College Teaching & Learning Conference

GAMING & LEARNING

 Video Excerpt – James Paul Gee  Pre-Reading Blog  In Class Discussion – Steven Johnson  Reading – James Paul Gee  Action Research Project REALITY LEARNING

James Paul Gee VIDEO EXCERPT

PRE-READING BLOG

“…a false premise: that the intelligence of these games lies in their content, in the themes and characters they represent.” (p. 57) Excerpts CONTENT

“You have to shed your expectations about older cultural forms to make sense of the new.” (p. 39) Excerpts CULTURAL FORMS

“We need to think, talk, and listen. When we tell students that popular culture has no place in classroom discussions, we are signaling to them that what they learn in school has little to do with the things that matter to them at home.” (p. 229) Excerpts POPULAR CULTURE

“I think there is another way to assess the social virtue of pop culture, one that looks at media as a kind of cognitive workout, not as a series of life lessons.” (p. 14) Excerpts COGNITIVE WORKOUT

“’You’re supposed to figure out what you’re supposed to do.’ You have to probe the depths of the game’s logic to make sense of it, and like most probing expeditions, you get results by trial and error, by stumbling across things, by following hunches.” (pp ) Excerpts TRIAL AND ERROR

1.Active, Critical Learning 2.Design 3.Semiotic 4.Semiotic Domains 5.Metalevel Thinking 6.“Psychosocial Moratorium” 7.Committed Learning 8.Identity 9.Self-Knowledge 10.Amplification of Input 11.Achievement 12.Practice 13.Ongoing Learning 14.“Regime of Competence” 15.Probing 16.Multiple Routes 17.Situated Meaning 18.Text 36 PRINCIPLES

19.Intertextual 20.Multimodal 21.“Material Intelligence” 22.Intuitive Knowledge 23.Subset 24.Incremental 25.Concentrated Sample 26.Bottom-up Basic Skills 27.Explicit Information On- Demand and Just-In-Time 28.Discovery 29.Transfer 30.Cultural Models about the World 31.Cultural Models about Learning 32.Cultural Models about Semiotic Domains 33.Distributed 34.Dispersed 35.Affinity Group 36.Insider 36 PRINCIPLES

 Option 1 - Interview a gamer  Option 2 - Play a game  Demographics  Questions  Findings  Discussion Qualitative ResearchPaper Requirements REALITY LEARNING

Melissa Farrish

 Logan, age 14  Middle school student  An avid “gamer” since the age of 3  Spends 6 to 14 hours per day playing games SUBJECT

 Credits reading skills to gaming  Recently scored at the college level on the Star test for reading comprehension  Reading and understanding text is a central part of many games  According to Gee (2007), video games have “a great deal to teach us about how reading works when people actually understand what they are reading” (p. 96). READING

 Plays with friends and e-Friends  Social experience  Distribution of knowledge and skills SOCIAL ASPECT

ADVENTURE  Ability to be adventurous  Takes risks, explores, and tries new things  Makes his own decisions

 A desire to see how the story will end  Motivated to successfully master the highest level  Personal satisfaction  Ability to create CHALLENGE

IN THE CLASSROOM  Spark interest and enthusiasm  Move from "skill and drill" to forms of assessment integrated into the learning  Ability to teach at each child’s level  Create a “network” of learning following the dispersed (#34) and affinity group (#35) principles.

Ingrida Barker

 Middle School English Language Arts Teacher  Teacher  WV Virtual School Spanish I Facilitator  Principal of Curriculum and Instruction at River View High School  Doctoral Student at ABOUT ME

 Not a Gamer!  Benefits of Playing and Creating Games  Globaloria and Dr. Idit Caperton Globaloria  Networked world PRE-READING

 Jason, Male, late 20s, Southern West Virginia  IT Specialist  Changed His Name  Cisco Systems Networking Academy Graduate  Systems Development Courses  Passionate Gamer for 20 Years SUBJECT

Ongoing, committed learning to retrieve the treasure internal and external grammars Clear identification of setting and quest to follow internal and external grammars of the game content andsocial practices/ views affinity groups Navigation of content and social practices/ views established by affinity groups. Learning from mistakes - psychosocial moratorium and risk taking (p. 222) OBSERVATIONS

Games help players “understand and produce meanings in a particular semiotic domain” and “think about the domains at a ‘meta’ level as a complex system of interrelated parts.” (p. 25) Critical, active learning in the virtual world of games forces gamers to make novel decisions to adapt to increasing levels of challenge and collaborate with others to build knowledge and skills. Passive to ActiveLearning from Games IMPLICATIONS

 Require Practice  Provide Feedback  Encourage Trial and Error  Facilitate Perseverance to Mastery  Scaffold Learning  Apply Concepts to New Situations TEACHERS CAN

Lee Ann Hvidak Porter

 My Initial Thoughts and Attitudes  Special Intelligence Communicator Sergeant in USMC  Age 25  No Post High School Degree  Married to “Alyx”  Plays FPS (First Person Shooters) THE INTERVIEW

 e-Friends  Meeting People  Cliques – Young Crowd / Old Crowd SOCIAL ASPECTS

 Active and Passive Learning  Strategies  Choices Determine Outcomes  Different Styles CONNECTIONS

 Incorporate Interactive Activities  More Meaningful Challenges  Avoid Teaching Concepts in Isolation  Choices  Ultimate Goal…to Educate! CLASSROOMS

 A Different Kind of Learning Occurs  Learning Occurs in Different Places  A Different Kind of Assessment  Get a First Hand Experience  How Do You Spend Your Time? PERCEPTIONS

Gee, J. P. (2012). How complex gaming environments can help young people solve problems and innovate in a world that is constantly changing. Retrieved from Gee, J. P. (2007). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Johnson, S. (2006). Everything bad is good for you: How today’s popular culture is actually making us smarter. New York: Riverhead Books. Microsoft. (2013). Microsoft Clip Art. REFERENCES