Engage

Engage Me or Enrage Me: What Today's Learners Demand

By Marc Prensky

1. There are three kinds of students found in every classroom: 
• Students who are self-motivated.
• These students find value in what they are learning. They are able to see how it affects their current life and their future life. They are engaged in most any type of teaching method, because their engagement comes from within and is not based on the teacher necessarily. These students are intrinsically motivated by goals and success and do not need extrinsic rewards for completing things. These are the students that teachers dream of having in their classroom, and honestly they are the most scarce to find.
• Students who go through the motions.
• These students do not find as much value in what they are learning. They realize that it is for a grade, so they may just do it to get it over with and get a grade for it. They realize that grades affect their future, so this is the kind of motivation they have. However, they are not truly engaged, because many of them have figured out how the system works. Most find out how much work they have to do simply to get by and will do nothing more. These are often the most common students found in classrooms.
• Students who are tuned out.
• These students do not understand how any of what they are learning actually relates to their lives. They can not make connections between what they learn in school and what they need for their future (or even for the present). Not even grades or rewards truly motivate them. If they are unengaged, they quickly become upset and annoyed by the teacher, learning, and school in general. These are the students that teachers often do not know how to handle.
2. Teachers in today's day and age are experiencing new problems that never occurred in their childhood days. As early as the 1960's, the author explains, students did not expect to be engaged every moment of their day. They did not have video games, iPhones, iPods, and other devices that would engage them. Students of this era never knew this kind of engagement, so therefore never felt that anything was missing from school. Students now, know that there is something missing. Schools are lacking real engagement that students are used to in other areas of their lives, and they definitely notice. The strategies of yesterday will not work for the students of today.
3. As teachers, we need to care enough about students on a personal level to discover what truly engages them. Every student has SOMETHING that they are good at, that is engaging, and that creatively enhances their lives. As teachers, we should seek to find whatever that something is and be able to transition and adapt that into the classroom. Students know that if all else fails, they will find something of value on the Internet. What would happen if students thought the same way about the classroom?
4. The argument here is not whether or not school can be engaging. It can! But rather, our task it to find out how. It is not even as simple as being culturally relevant to these students. It is more about finding goals that our students find worth pursuing. Students need to feel important and necessary; likewise, their goals should be important and necessary. If the goals are worth it to them, they will become engaged.
5. Students aren't looking for fancy graphics or pretty images. They want depth of ideas. They want strategy. They will think things through if things are worth thinking through. By providing game-based learning, students can learn in a way that relates to them, motivates them, and engages them.