Johnson part 2

I think my biggest take-away from Johnson's book is "don't be too quick to judgment" when it comes to relative usefulness of pop culture in education. As games, tv, and other media becomes more and more sophisticated there is the potential of learning important skills via these medium. Educators and librarians need to take a step back from quick criticism and really investigate what is out there. While I have some difficulty following the thread that video gaming has actually raised the collective IQ, I do truly believe that there is the potential of lots of learning "under the hood" of many seemingly entertainment based technology. As the digital world is so prevalent in society, writing it off as simply "pop culture" and of no use educationally is a big mistake. Embrace the changes and integrate the possibilities into the system...there are alot of great things to be learned.

Popular Culture and stupidity

The information in Johnson's book was very interesting and he had some valid points. I do agree that there are many things in today's popular culture that do provide great arenas for learning. His points about some of the knowledge gained from certain types of gaming is quite accurate. If you do spend time playing very complex, multi-layered games you can exercise your decision making skills, your ability to strategize, hypothesize, etc. The same can be said for high quality TV and film, there are things to be learned in every medium when the end product is well developed and written to appeal to higher order thinking. So, on the whole, I do not believe that videogames are evil and useless. Nor do I think that people would be better off only playing Zelda than reading a book or playing a sport. There is a place for all of it in a balanced life.

I do believe, however, that he bases most of his "electronic media is good" argument on a small percentage of the actual end product. While he puts forth an effort to say that the dreck of today is still better dreck than the past, really I cannot find that a compelling argument for it's worth.

I guess the bottom line is he believes that media shapes the culture rather than culture shaping the media... a bit like the chicken and the egg...which did come first? He has not convinced me that media drives the cultural and intellectual advances.