Gaming: Agents & Actors

Here's another article called Learning: More Than Just Knowledge that promotes the idea of the game metaphor in learning:

"The difference between learning design as a ‘play’ and learning design as a ‘game’ is this: in the former, the learners are actors, playing a role, and to more or less a degree, following a script. In a game, however, the learners are agents, seeking to achieve an objective, and to more or less a degree, employing their abilities.

The difference between actors and agents may seem small. But it is the difference between doing what you are told and making decisions for yourself. It’s the difference between our directing learners, or challenging them. And in this small difference lies the core of what information and communication technologies can bring to learning."

This is the kind of thinking that can lead us astray. The fact of the matter is that games have rules, and somebody out there sets the rules for us to follow. Are these rules really that different from a script? Are we not in one sense "acting" when playing a game? Would it be possible to describe education as a kind of game? Are we playing The Glass Bead Game?

If this is "what information and communication technologies can bring to learning" then we're all going to be playing a lot of games with each other, or as Neil Postman has said, Amusing Ourselves To Death.

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