I have a confession. I am a digital pessimist.
I’ve written previously (here and here) about the vices and virtues (mostly vices) of online learning environments. My experience with Florida Virtual School (FLVS), along with the actual bits of data I’ve been able to get out of FLVS, lead me to conclude that, at bare minimum, we have a long way to go in helping students achieve academic goals and benchmarks via online learning in a manner that actively facilitates (or, at least, does not compromise) the learning process. Historiann‘s post concerning the “efforts” of for-profit K12 Inc. to educate Colorado’s students further reinforces my belief that online learning has a set of structural negatives that may not outweigh the positives, even more so than bricks-and-mortar schooling.
So, how do games figure into all this? Again, I reference my experience with FLVS. When I first started with FLVS (I actually worked for Pasco eSchool, and we franchised with FLVS.), I was initially slated to teach one section of American History Conspiracy Code (CC), a “video game” (I use that term loosely here) version of the FLVS American History course. A week before the semester started, FLVS cancelled the section and moved all of the CC students to a regular online section of American History. The weak rationale provided by FLVS was that the game was buggy. While I’m certainly appreciative of FLVS’s recognition that a bad game is worse than no game, it contributes to the idea that educational video games will always play second fiddle to real video games. I haven’t seen any data concerning the success rate of the updated version of CC, but my experience suggests that it would not be significantly different and possibly worse than other digital iterations or analog versions of the same.
Videogames, Learning, & School Design (EDUC602) 
Thanks for the link! The story of online ed in Colorado just gets worse the more I learn about it. But paying for human teachers is boring and not technologically shiny and new–never mind that they’ll actually spend their money and buy a home in the community. No, we’d rather send our money to IT people who live out of state!
I prefer to think of myself as a “cynical optimist.” I shy away from terms like “digital pessimist” because it implies that the problem is with the technology, and I actually think that the problem is that the technology is most often poorly used. So I see tons of potential, but I’m cynical about what people end up doing with it.
-B
Fair point about the semantics of my moniker. But to make a distinction between the people and the technology often overlooks the inability of the technology to move beyond (or get around) the people. In the context of “digital pessimist,” to speak of one is to speak of the other.
I also think “digital pessimist” is more catchy than “cynical optimist.” š
I prefer the phrase Mark Stevenson (author, humorist, futurist) uses: “pragmatic optimist.”
That is to say, rather than seeing the (large, frequent, and multiple) flaws in everything, look at what the possibilities are. Build on the best possibilities.
I’ll go with that one.
How about “practically cynical digital optimist”? š