Cristy's+Journal


 * Cristy’s Reading/Gaming Journal **


 * Week 1 Questions (Chapters 1-2) **

My earliest memories of playing games include playing chess on my dad’s computer on a black and green screen and playing Donkey Kong on the Atari when we visited my grandma. I loved playing games with my dad and I saved up my allowance to get enough money for a Super Nintendo and games. My dad and I also played computer games together. One of my favorites was Zork where you just typed and didn’t actually see anything on the screen.
 * 1. ****Describe your background and history with video and computer games. **

In the middle school, I entered public school (I was homeschooled 1st-5th grade) and it didn’t seem “cool” for girls to be playing video games. I became overwhelmed with schoolwork and real world responsibilities over the years, and I haven’t had/made as much time to play games anymore. I still love to play Zelda games, and I’ve been working on Skyward Sword for a long time now. My husband always tries to get me to play games, either on my own or with him, because he is a big gamer, but I always feel like it’s a “waste of time.” Maybe I could benefit from playing more.

I’m a mother, a wife, a daughter, a pug owner, an educator, a WOU employee, and a WOU student just to name a few of the many hats I wear. I also have a blog called Fussy Buns: Living with Multiple Food Allergies at [|www.fussybuns.com], but I choose to not disclose my name.
 * 2. ****What are some of the real and/or virtual ‘identities’ you take on? **

I used to be a middle school ELL (English Language Learner) Teacher, so literacy is very important in my field. It was my job to teach students how to read and write in English. I think that it is important students not only be able to read the words, but also be able to think critically about what they read. It is interesting to think about literacy and thinking as social and cultural activities. Working with students from other cultures than my own, thinking about literacy in this way could help me better understand how a student is interpreting something. It could allow for better communication if different perspectives are taken into consideration.
 * 3. ****What impact might James Paul Gee’s definition of ‘literacy’ have on your teaching? **

I think one example of a semiotic domain I have learned is Spanish. I have studied Spanish for about 15 years and used it in a variety of settings: banking, education, and medical. While studying in Spain, I learned that certain words have different meanings than in Mexico. Since some of the words I used every day in Spain meant something vulgar in Mexico, I have to remember who I am talking to and where they are from when I am speaking Spanish so as not to offend anyone.
 * 4. ****What experiences have you had learning in new ‘semiotic domains’? **

I have many funny stories of learning Spanish. While working for a credit union call center on the Spanish line, I spoke with members mostly from Puerto Rico, where a branch was located. I remember one time a person called asking for a “préstamo de guagua,” which I understand to be “baby loan.” Very confused, I explained that we didn’t offer “baby loans,” but only mortgages, car loans and personal loans. Somehow the person explained that “guagua” meant “truck” in Puerto Rico. I had only heard it used as “baby” and so was very confused. Fortunately, the man’s loan was approved!

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">This week, I tried the game demo “Evolver.” I chose offline play and selected the character, Rosa Espada. I had not played a computer game in quite a long time and did not remember which keys were used for movement, so the tutorial was helpful. I thought there was too much text though and the voice was difficult to understand.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.5;">5. This week's game review **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">I was not able to play this game for long because I started to feel very nauseous. My husband said it’s a common complaint that first person shooter games cause motion sickness for some people. It’s interesting because I don’t get carsick, but I could not continue playing this game. I thought the movements were jerky and awkward, but maybe that’s because I wasn’t very good at controlling them.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">I think it’s important for the player to have a high interest in the game or they won’t bother to read and learn all the rules, the same as engaging a student in the classroom. I noticed that the machine in the game beeped if I submitted the correct answer and if I got the answer wrong, it beeped louder. This was not a huge incentive for me to want to get the answers correct. I wasn’t very interested in prime numbers and was feeling quite sick, so I didn’t like this game at all. I am doubtful that students really like this game either, but I would be interested in their feedback.

=** Weeks 2-3 Questions (Chapters 3-4) **=


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">1. How might virtual and projective identities be important in your teaching? **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">I used to be a middle school ELL (English Language Learner) Teacher and taught English through multiple content areas: Literature Arts, Social Studies, and Science. Although science class was typically a challenge for my students because it was almost like learning another language in addition to English, it also was fascinating because so much of their learning involved hands-on activities. I remember how excited my 6th graders were to learn how to act like a scientist before I even took them into the science lab. As the students took on their “virtual identity” of scientists, disruptive behavior I had experienced in my classroom (almost) entirely disappeared in the science lab. They behaved in the science lab in ways I had never seen before. They were ready to try experiments. They were sucked in. When it came time to dissect worms, for example, there were a few students who chose not to participate. Their “projective identities” would not allow them to take part in an act they felt was morally wrong. These students were not exempt from doing any work, but I respected their decisions and realized it was a difficult choice for them.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">“If children are learning deeply, they will learn through their projective identities, new values and new ways of being in the world based on the powerful juxtaposition of their real-world identities and the virtual identity at stake in the learning” (p.63).


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> 2. Describe an experience you’ve had in teaching a student with a “damaged” identity. **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">I would say that the majority of my students (grades 6-8) had “damaged” identities in one regard or another. Of course the severity was complex and some of the factors included were: their level of English proficiency, age, time spent in the US, ethnicity, whether or not their parents spoke English, how academically prepared they were in their first language, etc. Some common complaints I heard from ELL students were that they just didn’t “get it” when it came to learning, they didn’t understand what the teachers wanted, and they felt like outsiders compared to their “mainstream” peers. I attempted to create a culture of community in my classroom where students could not only learn the language they needed to help them be successful in school, but also strategies for “surviving” as a second language learner in the school and real-world. I tried to make the work we did in the classroom interesting and relevant to their lives, so that they would be engaged and willing to put forth the effort. It just also made their work more meaningful and enjoyable.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> 3. Give an example of a situated meaning in your content area, and describe how you might help students gain a more embodied understanding of it. **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">I certainly taught many ELL students how to look up words that they didn’t understand in the dictionary, but simply reading or copying the definition did not help them truly understand it. They may have been able to guess or match the definitions to the words on a test, but this would not show that they truly grasped the meanings. We did a variety of activities to help students learn vocabulary. For example, before going into the science lab and giving students dissection tools, I pre-taught the names of the tools and explained what they would (and would not) be used for. After checking understanding, students were taken into the lab and instructed to use a specific tool to do a specific action (after demonstrating this of course). Once students were guided through a dissection, they were able to explain what they did and what they learned by using specific vocabulary.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> 4. Describe a recent learning experience that involved using the probe, hypothesize, re-probe, and rethink cycle. **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Recently, I played //Torchlight 2// on the PC for the first time. I had not played a role playing game in quite some time and the world seemed chaotic to me. I didn’t understand anything that was going on, despite the pop-up tutorial windows and tips. I //probed// the virtual world by using the mouse to click on enemies and to pick up treasure and moving the character around. After playing for awhile and making my hand tired from all the clicking, I formed a //hypothesis// that the game would punish me for clicking on just anything, even if it appeared to be treasure. I continued to click away and //reprobe// the virtual world. Sure enough, a treasure chest attacked me and clicking on something (I’m still not sure what) caused my character to be enveloped in a cloud of green poison that damaged my health. I //rethought// my original hypothesis and accepted it to be true. It is more efficient to just hold down the mouse button and pay attention to what I am clicking on.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> 5. This week’s game review **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">This week I played two government games from iCivics.org: //People’s Pie// and //Win the White House.// //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">People’s Pie //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> is a budgeting game that teaches students how to control the US budget. The tutorial explains that controlling the budget is like a balancing act and it’s important to keep the citizens happy. Arrows with text explain what the different parts of the screen do. By changing the amount of taxes and retirement age, you can see how happy the citizens are as well as the budget total before accepting the policy. The next section of the game is making funding decisions and honestly, I thought this part of the game was very confusing. What I took away from the game is that it is impossible to keep everyone happy and not go into debt. I don’t think I successfully completed the game, but it would be interesting to know how it is supposed to end. //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Win the White House //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">teaches students how to run a presidential campaign by fundraising, polling voters, making appearances, and running ads. After creating your candidate and selecting your political party and hot issues, your campaign manager takes you through the Primary Debate. Although the tutorial shows how to use the different features of the game, I was often confused, always out of money, and eventually lost the election. I selected High School+ as my grade, but it would be interesting to go back to see how the game is ran for a student in elementary school or middle school. I made so many choices as a player throughout the game that it would be interesting to replay to see if the results were any different.

Weeks 4-5 Questions (Chapters 5-6)
An example of “Just in Time” in the classroom is the strategy “I Do, We Do, You Do.” For every skill I attempted to teach, I would first demonstrate how to do it, then we would practice it as a group, and finally the students would practice it on their own (or in small groups). I would be there to guide students if they had questions or made mistakes, but ultimately the students needed to practice the skill in order to learn it. They would not simply achieve it by listening to me tell them how to do something.
 * 1. **** Give an example of 'Just in Time' information presentation in a classroom activity. **

As an ELL Teacher, my class was a “subdomain” of mainstream classes. I taught my students the basic vocabulary and grammatical forms needed to be successful in their content area classes. In my Sheltered Science class, for example, students learned the vocabulary necessary to complete a lab and during the lab, we practiced specific grammatical forms. I had to explicitly teach the language, so that they could use it in the “real world.”
 * 2. **** In a content area of your choice, how might you incorporate teaching in a 'subdomain' of the 'real' domain? **

At the beginning of a lesson, I helped students identify their “Prior Knowledge” and reflect on previous lessons through a variety of self-assessment tools. We also did activities to give students some background information before we delved into a new problem. For example, from past experiences dissecting a worm, students anticipated how to carry out other dissections such as a starfish or crawdad.
 * 3. **** Describe a technique that you might use to help students ‘transfer’ early learning to more complex problems. **

When I played //Papers, Please// by Lucas Pope for my educational game review, I wanted to follow each rule that was presented daily. I was on a time crunch and needed to make enough money to keep my family members alive, so I started doing what needed to be done just to survive. I took bribes, approved entry for people that should have been denied, and didn’t take the time necessary to inspect all documents. In the “real world,” I do not consider this to be acceptable, but in the virtual world of Arstokzka, I saw no other way to survive. I’m not sure the game rewarded me for making these decisions because my family members still ended up dying on day 8.
 * 4. **** Describe a learning experience you've had where one of your 'cultural models' was challenged. **

5. ** This week’s game review: ** This week I played //CSI: Web Adventures The Experience.// I chose Case 1: Rookie Training (Beginner) and played as a guest. I liked that I was able to choose where I wanted to begin and selected “Medical Examiner.” I was surprised there wasn’t any audio. I’m not used to games not having any sound effects or music and I think that would have made the game more interesting. Maybe there is music once you move beyond the tutorial.

As a former ELL Teacher, I liked that the important vocabulary was shown in red and there were pictures in addition to labels for the tools to select from. If I selected the wrong tool, it would remain highlighted red so I could remember not to choose it again. Some text boxes disappeared before I had a chance to finish reading them and I think this would be challenging for an ELL student to follow along. There were several opportunities to practice the skills being described. There was also a warning that the practice autopsy on a dummy would be very graphic. I appreciated the warning, but it was very tame. There was also an Epilepsy Warning when I first clicked on the Case 1, which I thought was interesting.

Weeks 6-7 Questions (Chapters 7-8) *Extra Credit*

 * 1) **In a content area of your choice, give an example of a way in which the 'affinity group' "enforces certain patterns as ideal norms".**
 * 2) **Describe a classroom activity where students are able to 'leverage' the 'distributed' knowledge of their peers.**
 * 3) **How might you give students more direct control (as an 'insider' or 'producer') over their own learning?**
 * 4) **Which Principle of Learning do you feel is most-applicable to your teaching, and why?**
 * 5) **<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This week’s game review **