, as well as educational psychology at Ohio Dominican University. She has 1034 friends on Facebook; she is a Mafia Wars queen; she has played more Mind Jolt Games than anyone I know.
RD> Arlene - When did you start teaching?
Mrs. G.> January 1960. I have taught literature, writing, communication, business communication, and education psychology. Over the years, the age of the students varied with the youngest at 8 years old and others ranging to past 55 year olds who returned to college.
RD> Why did you become an educator and remain an educator for these many years?
Mrs. G.> My own teachers and my mother pretty much directed me to a career in education; in many ways, I lived my mother’s career dream. Fortunately, her dream was also mine. For me, one important value of education to students is creating a set of choices and opportunities. Obviously one value to a teacher is successfully motivating a person to continue to increase choices and the span of opportunities. I love doing the motivation part; I love watching students capture ideas and concepts that lead them to further inquiry. What other job can give that?
RD> These days, there is a lot of discussion in the web-sphere and media, about how people get information and how they learn has changed dramatically in the last 10 years. Over the years, what have you seen that has remained the same in how people learn?
Mrs. G.> I think how people learn has fundamentally remained the same. There are those that are the top-performers and then there are those that I call Middlers. There is always a curve. What I think has changed in my fifty years of motivating is how educators have embraced how they motivate.
The top-performing students who received opportunities to be creative and taste success using their learning at an early and formative age, learn and explore in inventive ways --- they did it before and they do it now. The educators who have been successful have figured out how to keep them motivated in this technology age. I have found that the best way to do that is engage them to reach their peers. One adaption that occurred is using technology to communicate but inherent interaction between educators and students in this group has not changed all that much.
The underserved group of adults is what I call were “Middlers” in middle and high school. Their performance was average or below average in middle and high school. These Middlers typically will not go to college at 18 years of age. I found that these Middlers need nurturing and not more of boring repetitive learning activities. For example, when I was teaching grammar in middle school, we were instructed to teach the same modules taught to a 3rd grader, 4th grader and 5th grader. Guess what! These students did not care the second time it was presented to them and it certainly was not interesting to them in 4th grade. So! They tune out and the time they could have used for learning is wasted.
People of all ages, learn very quickly how to be lazy in their learning when they know they will have repetitive lesson plans. The same group as adults often do not want to go back to school because they expect the same boring repetitive learning activities. In the last few years, I find that this group is getting better opportunities to come back and acquire skills and knowledge and expand their horizon. Columbus State Community College and Marion Technical College – here in central Ohio have devised curriculum that helps them acquire meaningful learning. If you, as an educator provide the challenge to the students where they figure it out, and they taste the success in figuring it out, then they go to the next stage of wanting to learn more, thus expanding their set of opportunities. Their learning desires have not changed but they are learning faster and more with the new technology such as Google, Wiki and a curriculum that keeps them engaged. I find that Games and such technology have changed the Middler’s desire to learn.
RD> Given that you are such an active gamer, how did and do you use games in your teaching?
Mrs. G.> I always used activities like have butcher paper and crayons and other games in my classroom. This was for students of all ages and from all diverse backgrounds. Games actually provided that challenge and motivation.
My entre into video games came with my grandkids. We created a playroom in our house where we outfitted the room with Playstation and a large number of games. Many of the video games follow patterns and motifs common in mythology and folklore; my grandson Zach was very engaged in playing. At that time I was teaching a classroom course about the narrative of folklore and myths and I found Zach learning how to manage the archetypes of mythology – the heroes and villains. Watching that made me realize that video-games have a great upside to faster learning. Playing the games with the grandkids provided not only opportunities to spend time with the kids, but also a new level of interaction that included several learning opportunities.
Another example was with my youngest grandson. We were playing one of the NCAA games and had to do is pick uniforms etc. for the avatars. I am not good at replaying sports events, and did not want to play. But then my grandson figured out a way to motivate me; he called me on the phone and told me that I assign all the players to have Brutus the Buckeye uniforms. Being the Buckeye that I am, I got hooked. All these kids, when I got stuck or did not feel challenged, were amazing and they would say, “Grannie, try this.”They figured it out and motivated me to keep my interest. Because they enjoy playing with others, they want others to play too and not walk away bored. Games allow people not only to learn by figuring out, but also teaches them how to motivate others to learn and play with them in their peer group. As you know peer-learning takes the pressure off from the educators to constantly battle with how to motivate next. Of course, I am proud to be in the peer group of my grandkids.
RD> What do you see as the downside of so many technology distractions in front of under-40 crowd?
Mrs. G.> I am not good at using mobile phones has they have horrible interface for texting. But that’s not the reason I have issues with the texting phenomenon. I do worry about texting and communication. Over generation, writing had fairly strict style guides and norms. But there are no style guides in Twitter and with texting. It is evolving, but the chance of miscommunication is very high; learning to communicate with clarity is not emphasized. Just because you have to write in 100+ characters and your thumbs are good to handle such a keyboard does not mean one knows how to communicate. There are no style guides or standards on how to abbreviate. The other thing that worries me with new technology like texting is that it has made communication become a reaction and not a dialogue. Lack of focused communication is creating a generation that may not experience sufficient knowledge gain… Information gains sure, but not knowledge gain.
RD> Aside from classrooms, where do you see video-games happening?
Mrs. G.> I am at that age where I interact with many elderly folks at a regular basis. My 94-year old mother-in-law for example. I see a tremendous advantage of introducing computer and interactive games with the nursing home community. Older people – those who are very alert always played games, but they played it as recreation. Nursing homes can make video and online games a daily exercise like mandatory walks for physical exercise. It will help deter lack of alertness and maintain high levels of cognition. In my opinion this is a big opportunity for the video and online gaming industry to explore.
RD> Thank you Mrs. G. It was wonderful chatting with you.
Mrs. G> Let us keep them motivated and engaged and communicate better.
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