New book asks: Can technology customize education too much?

For decades, ASU's James Paul Gee says he resisted the lure of video games – that is, until his six-year-old son began playing a game called Pajama Sam, which encouraged him to explore games for adults, such as Half-Life, Deus Ex, Rise of Nations and Halo.

Gee, the ASU Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies and co-founder of the Center for Games and Impact, says he quickly realized that games served as unique problem-solving spaces.

"Such video games are designed to challenge players and make them work hard and succeed," writes Gee, whose new book The Anti-Education Era: Creating Smarter Students Through Digital Learning looks at the e-learning revolution and how its mission to improve learning actually can be hindered by modern technology's increasing ability to customize, thus narrowing students' horizons.

In a recent Slate article, "The Problem with the School of One," Gee says as schools continue to use the latest technology in the classroom, technologies geared toward optimization might actually be hindering learning as they "increasingly allow each of us, if we wish, to customize many things to fit with our skills, styles, desires, and beliefs in such a way as to leave us less challenged and feeling more 'successful.'"

Gee, whose research looks at games as platforms for 21st-century skills, says the best learning outcomes occur when a gamer is challenged, forced to collaborate, and required to adapt under quickly changing circumstances. On the contrary, today's technologies aim to identify a learner's "sweet spot" so that one never feels out of his or her comfort zone.

"What happens when people with different 'sweet spots' have to learn, solve problems, and collaborate with others who have different 'sweet spots,' as people so often have to do in modern workplaces? I wonder what would happen should, God forbid, children run into learning situations in the world that cannot be optimized for them individually," Gee says.

Access complete Slate article below.

Gee has been featured in a variety of publications including Redbook, Child, Teacher, USA Today, Education Week, The Chicago Tribune, and more. Described by The Chronicle of Higher Education as "a serious scholar who is taking a lead in an emerging field," he is also the author of "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy."

Future Tense is a collaboration among ASU, the New America Foundation, and Slate magazine that explores how emerging technologies affect policy and society. The Future Tense channel at Slate features multiple blog posts daily and several full-length articles weekly.