Stephani's+Journal


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


 * Describe your background and history with video and computer games.**

I have been playing video games since about fourth grade. I used to play most often with my step-brother who was very into video games and introduced me to them. We played games like Sonic on the Sega and Mario and Donkey Kong on the Nintendo 64. Before this I played every once in a while at my granny's house; she had an original Nintendo with Super Mario and the duck hunting game. However, playing video games has always been a social activity for me. I do not often play games alone; I just don't have the want. I thouroughly enjoy playing games in social situations, especially games that involve dancing or moving with the Kinect for XBox360 or the Wii, which I own. I have never really gotten into playing computer games. I find it difficult to use the keyboard as a control and get frustrated with slow operating speeds. The only game not on a console type system I have really enjoyed playing is Angry Birds.


 * What are some of the real and/or virtual ‘identities’ you take on?**

I tend to become more violent and competitive than my normal self when I play video games. I become frustrated easily and lose my temper at times, so I do not usually play for very long to prevent getting grumpy. This is an identity that I am aware of and try to keep in check. As for avatar identity characters and such, I have never made one that does not simply represent how I look, like my Wii Me. This is mostly due to the fact that I do not play role playing type games so I have no need to make an alternate identity for myself.


 * What impact might James Paul Gee’s definition of ‘literacy’ have on your teaching?**


 * What experiences have you had learning in new ‘semiotic domains’?**

In the gaming world, I am usually an imaginary world type of player, like Mario and Kirby. However, my boyfriend is a serious gamer and prefers the Xbox360 first person shooters and fantasy role players like Modern Warfare 3 and Kingdoms of Amaleur. This is a new semiotic domain that I have been introduced to, and coerced into learning more about. I have actually enjoyed it, though. I am a curious learner. It is interesting to learn the vocabulary of first person shooters and to submerge myself in the intricacies of the gameplay on the screen. They are much more complex than the games I am used to. I "die" often and have to constantly readjust my shooting and control my tendency to panic when people are shooting at me. Now that I play, I have even experienced the external domain of Xbox360 shooter games with my boyfriend and have accompanied him many times to Gamestop, which is a huge part of the external domain.

How might virtual and projective identities be important in your teaching?
To me, virtual and projective identities are all about buy in. What can we do as educators to get students to buy in to the identity we construct to make them successful? In an English class, teachers ask students to take on the virtual identity of a writer, a reader, a detective. In order for students to make use of those identities, we have to emphasize the values that go along with that identity. A writer is detail driven, creative, precise, and focused. When students write for me they become these things and take on that role. They have to project this identity onto themselves. They must embody the hopes and aspirations of a writer, to have the push to publish their work and earn public praise. Once they push their identity to this level, they believe they can be a writer and push themselves to do great work.

I had a student that didn't believe he could be a successful student. His real world identity was an unitelligent teenager with no reason to try anymore. I had to work very closely with this student to reconstruct this identity and prove tohim that it was not fixed, but could change into the identity of a successful student. No other identity could be taken on until this real world identity was changed. Until he believed he could do accompolished work he would never buy in to the virtual or projected identity of a writer I explained above.
 * Describe an experience you’ve had in teaching a student with a “damaged” identity.**

The first example that comes to mind are words with multiple meanings, like run. Run can mean run for an election, can describe the motion of water, the motion of a track star, or the action of a motor. The precise meaning of the word run would depend on the situation. In order to make students grasp this concept I would have pre-written sentences, or situations, and have blanks where "run" would be inserted. After run was inserted, I would ask the students if this made sense. Situated meanings seem to often be intuitive, and students often know the situation os correct or incorrect just by hearing it aloud. This concept could then be applied to other words, and even to other concepts entirely that require certain situations, like in grammar with verbals. Verbals can be used as action verbs in a sentence, but verbs can also function as nouns, adjectives, or adverbs in the right situation, like the fallen tree, or I like writing.
 * 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.**

Teachers need to be constantly using this cycle to evaluate their lessons and practices. I recent experience with this is homework. Students have been turning in incomplete homework or homework that did not follow the instructions whatsoever. I would grade it down, return it, and the student would choose not to redo the work and just take the poor score. I made a hypothesis that if I simply did not grade it and told them to redo it, then perhaps this would encourage them to complete assignments and follow instructions BEFORE they turned it in knowing that they would receive no credit for it at all otherwise. So, I announced to the class that any incomplete homework or assignments that failed to follow instruction would not be graded, but handed back unscored. I have had students asking more questions about doing assignments correctly and turning in work that exemplifies a greater effort that before. This has caused me to think about my homework practices and evaluate further. What can I do to increase the quality of their work even more?
 * Describe a recent learning experience that involved using the probe, hypothesize, re-probe, and rethink cycle.**

= = = **Weeks 4-5 Questions (Chapters 5-6)** =

**Give an example of 'Just in Time' information presentation in a classroom activity**. ====Big projects, like book reports ad research papers, need to be presented with the "Just in Time" concept. Last trimester I gave students a large research project. There are many steps to this project. On the first day that I assigned this project I went over the whole thing part by part. I saw that students were glazed over with too much information. I wanted them to see how the whole project would come together, but I knew that the one overview would not be sufficient and I would have to go over each individual part in more detail as the due dates for separate parts came up. I did this, part by part, giving detailed instruction on each subsection as they came due and had much more success and understanding. This is difficult, though, when students are absent or pulled from class for different activities because if you give the information "Just in Time" and a student misses a middle chunk, later chunks of information may be more difficult to process. The good thing about this concept is that if you give the information "Just in Time" is does not take long to give individual instruction to students who were gone because you have broken down the info into small and quick chunks to be taught quickly.====

====I think a good way to relate this to the classroom would be taking pre-tests. The pre-test would be a subdomain of the post-test, a practice test that acquaints students with the format and information of the post-test, but has either fewer or no consequences on student grades. I have done this in my classroom with good results. Not only do students learn how to study for the post-test, but also students are far less anxious about taking the post-test because they at least know the format and are left to wonder about less. This in turn lets students focus on putting their knowledge on the paper and worry less about freaking out just because they are testing.====
 * In a content area of your choice, how might you incorporate teaching in a 'subdomain' of the 'real' domain? **

====An example that comes to mind is in grammar. Adjectives are often tricky, especially when they don't look like the adjectives we first teach students like red, big, selfish and such. We teach students that adjectives come right before the noun that they modify and are different from verbs and adverbs. However, in later grades we introduce verbals- verbs that function as adjectives, nouns or adverbs. This seriously throws students for a loop. They have to transfer the knowledge they know about adjectives to a new situation we previously told them didn't exist. Leading them through this transfer is difficult, and the best moment is that "aha" moment of discovery when they realize that the verbal is working to describe a noun, not the action of the sentence. Students often discover this when they write their own sentences attempting to use verbals and getting it wrong the first few tries. I like letting them work in groups and then coming to me to check the sentence. If it is wrong, I tell them to go back and look at what words modify what other words and have them rework the sentences. When they get that "aha" moment, the transfer has been made.====
 * Describe a technique that you might use to help students 'transfer' early learning to more complex problems. **

I have made many new friends in college that I never would have before. There is so much diversity in a university that I could not help but have my cultural models challenged. Two friends come to mind: one who is a few years younger than me and cute and high energy and one who is older than me and a bartender and Burning Man participant. The younger one at first seemed like one of those young, party going girls that would annoy the crud out of me, however, she turned out to be very mature for her age and has become one of my best friends. I had a cultural model of what I expected her to be like, but it was challenged. The older one scared me to death at first with her outgoing, forthright personality and wide array of life experiences that I would never have even dreamed could occur. I had never even heard of Burning Man before. But, under all that spunk, she is a loving and truly devoted mother who cares for her husband and children more than most mothers I know. I expected her cultural model to be against motherhood and devotedness, but she challenged that model and combined them. it seems like cultural models, if I am understanding them correctly, are a lot like stereotypes. Working against putting people and things into preconceived notions of cultural models is one of the hardest things to learn and the hardest to teach to avoid.
 * Describe a learning experience you've had where one of your 'cultural models' was challenged. **

This week I played Mario with my boyfriend. I love Mario, especially the Wii version of Super Mario, but playing multiplayer always seems like a good idea at first and then I end up getting frustrated. The other player gets in the way, does not allow the screen to advance and ends up killing me more than I kill myself most of the time. I have to slow down or speed up according to the other player, and this gets annoying and I just want to stop and play by myself or watch. A good game that works well with two players is Rampage. The screen is fixed in one area and you cannot really prevent the other player from doing much. You are both on your own, but accumulating one score. I think simpler games like this work better for two player options. I will have to keep this in mind when I create a game later in the term for our final project. I need to make sure that students can play at their own pace and not be held back by others, or at least as little as possible.
 * Video Games of the week: **

On another note, I love my Mac, but it frustrated me this week when I was looking for an educational game to play. There were quite a few that I could not play because they were PC Only games, like Re-Mission. I went through four different games that looked more advanced and had better graphics and more complex controls until I settled on a less fancy game for lack of time and increased frustration. I ended up really liking the game I chose, which was an invasive species simulator, but it was not my first choice.

Weeks 6-7 Questions (Chapters 7-8) *Extra Credit*
I feel that the **“Psychosocial Moratorium” Principle** is most applicable in my classroom. Learning English grammar and writing rules is very difficult and takes practice without penalty for children to feel that they are comfortable with the material. By reducing penalty and giving only guidance we show students that we are interested in their advancement, not just their score. Some students take much longer to reach their goals than others, so penalizing slow learners is unfair. If you penalize students in the learning stage they often give up. By using this principle of reduced or no penalty for repeated practice we encourage students to be unafraid to make mistakes and encourage them to learn from those mistakes.
 * 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?**


 * Game of the week**: I played Minecraft on the xbox360 with my boyfriend this week. It is definitely an interesting game. The graphics are simple, yet the game make-up is so complex. It is a sandbox builder game, as Brandon puts it, in which the player mines stone and gems and such and turns them into useful objects and shelter. The game gets more and more advanced as you collect more advanced mining material and turn that material into more advanced tools and resources. The objective of the game is to advance to further worlds via portals you find while mining. The final world has a dragon you must defeat. Other than that, it is a game like Sims that you simply live and build and advance your character. It can be played in single player mode or multiplayer mode with other players online. You can invite other players to your world to help you mine and build. While the game is fairly simple, it is ridiculously addicting to mine and build your own materials and shelters. There is a certain sense of pride that comes from seeing something built from the ground up.