Gee,
\n James Paul. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and
\n Literacy<\/i>. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
What Video Games Have To Teach Us<\/i> delivers an insightful and positive pronouncement of what teachers (and everyone, really) ought to
\nunderstand about gaming; Gee advocates, with resoundingly smart support, a
\nthoughtful take on video gaming as an activity far more complex and meaningful
\nthan most off-handed–"waste of time"–skeptics would ever consider. Games
\nand gaming activity reverberate with thirty-six education principles; Gee
\nanchors each chapter with a handful of principles to tie video gaming in with
\ncareful theoretical insights related to New Literacy Studies, situated cognition
\nand connectionism (8). He blends anecdotes from first-hand experience and
\ninterview\/observation data gathered by ethnographic methods to introduce the
\nmany conceptual hooks linking video games and literacy learning.
\nSpecifically, Gee articulates the ways in which games function as a precursor
\ndomain for more advanced activities (c.2), as a playground for mingling virtual,
\nreal and projective identities (c.3), as a demonstration of situated learning
\nand distributed cognition (c.4), as a platform for explicit and tacit learning
\nmodes (c.5), as an amalgamation of cultural models (c.6), and as a forum for
\nsocial connection and interaction (c.7). <\/p>\n
Many of Gee’s scenarios about education and the applicability of video gaming
\nprinciples focus on the sciences (physics and biology). His prose involves
\nvery little citation; in other words, the book isn’t referentially dense.
\nInstead, he includes, densely written and in small print, bibliographic notes at
\nthe end of each chapter. What Video Games Have To Teach Us is highly
\nstructured; its outline is distinguishable at any point and there are several
\nmini-taxonomies, clusters of terms introduced to give dimension to a concept.
\nFor instance, regarding expertise, Gee suggests three premises: value everyday (lifeworld)
\nknowledge, the young are better at some things than the old, and "protect
\nlifeworld domains from the assaults of specialists" (39). <\/p>\n
Gee also introduces a learning cycle evident in gaming that ought to be
\ncelebrated in formal educational settings: prope, hypothesize, reprobe, rethink
\n(90). Despite its processual regularity, the sequence, according to Gee is
\ngeneralizable across video gaming and science education.<\/p>\n
"Games, of course, reflect the culture<\/b> we live in–a culture we can
\nchange<\/b>" (11). ^Cultural change, however, happens incrementally, and Gee
\nmight have been more explicit in this project about the degree to which playing
\ngames or designing games manifests as a culture-changing force.<\/p>\n
"By semiotic domain<\/b> I mean any set of practices that recruits one or
\nmore modalities (e.g., oral or written language, images, equations, symbols,
\nsounds, gestures, graphs, artifacts, etc.)" (18).<\/p>\n
"Three things, then, are involved in active learning<\/b>:
\nexperiencing<\/i><\/b> the world in new ways, forming new affiliations<\/i><\/b>,
\nand preparation<\/i><\/b> for future learning" (23). <\/p>\n
"Meaning, then, is both situation and domain specific" (25). <\/p>\n
"Because I want us to think about the fact that any semiotic domain, whether
\nit is first-person shooter games or theoretical linguistics, that domain,
\ninternally and externally, was and is designed by someone" (32). ^No
\nmention of agency or rhetoric in this discussion of design. In places, design<\/i>
\nfeels static or a bit deterministic in the context of gaming.<\/p>\n
"But for critical learning, the learner must be able consciously to attend
\nto, reflect on, critique, and manipulate those design grammars at a metalevel"
\n(40). <\/p>\n
"However, all deep learning–that is, active , critical learning–is
\ninextricably caught up with identify in a variety of different ways" (59).<\/p>\n
"The argument is that just as language builds abstractions on the basis of
\nconcrete images from embodied experience of a material world, so, too, does
\nhuman learning and thinking" (76).<\/p>\n
"The appreciative system is where affect and cognition merge and come
\ntogether" (97). <\/p>\n
"In playing video games, hard is not bad and easy is not good" (165). <\/p>\n
"So learning here is social, distributed, and part and parcel of a network
\ncomposed of people, tools, technologies, and companies all interconnected
\ntogether" (177). <\/p>\n
"I am claiming that elites can use anything–canonical literature, the Bible,
\nbiology, or any other sort of text–to attempt to dupe people by trying to force
\nthem to read it in the elite’s way" (204). <\/p>\n
Terms: New Literacy Studies (8), situated cognition (8), connectionism (8),
\nmultimodal (14), semiotic domains (17), problem of content (20), affinity group
\n(27), design grammars (30), lifeworld domain (36), design space (40), precursor
\ndomain (47), practice effect (67), masterful performance (70), mind as network
\n(92), appreciative systems (96), transfer (124), regime of competence (133),
\ncultural models (143)<\/p>\n
Gee, James Paul. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[174],"tags":[953,135,1154,424,1155,1156,436,967,582,981,907,1157,445,553,899,950,255,453,547,1153,1158,1159,288,1160,2024,1161,327,1100,465,1162,626,1163,443,535,1164,433],"class_list":["post-7026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing_technol","tag-affinity","tag-cognition","tag-connectionism","tag-design","tag-discovery","tag-domains","tag-embodiment","tag-experience","tag-games","tag-gender","tag-identity","tag-impetus","tag-knowledge","tag-language","tag-learning","tag-lifeworlds","tag-literacy","tag-meaning","tag-multimodal","tag-newliteracy","tag-pattern","tag-play","tag-practice","tag-precursor","tag-problem-solving","tag-psychology","tag-reading","tag-repetition","tag-simulation","tag-situatedcognition","tag-social","tag-strategy","tag-text","tag-transfer","tag-values","tag-visuality"],"yoast_head":"\n