Article Review

Citation:

Bloomfield, D (1999).Life imitates Pokemon: The virtues and necessities of technology-based peer education in today's schools. Social Policy. 30(1), 13-19.

Quote:

“The cooperative inventiveness that makes whizzes out of under-performing, under-challenged school children can be harnessed for direct instructional purposes. In the same way that the Nintendo Corporation has actively, structured the Pokemon experience for its purchasers, teachers can and must dig deep into their talent to structure similar cooperative experiences for their students.” (Bloomfield, 1999)

Reaction

Bloomfield is absolutely correct in pointing out that teachers today are teaching a group of students which are products of a video game society. This society includes the concept of peer teaching. They teach each other every day about anything and everything without even realizing. I think peer teaching is an extremely effective way for students to learn. I like the teacher as guide concept and plan on implementing it in my classroom.

While reading this article, I thought of the class WonderWeb that we participated in for this course. The WonderWeb was an efficient way to learn from my peers. Students can only benefit from learning from each other. In my classroom, I would love to provide the students with several opportunities to learn from each other, including the peer tutoring program that Bloomfield talks about.