13. Gaming to Re-engage Boys in Learning

http://www.ted.com/talks/ali_carr_chellman_gaming_to_re_engage_boys_in_learning.html

     This video is about a speaker, named Ali Carr-chellman, who is trying to explain what is happening to boys in the lower grades.  She first introduced the 100 girls project where every 100 girls that dropped out of school over 200 boys dropped out.  For every 100 girls that were put in a title one program over 300 boys were put into the program.  She also mentioned that only 7% of the elementary teachers are male so that means 93% of the teachers are women.  That means that the boy students may not have a male role model until middle or even high school.  Then she related that boys like to play video games and play with action figures but they cannot bring toys with guns to school or even have a knife locked away in their truck in the parking lot without getting suspended.  She discusses that boys need to be able to write what they want to write because if a boy wants to write about a tornado blowing through a house and destroying stuff because that is what boys do and there is nothing wrong with them writing about things like that just because it was violent.

    I really enjoyed this short video because she had some interesting points.  As she said there are very few male elementary teachers out there and I am glad that I will be able to be one of them because that is the profession that I am going to do because of my love for children.  Also as she said boys loved to play video games, such as world of warcraft, and there is nothing wrong with that.  I personally have played the game for a number of years and I believe that video games can be a great way to connect to all children and not just boys.  Mrs. Ali also stated that companies such as blizzard, who run W.O.W, have a lot of revenue to make their games great but other companies just make basically flash card games.  But overall Mrs. Ali made very good points in how boys are not being able to do what they want to do or write what they want to write about because teachers are scared of violence.  Just because people watch horror movies, shows or play violent video games does not mean they will act out what they see.  If boys and girls are also taught good common sense and good morals then there will no excuse for them turning violent in the future.  I have played video games since I was 3 years old and I have yet to cause harm to others.  I may have wanted to from time to time but the good common sense and morals in me made me not make my plans come to fruition.