The Prensky rules

Original post:  May 15, 2013

I just finished an article titled "The Touch-Screen Generation". With the advent of tablet computers, young children are now able to use all kinds of applications. If you have ever seen how intensely some young children engage with iPads, you know precisely how intently they can focus on these little screens. There have been many debates about whether or not this is a positive development.

Many parents feel guilty about allowing their children to play on tablets. One way they attempt to ease their consciences is to insist on educational applications. Marc Prensky, an education and technology writer, takes a very different approach. Here is an excerpt from the article:

Prensky’s 7-year-old son has access to books, TV, Legos, Wii—and Prensky treats them all the same. He does not limit access to any of them. Sometimes his son plays with a new app for hours, but then, Prensky told me, he gets tired of it. He lets his son watch TV even when he personally thinks it’s a “stupid waste.” SpongeBob SquarePants, for example, seems like an annoying, pointless show, but Prensky says he used the relationship between SpongeBob and Patrick, his starfish sidekick, to teach his son a lesson about friendship. “We live in a screen age, and to say to a kid, ‘I’d love for you to look at a book but I hate it when you look at the screen’ is just bizarre. It reflects our own prejudices and comfort zone. It’s nothing but fear of change, of being left out.”

I found this unusual perspective to be very thought-provoking. While I can't say I will personally do the same thing, there is a lesson in his approach. Other parts of the article question why we focus so relentlessly on education at the expense of fun. Fun might actually lead to creativity much more effectively!

Here is the link to the full article:  http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/04/the-touch-screen-generation/309250/4/