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as children will need to learn in the digital age; as active agents, using multiple simultaneous interactive resources. In his rather radical paper 'Rethinking Learning in the Digital Age' MIT professor (and creator of Scratch) Mitchel Resnick proposes a total re-think of the classroom space, adopting the modes of the multimedia, multi-tasking era:

"Instead of a centralized-control model (with teachers provide information to a room full of students), we should take an entrepreneurial approach to learning. Students can active and independent learners, with the teacher, as adviser does not chief executive. Instead of dividing the curriculum into separate disciplines (mathematics, science, social studies, language), should we focus on issues and projects that cut across the disciplines by taking advantage of the rich connections between different domains of knowledge. "focus

Resnick sees a shift from a "knowledge society" a "Creative Society" in which the general population are active, imaginative participants. This is exactly what happens in games at the moment, with the advent of the "user-generated" content and build-it-yourself games like LittleBigPlanet and ModNation Racers. Allow many titles now with level editors users to create and share their own things to come - and in an age of social networking, social news aggregation, and interactive television passive consumption is over. So, what place it has in the school have?

Gove 's view is certainly a step forward - games should be, and indeed are