Kong, Tablets and the DI Accent

This is going to be a bit of a double post, but it's inspired by the same book - Prensky's Don't Bother Me Mom, I'm Learning. The first part is on games and how they can be used to explain story in ELA classes - I picked up King Kong for PS2 this week in part on the recommendation of my younger brother and because I've been eyeing it on my own because of the way that it's presented with no obvious interface and I wanted to see what could be done with that. I also picked up the DVD (non SE though.... the game and the widescreen cost the same less a dollar as the SE version) and found that as I played the game, it follows the story of what is happening to the characters that you don't see in the movie. This is not really obvious, but it's done in a way that really makes you feel amazed when you see Kong the first time and scared when you are confronted by the dinos for the first time and ancy with the millipedes. The game play and the problems are simple, but I'm thinking that this is a great way to get kids to look at the story behind the story that is being told. I'm sure English teachers have done this before, but this is something that may pick up a few more lightbulbs to go off in kid's heads. The second part is thinking about tablets and how they seem to be the ultimate expression of the Digital Immigrant's accent. Using the analogue input of the pen, they mimic the slate/paper "of yore". Granted for some applications, this is an ideal method of input, but for general computing, it's a bit off. At least until the entire OS can be driven by reasonable gestures (ala Minority report). Technorati Tags: Tablet PC, Game Based Learning, Prensky, Digital Immigrant