Books worth reading: Breakthrough; What Video Games have to Teach us.

With the readable, 100-page book "Breakthrough,"

Michael Fullan, Peter Hill and Carmel Crevola make the case that we are nearing a tipping point (or breakthrough) in which it will be possible to sustain school systems that truly are capable of helping most all students reach high levels of learning and achievement.

The authors believe that we know enough about how people learn for this to happen. They write, "Our book is not about prescription; it is about precision--the kind of precision that is tailored to the individual needs of each and every child in the classroom."

At least four key ingredients are required to create such personalization: a set of powerful and aligned assessment tools, a method of gathering formative assessments that is not time-consuming, a means of using the data to design instruction for each student, and a means of monitoring this learning.

The development of CLIPs, or Critical Learning Instructional Paths, is advocated as a tool to implement these ingredients. The purpose of CLIPs is to bring "expert knowledge to bear on the detailed daily decisions that every classroom teacher must make in teaching a coherent domain of the curriculum."

This approach caused me to wonder if the development of CLIPs should be the direction of my professional work. A change like that would require a "breakthrough."

Breakthrough (2006), by M. Fullan, P. Hill, & C. Crevola. Publisher: Corwin Press.

In his book "What Video Games I have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy," Paul Gee declares, "[T]he theory of learning in good video games fits better with the modern, high-tech, global world today's children and teenagers live in than do the theories (and practices) of learning that they see in school." The book then discusses 36 principles of learning, and shows how these are built into good video games. Rather than an argument to make better use of video games, the book is a "plea to build schooling on better principles of learning."

For example, one of the 36 learning principles cited is the "probing principle." This principle argues that "learning is a cycle of probing the world (doing something); reflecting in and on this action and, on this basis, forming a hypothesis; reprobing the world to test this hypothesis; and then accepting or rethinking the hypothesis."

We know that Robert Marzano has identified "generating and testing hypotheses" as one of the nine best learning strategies. The question Paul Gee would ask is, "Where are we most likely to see students generating and testing hypotheses? In a classroom or while playing a video game?" His book is a challenge to educators to create schools that would require that "classrooms" be the answer to that question.

What Video Games have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy (2003), by J.P.Gee. Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan.

Reviewed by George Manthey, assistant executive director of ACSA's Educational Services Department