Brandon's+Journal

Question 1- My earliest experience with video games was way back in the 70s when we got the home version of Pong. It seems ridiculous now but my brother and I played that game for hours. To make Gee's point, even two lines and a blip going back and forth was way more entertaining than school to my brother and I. Most of my early experience with video games was long hours spent at arcades, spending every quarter I could find to play games like PAC-man, Asteroids, Space Invaders, and Dragons Lair. At that time I also had the Atari 2600 and played that all of the time but it did not compare to the games at the arcade. As game systems and computers have improved I have owned and played just about every system that has been invented. Today I have a Wii but I prefer to play Computer based games. I do not play nearly as much as I used to but I can still sit and play for hours occasionally.

Question 2- Currently my main identity is a student and a student teacher. I am also a business owner and a real estate broker. The only virtual Identity that I have at the moment is in a new (new to me) game that I have been playing called Entropia Universe. It is a large MMOG similar to World of Warcraft. I am a hunter and a trader.

Question 3- As a social science teacher I feel that developing literacy the way that Gee describes it is an important part of what I teach. Like Gee says all things come with their own set of symbols unwritten rules that form a type of literacy and I believe that it is part of the social science teachers job to teach students to recognize this and to develop the skills they will need to be literate in the multidimensional world that they are a part of. All students engage in literacy education that they do not recognize like learning how to navigate social media or understanding the social structure of the school and community they are apart of. I feel that it is the job of the social science teacher to teach the students how to understand all modalities of social interaction. we should be teaching the skills the students will need to recognize that there are may types of literacy and that they need to be able to understand how to use all types to be successful.

Question 4- as a linguistics student learning to teach English as a foreign language I learned that any time you learn a new language you are not only learning how to communicate with speakers of that language you are also learning a new or alternate understanding of the world. Language can show you how a culture understands the world that they live in and what that culture values. In the English speaking world we equate time with money, we spend time or save time. we give our time or waist time. this show that time and money are important in the west. other culture do not have these same concepts so learning the language and the words would not be enough to understand the concept. the larger cultural understandings must be taught to give them meaning. I recognized many of the some concepts in Gee's writing that I saw in the linguistics I studied earlier. Like most things video games have a language that requires a deeper understanding of the culture to be able to fully understand the world.

This week I look at the educational games demos from Moodle. They are all way more engaging than the old Oregon trail game I got to play in school but I think they could still be done better. I also started play Entropia Universe for entertainment and to see if I could find a way to use it in a class.


 * __Week 2__**

Question 1- when teaching history it is easy to think of ways to use virtual identities to help the students connect whatever area we are learning about. learning history is all about truing to put yourself in the place of the people who lived during the time that you are studying. as a teacher it is not always easy to get student to connect to the subjects this way. we often use simulation activities to get the students in the mind frame of the time. I believe that when the students are able to connect with the projective identity the best learning happens. this happens much more often in video games than it does in the classroom but I think you can see it happening when the students start to ask good questions. the type of questions that may bring the lesson to the next level of understanding for the student. the trick would be to get all of the students to be at this place at the same time. I think the the projective identity is key to history class. As the students learn they first can put themselves into the history and then at the next level they can use the history to inform their current lives.

Question 2- I can think of many examples of students who have damaged identities. I often hear things like im not smart in this way or I cant get this stuff. there is one student in particular that does not do much of anything in the class. at first I did not know what to do with him. I thought that he was just going to be a problem but instead of writing him off I decided to try to find some way to connect with him. I feel that he has been treated in some way that makes him believe that he is not able to do good work so he takes the tough guy approach and does no work as a way to protect himself from feeling dumb. I just started talking to him as if he were someday going to get some work done but I did not try to get him to do it. he has began to work a little but I think now if I can find some ways to make him feel successful he may begin to become more a part of the class. I felt that Gee's suggestions here gave me a better way of looking at what might be happening in the minds of some of the students and one possible way to get them back engaged.

Question 3 - the answer to this question goes back to my answer to question one. in history the key to a successful class is getting the students to make connection and the best learning happens at the point when the students more from simply empathizing with the characters form history to being able to see hoe those characters and their actions have meaning in the students lives and how they the student can take the lessons of history and use them to guild their choices. In history situated meaning is at the hart of every lesson as the teacher I feel that i must get the student to a point where they have the skills to understand what we are learning. they can not learn about ancient Rome if they do not understand the context of the world that this history is happening in. they can learn facts and figures but they will not connect with the subject unless they are drawn into the world in which they exist.

Question 4- I just recently bought a new lap top computer with windows 8. windows 8 is not intuitive to me it does not work like the windows system that I am used to so I have had to do a lot of probing and hypothesizing to figure out how to get things to work. I first try to look at things with the old perspective and I try to find things where they were before. when this fails I consider how things may work now and then I try again. slowly I am beginning to see how things work and once I get the feel for the new look and location of things it all starts to feel more comfortable and familiar.

This week I played the peace maker game because I am curious if it may be something I can use in class. I think that it is an interesting game I felt that it was a good way to talk about this subject. I had some trouble with the installation and it did not work that well so I want to try to play it some more to get a better understanding of how it work and I may try to incorporate it into my lessons.

1. Give an example of 'Just in Time' information presentation in a classroom activity.
 * __ Weeks 4 and 5, Chapters 5 and 6 __ **

In my world history class we are studying imperialization and the division of Africa by the European powers. The students are being asked to role-play one of the European countries that participated in the 1884 Berlin Conference. In groups I assigned the students a country and asked them to spend some time researching the country and its part in the conference. Just about the time when the students began to say what are we doing I gave the three topics and asked them to create a position statement for each topic from the perspective of their country based on what they had learned. This fits the “just in time” idea because if I had given this information to early the students would not have taken the time to learn about the country they would have tried to complete the statement without having all the information they needed. By holding back the topics the students gathered information that helped them to make better statements and it keep their interest longer by giving them more than one task.

2. In a content area of your choice, how might you incorporate teaching in a 'subdomain' of the 'real' domain?

In a history class the students are asked to do a lot of writing assessments. In order to do a good job at this they need to understand how historical writing can be different from other classes. One way to accomplish this is by using a document based question. With a document based question the students are given five or six primary source documents and then they are asked to answer questions and create thesis statements from the information that the find in the documents. This builds the students understanding of the subject and strengthens their ability to write about it. In the end the students will have to answer a more complex question based on the information that they got from the documents. The students are able to build their ability to write a good essay while they gather the information they need to answer the question.

3. Describe a technique that you might use to help students 'transfer' early learning to more complex problems.

The document based question can also be used to transfer the basic learning the students are doing to the more complex writing they will be required to do later. This will be true for the writing that they will do in history class as well as other classes that they may have that require more complex writing. More importantly the skill may also help to build the skills that the students will need to pass writing assessments and in their future college education.

4. Describe a learning experience you've had where one of your 'cultural models' was challenged.

When I began to do my student teaching at first it took some time to adjust to being the teacher and not the student. To go from being the person in the class to learn to being the person who has to teach it requires a shift in who you see yourself as. And it can be difficult to make that transition. As a student you develop a culture of finding ways to pass the class. Sometimes not always learning but passing. When you become the teacher you now have to find ways to combat that attitude that you know exist. Even more so as a student teacher because now you have both goals at the same time and it can be challenging to keep your own identity straight at times.