Dustin+Goedde

Christensen, C.M., Horn, M.B., & Johnson, C.W. (2008). //Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.// Chicago: McGraw-Hill Professional Publishers.

Clayton Christensen's analysis of disruptive innovation to education provides a voice of reason and a healthy dose of optimism for his readers. Christensen's tone throughout the book is not based from arrogance or naivety but rather from matter of fact reasoning spear headed by business precedents and economic sign posts. I firmly stand behind the theory of disrupting innovation put forth by Christensen. The theory suggests that the areas that will experience this disruption will likely be the most underfunded, program limited, over-crowded classrooms is right on target. Necessity does breed innovation. Christensen insinuates that innovation will be inevitable and take root in the areas of non-competition or better than nothing scenarios. This insight does not bode well for the school districts that are maintaining the status quo. Districts that receive ample funding and have large bureaucratic administrations will be faced with increasingly more difficult financial burdens and time consuming policy's. I think that disruptive innovation theory put forth by Christensen is a common sense application. His argument is reasonable and logical, which is clearly grounded in research and history.

Bauerlein, Mark. (2009) //The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30).// New York: Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

If there is anything that this country is good at it, it is creating an unprecedented level of fear and paranoia. Like the fox leading Chicken Little away for the slaughter, so too does Mark Bauerlein in his book "The Dumbest Generation." Fear mongering has always been a lucrative business and Mark has written a new chapter in the talents of it, that even the national news broadcasting networks will want to read. I will admit that Bauerlein creates an impressive argument backed by a score of statistics and coherent strings of evidence to illustrate a deficit in the youths appreciation and understanding of such academic subjects as history, reading, math, and the arts. However, what he fails to do is prove that there is a deficit in their capacity to learn. I equate Bauerlein to the priests of Harlem when they started to complain that the youth are loosing appreciation for the arts of identifying and burning witches at the stake. The knowledge found in the dusty old text books can be retreived with a minimum amount of effort by today's youth, so why is it important that they commit it to memory? Even the elementary school teachers admit that they don't put any more emphasis on writing in cursive or spelling anymore because of e-mail and spell-check. Mark Bauerlein needs to get with the times.

Marc Prensky's "Don't Bother Me Mom - I'm Learning!" makes an arguement that fly's in the face of conventional wisdom; video games are a mind numbing activity. I think it's important to consider Prensky's motive when considering the value of this book, which is two fold; "...to give you a new perspective and insight...into gaming" and "...to understand and appreciate the many positive things your children are learning." Evaluating the effectiveness of this book with these two goals as a measuring stick I would emphatically agree that a new perspective and understanding is gained. However, I would not use this book as emperical evidence to prove any connection between video game playing and the brain engaging in higher level thinking. Prensky makes outlandish claims and uses erroneous statistics to make speculative unfounded connections that any reasonable person can detect as false. For example, at the beginning of chapter two Prensky opens up with the remark "Want your kids to grow up to be surgeons? - Let them play video games." There is no denotation of sarcasm or witty jestering on Prensky's part when he suggest this. The notion that video games will produce surgeons is irresponsible and reckless, to become a surgeon one must invest 100's of hours into studying anatomy, physiology, and various other hard to pronounce disciplines; not blowing zombies heads off with a sawed off shotgun. It is when I crossed sections in his book like the aforementioned example that I believe Prensky derails from his intended goal which was to help readers gain a perspective and understanding about video gaming. He does do a quality job in utilizing the professional opinions of professors, psychologist, and social scientists to comment on apparent connections between learning and video game playing. It stands to reason that learning is taking place at some level. Prensky presents an easily digestible list of skills gained from gaming on page 67 of things like cause and effect scenarios, or the value of persistence. So yes, I would support Prenskys goals of this book by giving perspective and understanding, but I would stop there.

Dustin Goedde