Not so long ago, the stereotypical computer gamer was a geeky adolescent male who basked in the glow of a computer screen for days at a time, living on nothing but junk food and soda. But these days, as I observe my two daughters, I know that computer-mediated games can be a healthy pursuit and that they are now central to the lives of many youth. For example, my 10-year-old spends hours playing online Webkinz games to earn "cash” so she and her 9 year-old sister can purchase furniture for the house of their stuffed animals' avatars. The youngest also desperately covets the Wii, longing for something to do that's more "active and interesting” than TV.

My daughters are teaching me that digital games can be multi-faceted, social, compelling, and intellectually stimulating worlds. In comparing the richness of good digital games with the mind-numbing worksheets that my daughters bring home each day from school, it's apparent that educators have a great deal to learn from computer games. In early October, 2007, a group of NERCOMP workshop participants met in Southbridge to do just that.

"When you look at knowledge as the central aspect, or the central product of education today, it would suggest that if knowledge itself changes significantly or substantially, that we also would need to consider the framework and the design of the organizations that we use to create, disseminate, share, evaluate that knowledge." 

George Siemens, author of Knowing Knowledge, Associate Director of Research and Development with the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba, and founder and President of Complexive Systems Inc., was the keynote speaker at the Ohio Digital Commons for Education Conference in Columbus, Ohio (March 4-6).