One of the first champions of the positive effects of gaming reveals the dark side of today’s digital and social media  Today’s schools are eager to use the latest technology in the classroom, but rather than improving learning, the new e-media can just as easily narrow students’ horizons. Education innovator James Paul Gee first documented the educational benefits of gaming a decade ago in his classic What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Now, with digital and social media at the center of modern life, he issues an important warning that groundbreaking new technologies, far from revolutionizing schooling, can stymy the next generation’s ability to resolve deep global challenges.  The solution—and perhaps our children’s future—lies in what Gee calls synchronized intelligence, a way of organizing people and their digital tools to solve problems, produce knowledge, and allow people to count and contribute.
