Sasha A Barab, Ph.D. is a Professor and internationally recognized learning scientist.  He is taking the work of James Paul Gee, Ph.D. to the next level and leading the way in learning research and game design.  He is currently teaching at the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University.  He is the CEO of LifeLabs Studios and co-founded the Center for Games and Impact, where scientist and educators combine their knowledge of learning to develop impactful games that teach students by using play and activity theory. Dr. Barab holds the Pinnacle West Chair of Education and has extensively researched and designed "games for impact."

Key factors in learning within context are social connection and creativity, this is why learning works in the digital world.  Everything is intertwined connected and linked so context and content merge into a learning environment that engages the mind completely. In this world, there is no difference between creativity and information.  It is all united under an activity system crossing into other cultures, languages, situated context, and building a foundational global society.  In the digital world, humans are forced to engage in the three-fold integration in the way we spoke about earlier.  They must creatively explain and design, problem solve and adapt, and use multiple modes to transcribe data and ideas to their end-users.  This full experience helps engage the instructors and the students and enables play.  Play blends learning as creators and users develop stronger ideas together.  They share their situational awareness in a world where interpretation is key.  

Teaching with technology issues instructors a challenge to anticipate the student's interpretation but also allows for ideas to formalize, flow, and uses writing as a tool to create learning.  Whatever does that mean?  Students and teachers alike must write. Either writing script to follow in the game or writing in discussion, teaching in technology offers more creativity and writing experiences.  We understand the context and slow down as teachers formalize their ideas to share, or students slow down their discussion and formalize their ideas also sharing.  The connection to others in a digital way forces the writing experience to happen.  As a learning strategy, the children of technology naturally learn the way humans were meant to learn.  As educators, we need to understand why and ensure we use writing as a tool for instructing across all platforms and understand the theory of play.

Students now have never been without a vast social structure, their ideas cross easily and effectively on social media and games.  The children of technology in this digital age have only understood content where expression is valued.  Content creators are young and engage the world in their own way and they are rewarded for being unique in the business world.  Why shouldn't it be the same for education? Tailoring education in a way that uniquely focuses on the student is not a new idea, it is generated by this digital age because unique content and contextual understanding is the key to engagement.  The children of technology cross social activities and find similarities to connect them as well as celebrate the differences they realize.  The tech brought them together across the globe, the games created information and a working problem, and their solution was to blend ideas and modes to find more ways to engage each other.  Incredibly language differences didn't separate users but forced creators to understand more about their end-users.  

Think about what tech you have in your household, I mean electronics and games, communication, streaming, etc.  How much of it engages a social platform?  Do you link with others by using that particular technology?  If it wasn't in your home, how much would that limit your world?  Understanding that today's generation was never without that engagement of society, now you see that their world is the globe, not the country or even the town you live in.  Their world includes everyone and everyone is part of something unique, their identities are what makes them unique but their community is what makes them successful.  Dr. Barab's work offers an understanding of the way communities of teachers and students help bridge learning gaps and make a more successful experience.   His work offers a comprehensive view on why when teachers and students engage as a community of learners both are more successful.  He is a teaching professional that has researched how the individuality of the student offers a widening and more comprehensive understanding of the information given if learned under a community setting.  Particularly in the teaching of new educators, he has found that including their individual goals and interest in their learning and offering a setting where the community engages in their goals makes them more effective learners and teachers.  He links the idea that learners are also teachers directly to teaching new educators but it also works with learning theory.  As I said before teaching is the most effective way to learn, so learning to teach in a community bridges the most important attributes to learning.  Students now can easily connect to a community, learn inside it by engagement and practice, participating fluidly across cultures and identities.  They celebrate their individualism and identity while studying under another's own purview. 

Read more about this Community of Teacher Training model on Dr. Barab's Website Here!

Take a look through a "Student Perspectives on the Importance and Use of Technology in Learning"