PRENSKY

HOME Prensky, Mark (2006). //“Don’t Bother Me Mom – I’m Learning”//. St. Paul, Minnesota: Paragon House.

Marc Prensky’s “Don’t Bother Me Mom – I’m Learning!” attempts to highlight the upside of video gaming. Prensky depicts a strong and almost biased look at the positive aspects of gaming among what he calls “digital natives.” Digital Natives, as defined by Prensky, are those people with whom digital technology has been part of their lives since birth. He feels that “to a large extent, games are how our Digital Native kids are training themselves in the skills demanded by the future.” (2006, p.31) He goes on to state that these “Natives” learn differently than people of older generations, whom he refers to as “Digital Immigrants,” and for much of the book he discusses how games can be learning tools and how immigrants can learn to bridge the gap created by the generational divide.

The pros of this book are numerous from a certain point of view. If you are a parent of one of these natives then the information provided can help you communicate with your child and understand why they spend so much time glued to the TV playing games. One thing that is stressed throughout the book is for immigrants to be able to have an open dialogue with their native counterparts. And by doing so Prensky seems to think the immigrants will undoubtedly see the positive aspects ring through. One positive example of learning through gaming that Prensky showed came from chapter 12 titled //Economics and Business Lessons for a 10-Year-Old from a Computer Game.// He discusses how a game titled //RuneScape// help teach a young individual many economics lessons throughout his game playing. That chapter was among a few that had my jaw dropping to see such a strong effect being created by a video game. However, after coming back down to earth, I began to wonder if any of the lessons Prensky suggested the individual was learning were actually being learned. A major con of this book was that there was very little evidence provided to back up Prensky’s claims. And in this example there was no evidence was given that the individual understood the underlying lesson he “learned” from playing the game, or if he was doing just that, playing the game. That had me thinking about what Prensky passed as fact for his side of his argument throughout the book. He stated in chapter three that videogame researchers were finding information that were in line with a doctor from New York City’s Beth Israel Hospital who found “that doctors who played videogames earlier in their lives made almost forty percent fewer mistakes in surgery!” (2006, p.7)That sounded amazing but no information was given as too how many doctors were observed to be benefiting from the game play or what research was being done that could verify these findings, that lack of what I feel to be important supporting information created some questions for the findings validity.

In closing, I found this book provided a plentiful amount of background information for a parent trying to reach a child that spends countless hours in front of a TV or computer. But for my purposes as an educator I found it to be more of a one sided piece that offered very little information that I could translate into my classroom.

RAY SANCHEZ