Tim+Treen's+Journal

=**Week 1 Reflections** = While reading James Paul Gee’s own introductory experiences with gaming, I find myself reflective of my own introduction, for obvious reasons, but especially reflective of my early gaming days when my younger brother and I, like Gee and his son, played games within the //Freddy Fish//, //Pajama Sam//, and //Spy Fox// series. Though not my earliest experiences, those are likely my solitary, haphazard mouse-clicking through //The Manhole// and gripping the grey plastic of a Game Boy in sweating fingers as I navigated Mario in //Super Marie Land//, they made me aware of gaming as a cultural practice. Truly, my early, formative experiences with video games are also those of my brother as we grew up gaming and facing the social stigmas of gaming together.
 * 1. **

As I was introduced to gaming through friends and a forward-looking grandmother, I brought my experiences to my brother, telling him stories about the universes I encountered as we fell asleep in our shared room. As he grew and my means of gaming upgraded from the crowded screen of a Game Boy to the openness of a television or computer monitor, he began to watch and occasionally take part. By the time we reached the //Freddy Fish// stage, we were taking turns playing, sharing our discoveries in a dialect of gaming that confused and sometimes concerned our elders. Also of concern to our elders, especially those who lived in semi-rural settings and valued physical efforts with physical results, was how much time we devoted to our Pokémon or discussing strategies for //Final Fantasy// boss battles. To them, we were wasting our time, and when my brother looked to me for defense, I had yet to develop the language to explain what motivated us and what abstract values we found. How could I? I still struggle to admit that part of what compelled me to stare at a screen for hours on end was the connection I felt with my brother as we shared, compared, and fought about games. Because of our common interest in games, we grew into our own people through our micro-culture and utilized our practiced perspectives in our separate circles.

I am firmly convinced, as sentimental as it is, that my lifelong sharing of video games with my brother played a significant role in creating me as I am today. I teach today because I learned to teach my brother how to play video games. I listen to other perspectives today because I learned to listen to my brother’s alternate views that enriched my own limitations. I focus on the stories because I originally had to explain their complexities to my brother. Even now, with us both adults, he continues to recall to my mind the strategies of years ago and the minor details of stories that somehow alter the entire composition.

From these experiences, I have developed multiple identities within and without gaming. Primary among these is my identity as a teacher, which is largely thanks to the mentor position I held with my brother. This identity revels in the sharing of perspectives and seeks to inform perspectives with the knowledge it holds. This is contrary to the illusory identity I take on when at a LAN party or gaming online, which is rare. The gaming identity is not sympathetic or supportive as it uses the resources of language at its disposal for the purposes of distraction with as many uncomfortable and bizarre images as possible. It is greatly surprising how much these two identities contrast, but like plumage, the aggressiveness of the gaming identity is a constructed illusion meant to create an advantage. Also, the gaming identity is only true for LAN and online play, which almost always occurs in the presence of people who already know the identity is an illusion, making its grotesque incongruity all the more distracting. When playing alone, I typically play chivalrously and feel physically uncomfortable and embarrassed when my avatar engages in some dishonorable act, such as inciting violence through a poorly chosen dialogue option. This latest identity is rather odd, considering that I am almost always the only observer of my avatar’s actions, so my mistakes or moments of impropriety when single-player gaming should not illicit such emotions, but it does support the concept of playing video games being a social exercise. I suppose I am embarrassed for my avatar and the difficult explanations he owes to the NPCs.
 * 2. **

Gee’s definition of literacy is nothing new to me since it is the definition I have been taught in my graduate studies. Because literacy is tied to domains of knowledge and practice, what Gee calls Semiotic Domains, the acts of reading and writing become acts of interpretation and creation specific to each domain. This requires the instruction of literacy to be universal across curricula and time as students engage the multitudes of domains available to them. Even as a Language Arts teacher, this requires me to think of literacy as more than reading and writing. Instead, the type of reading varies from text to text to “text,” opening the classroom to multiple media and genres, and the process and product of writing is often something other than an essay.
 * 3. **

This complexity of literacies requires teachers also to model the various domains applicable to their positions since literacy is a social action as well as a mental one. As teachers model, students will be introduced to the grammars of the domains and practice within them as novices with support from the experienced teachers. This creates a requirement for exemplars of expectations for students to study, mimic, and eventually surpass.

On the subject of Semiotic Domains, one of my most memorable experiences with learning a new domain was my introduction to fencing. Being a nigh ancient sport with roots across multiple continents and languages, the basic language of fencing is surprisingly simple. To begin, fencing is divided into three globally recognized variants: Foil, Sabre, and Épée, each being named for the weapon used. All three weapons are essentially light, thin swords, but unless you want to put a purist in his or her grave, never call them swords. As my teacher said, “the word ‘sword’ is such a crude word; the masters gave these things beautiful names, so use them.” Foil is the most recognized, traditional, and, in an example of design grammar, the most prestigious of the sport, using only a thrusting weapon, an acceptable target area of the opponent’s torso, and a rule called “right of way,” which basically turns the match into a game of reverse tag (a fencer can only score a point when “it”). Sabre is similar to foil in its use of right of way, but lacks its prestige because it allows slashing and targeting of the entire body above the waist. Finally, Épée carries a reputation as the chaotic cousin due to its lack of right of way and full body target area, looking to many like a haphazard flurry of thrusts.
 * 4. **

In the heat of a match, the terms continue to fly. The stereotypical “en garde” and “touché” are part of the vocabulary, but they are never used in tandem since the former prepares the contestants and the latter is the term used for scoring a point, which is usually translated to just “touch,” so called because one fencer touched the other with his or her weapon. Deflecting an opponent’s attack with one’s own weapon is called a “parry,” but a “parry with distance” is the act of dodging the attack with a step back. These moves are usually followed with a “riposte,” which is a quick counter and often the only way to score a touch with right of way. Some of the tactics also have curious names. The harassing tactic of forcefully tapping an opponent’s weapon is called “beating” and the occasionally seen all-or-nothing lunge in which the fencer effectively dives at his or her opponent is called a “fleche.”


 * Video Game Reflection: **

An entertainment video game I played this week was the top-down spaceship shooter, //Space, Pirates, and Zombies//, which was recently modified to //Space, Pirates, and Zombies, and Bounty Hunters// thanks to a developer patch. As a game, I find it delightfully entertaining with balanced controls, dark humor, and a decent level of difficulty. However, as a teacher, I find the game lacking necessary details. Granted, it teaches basic controls such as movement, weapons systems, customization of craft, and navigation through a series of pop-up windows during the first story mission, but advanced controls such as directed targeting, tactics management, and jettisoning armor are only taught through investigation of the control options, random tips during loading, or experimentation with the keyboard. This is fairly unsurprising since the game developers pride themselves in reviving an action sub-genre from the last millennium, which enjoyed a niche clientele at best, thus they aim the game primarily at these niche players who are already familiar with the general mechanics and do not hesitate to research the game’s full array of features. This makes the game friendly only to a core group, but not hostile to others, just neutral.

=<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">**Weeks 2-3 Reflections** = <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">As applied to video games, I find no major argument against Gee’s theories of identities. I often find I am of multiple minds when playing a video game, especially one of the role-playing persuasion. When playing a game, let’s use // Fable 2 // as an example, I know that the virtual identity is the playable character, “Sparrow,” governed by my manipulations and the mechanics of the game (54-55); I know that the culmination of my experiences is my real-world identity (55); and I know that my plans for molding the virtual identity and my reflections upon my progress constitute my projective identity (55-56). However, my brow becomes furrowed when I think about these identities in the classroom.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;">1. **

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">Gee claims that the virtual identity of a student in a science classroom is that of a “real” scientist (60). I disagree. A virtual identity is that which is governed by the mechanics of its environment, so the identity governed by the mechanics of the science classroom isn’t that of an established, professional scientist, but that of a grade-level science student. As an example, professional scientists use their knowledge to formulate a hypothesis, create experiments, reflect upon results, and repeat the process based upon new knowledge. Science students are not usually allowed to engage in these practices because their experiments must be demonstrative of the concepts they are expected to learn. Professionals are pursuing something new while students are pursuing something already accepted and expected. Unexpected results produced by the former are studied while unexpected results produced by the latter are dismissed as errors. This limits the scope of the students’ identities.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">Though real-world identities are not impacted by this discrepancy because they are already established beyond the virtual identities, the projective identities based upon virtual identities limited to a classroom environment are often also limited to the classroom environment. Therefore, the projective identity of a science student is most often going to be an identity in which the student is successful in terms of the course: high grades, teacher compliments, not having to re-take the course.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">This limitation has mixed impact in education. On the one hand, a limited virtual identity makes the domain less intimidating for a student with a damaged identity. However, on the other hand, the limited virtual identity decontextualizes the experience, limiting critical learning and removing long term elements from the projective identity such as future careers. This is not insurmountable by students, but it does require an additional step in the learning process and a secondary modification to the identities involved in learning. By limiting the virtual identity to that of a student instead of that of a professional, students are denied the immediate creation of a projective identity that involves a career or associates with other projective identities such as that of a historian, which spawns the pathway to bioanthropology.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">This limitation of identity is common in Language Arts education because the content area is spread thin at the best of times and made completely irrelevant outside of school at the worst. Many who pursue English degrees in college embody this limitation in that they lack perspective in what career options are open to them, thus they elect to become of the self-serving machine that creates English teachers, or they augment their skills with other experiences to become more viable in our society. As a Language Arts teacher, I try to incorporate long term virtual identities, but this is difficult when so much of what is required is foundational instead of specialized, making the long term options dependent upon success in high school English multitudinous. This seems to be true in almost all core content areas in the public educational system. By no means do I advocate for a strictly apprenticeship-based system, but the system of infinite possibilities requires that most projective identities are severely limited in their span.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">I did not expect that to take so long…

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">As for damaged identities, I appreciate Gee’s definition of such as those in which the virtual and the real-life are at odds, creating an expectation of failure (61). In my own experiences with such “damaged” students, I unwittingly followed Gee’s three necessities for repair: entice the learner to try, entice the learner to exert a great deal of effort, and ensure that the learner sees some success for the effort (61-62). In working with a struggling writer, I enticed attempt and effort by walking the student through the steps of writing with emphasis upon each successfully completed step. For example, when outlining his argumentative essay, I probed for his central claim and reasons for the claim. With each response I directed him to write his thoughts in an outline, building the structure of his essay. As the outline filled with information, he saw the success of his efforts, encouraging further output of effort and intake of encouraging success.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;">2. **

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">Another point of appreciation I found in Gee’s text is the concept of situated meaning. Being an English major for my undergraduate degree and a Language Arts teacher, situated meanings abound in my experiences. As is somewhat evident in Gee’s linguistic foundations, Language Arts is the discipline that is most often burdened with the explanation of situated meanings, especially as they relate to synonyms (pronouns are too easy).
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;">3. **

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">Actually, I must confess that this topic is not solely the responsibility of Language Arts since its most recent incarnation in my experience was through my observation of the Spanish class that shares my room. During the class, a frustrated student exclaimed that Spanish was too redundant and shouldn’t have so many words for the same meanings. The Spanish teacher responded by attempting to give an example in English, choosing “slow” as his base word. After a few seconds of pondering, he turned to me and asked if I could come up with a synonym. I too gave the thought a few seconds, but could not produce a convincing example. No English word quite captures exactly the same generic meaning as “slow.” Enter connotations.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">Connotations, contrasting to the dictionary definition of denotations, are the unstated additional meanings we give to words. They are the moods and the tones of synonymous words that create layers of meaning to writing and speaking. Due to connotations, one must recognize the context of a language act before committing to a specific collection of terms. Context is also the most effective way of demonstrating and explaining the concept of connotations.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">To teach connotations, one could create specific scenarios for language acts, such as speaking to an authority, writing an apology, or scolding a subordinate. The more authentic these situations, the more authentic students are likely to be. However, the creative act is without learning if there is no experience from which to draw. To provide authentic experiences, exemplars could be viewed or read, and students could practice in replacing words with synonyms to see just how integral connotations are to a language act.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">Perhaps the most recent learning experience in which I engaged was downloading and installing a modification for one of my PC games. Thankfully for the purposes of completing this response, I actually utilized the probe, hypothesize, re-probe, and rethink cycle. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">Probe: <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">Having downloaded and installed modification packages for previous games, my initial probe into the experience was rather confident. I began by downloading the folder, a mammoth undertaking for my bandwidth, then extracting the files from the zip folder in which they were stored. As I explored my program folders for the appropriate location to which to send my files, I realized that no program folder carried the name of the game. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">Hypothesize: <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">Not finding my destination folder, I took a moment to collect myself. I knew that I had the game because I had recently played it, but I also knew that my copy was digitally downloaded through the online marketplace and support program, Steam. I then hypothesized that the game folder must be installed somewhere in the Steam directory and tested my hypothesis through a search of the directory. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">Re-probe: <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">This portion of my learning experience was not so simple as a re-probe and a success. Instead, my overall re-probe was comprised of many smaller re-probes, rethinks, and repetitions of the cycle in the space of a handful of minutes. I started by visually scanning the directory for all of the folders, knowing the game would be in a folder, and selected the one I thought most likely to contain my game. The first few attempts were unsuccessful, realized after I thought about the contents of each folder, but after a series of probing cycles, I finally encountered the folder I sought. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">Rethink: <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">This stage was repeated multiple times in my search, but the overall hypothesis was eventually proven true by my multiple searches through folders. When I finally found my game folder, I reflected upon the directory pathway and made a logical rule for future searches: any game downloaded via Steam will save its files in the “common” folder in the “SteamApps” folder in the Steam directory. This rule forms a new hypothesis, which I have already discovered occasionally incorrect through subsequent re-probe/rethink cycles.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;">4. **


 * <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;">Video Game Reflection: **

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;">As previously alluded, a game I played in these last few weeks was // Fable 2 // for the X-box 360. Having played the previous installment, I was relatively familiar with the interface and mechanics of the game when I first picked it up, but was unpleasantly surprised by a few of its foibles. Chief among these were the placement of frequently utilized information displays, such as the area map, in the pause menu and the frequent tips and control explanations at the top of the screen, which exhaust novelty within a handful of hours. Initially, these tips and explanation are necessary as the game does not provide a complete tutorial of all of the game’s elements, but being reminded of the same action that I had taken dozens of time before became rather annoying.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;">Apart from the annoyance of the imbalance of need and supply of information, the game suffers from a contrasting problem from that of its predecessor. In the first // Fable //, the game world felt suitably large and exciting until the halfway point at which time it became small and unexciting with too little to do. In // Fable 2 //, the game world feels uncomfortably large and busy with too much to do, rather, with too much unimportant things to do. A session of play can become bogged down with navigating menus, making sales and purchases of properties and items, and managing the various time-pressure events throughout the world. This is especially true when the world outside of the towns lacks exciting encounters, interesting secrets, suitable rewards, and any reason for travel by foot instead of travel by menu.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;">Overall, the game demands an audience that is patient and willing to trudge through texts and hours of jogging between quests to reach boring plot points and marginally interesting gameplay. Honestly, the only motivations I have for continuing to play are curiosity at what I may find behind a demon door and the desire to become a land baron, owning every property available.

=<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left;">Weeks 4-5 Reflections =

In Language Arts writing units, revision and editing strategies are most often presented as “just in time” information. Since knowing how to reverse outline for organizational clarity and oral read for sentence fluency are of minimal importance during the creation process of writing, such information is most often reserved for the revision and editing portions of the writing process. In fact, good writing instruction is organized according to the writing process, keeping instruction of creation, pre-writing, writing, revision, and editing strategies for those stages in the students’ processes. This not only allows students to focus their energies on the process at hand, but reserves information for when it is most applicable and contextual.
 * 1.**

Again, in Language Arts writing units, subdomain teaching occurs on a regular basis, most often in the form of writing journals. In these journals, students are allowed to practice written expression in low-risk settings, providing compositional practice and a testing ground for new strategies. In my work with my Junior English class, I used the journal assignments as practice arenas for formulating arguments. Additionally, students are encouraged to share what they wrote with the class, which again creates a subdomain experience for formulating arguments. To emphasize the learning elements, the teacher could assign an argument template for the journal assignment, such as “The school should/should not adopt a uniform policy because…,” demonstrating a rudimentary structure for a claim.
 * 2.**

When Language Arts teachers and Social Studies teachers work together, transfer between the two content areas becomes a cornerstone of each lesson. For example, many literary movements were motivated by historical events, so students in a Language Arts class would be encouraged to consider the historical contexts of a story, learned in History, to illuminate its themes. This is especially useful when students have to decipher historical allusions such as those found in wartime literature.
 * 3.**

During my undergraduate learning, I, like a great many students, found my cultural models in nigh constant flux as I learned about the multitudinous perspectives at play in higher education. One particular learning experience occurred in my first year and has permanently altered my perspective on literature and expression: the seriousness of comics.
 * 4.**

Going into my first year of my undergraduate degree, I took a class entitled The History of Comics, thinking it would be an easy transition into the realm of academia. After all, comics, to me, were a simple medium of humor and heroics, so very little //real// work would be involved. However, the moment my instructor entered the room and began lecturing on the content of the course, I realized that matters would be slightly more complicated.

As the term progressed, I found myself bombarded by concepts that I did not always accept. One such concept was that of timing. I thought timing could exist within a single panel, but despite my extensive arguments to support my position, I was still informed of my ignorance and corrected. Often, these corrections were received with a great deal of frustration, especially since the comics with which the class worked were not the superhero stories and Sunday paper funnies that I expected. In fact, such stories were actively shunned and ridiculed, though with a healthy dose of self-criticism as I was to learn later.

Eventually, through a great deal of patience and perseverance, mostly motivated by the fear of failing a course in my first term, I learned the content and developed an appreciation for the material. Furthermore, my cultural model of comics underwent a rapid and extensive evolution as I read more by Art Spiegelman and other writer-artists who used the medium as a means of experimentation and narrative expression. Through reading “serious” comics, studying the artistic techniques of comics, and learning about the history of the medium, I came to realize that I had previously experienced only a minute fraction of the medium, and a terribly oppressed fraction at that. Even more, I found parallels between comics and the budding medium of video games, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

By the course’s end, I had been transformed. I had skirted the edge of fringe artistic culture and learned the basics of a new medium. More still, I realized that the short stories and novels from my high school Language Arts classes were only a limited perspective of storytelling. Comics were an addition to that perspective, and with comics came a can of worms that promised to open the means of storytelling to existing media, such as video games, but also to hereto unknown media on the horizon.


 * Video Game Reflection:**

In these last few weeks, I returned to one of my favorite and longest-played series of games, //Fallout//. Feeling only slightly nostalgic and desiring to re-experience one of the most fascinating introductory sequences found in a game, I chose to play //Fallout 3//. Though I find it mechanically and thematically inferior to the later //Fallout: New Vegas//, //Fallout 3// offers a unique take on the tutorial.

Perhaps inspired by //David Copperfield//, or by the shift in engine and perspective from previous installments, //Fallout 3// begins with the main character’s birth and teaches the basics of the game’s mechanics through key points in the character’s childhood, paralleling the player’s learning with the characters as both literally take their first steps together. This also allows the player to create the character in RPG fashion through real-life-like devices such as determining a newborn’s sex and career aptitude tests.

This treatment of the tutorial concept continues beyond the initial learning quest. Though optional, a series of early-game quests in which the character aids an enthusiastic author write a survival guide to the post-apocalyptic wastes serve as additional tutorials in the game’s more specific and complex elements such as dealing with radiation and scavenging for food. Completing these quests awards the player with experience points and items, further motivating the learning process, but also supplies a humorous narrative that supplies even more motivation. Furthermore, the learning is made contextual, making it more effective, and its integration is so thorough and rewarding that even experienced players are willing to replay the tutorial elements simply for the rewards. In essence, //Fallout 3// takes a massive step toward making learning unrecognizable in video games.