Sam's+Journal

Week 1 Journal Entry
I started playing video games in the early 80’s – anything from Nintendo Game & Watch’s “Donkey Kong Jr.” to programming – from a book – pages of adventure game code into my Dick Smith VZ200 computer using BASIC on rubber keys and saving them to cassette tape:
 * Describe your background and history with video and computer games:**



Video games have always been a form of entertainment for me – just like movies and TV – simply another option whenever I get the opportunity to blob on the couch; I think for many of us in this generation, although we might not label ourselves “gamers”, we’ve always been //around// video games.


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

My real world identities include teacher, faculty support, student and father. The first two involve patience, understanding and the ability to keep up on technology. The third involves keeping my head down, doing the required work and donning a cloak of invisibility from my family. The final role involves getting angry and shouting at my kids ;)

Although I have taken on many //virtual// identities, from stealthy assassin to corrupt dictator of an island nation, I can never seem to stray my virtual identity’s morals and decision making too far from my own; so although James Paul Gee states that “different characters/identities lead to different ways of looking at, feeling about, and interacting with the (virtual) world” (Gee, 7), I find that even my role-playing avatars are very similar to myself, both physically and ethically. Games in which the player can decide to take the path of “good” or “evil” (notably, the Fable series) are becoming more popular, although I can never seem to bring myself to play the part of the “bad guy” – as fun as it initially sounds.


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

James Paul Gee’s definition of literacy as a multimodal understanding of the domain of video games could have an effect on my teaching; I teach a class on PC Basics for students who are new to the world of computers, so they are not at all familiar with that particular domain – requiring me to try to introduce new terms in comparison to previous technologies they may already understand (reading hard disks is like a record player, etc). In learning computers, we are often required to use familiar words in unfamiliar contexts (windows, mouse, etc.) so it would certainly be helpful to ensure that “meaning is both context and domain specific” (Gee, 26).


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

Home-brewing beer is (I think!) a fine example of a semiotic domain. At first, learning about brewing beer was strictly a passive consumption of content; I browsed and studied multiple books and websites, confused by the terminology and intimidated by the idea of the process. It wasn’t until I began to actually apply some of that content into a hands-on setting (in which I white-knuckled it through the actual steps of beer-making start to finish) that the content began to make sense. By joining Internet forums on the topic, I was able to create affiliations that furthered my understanding of this semiotic domain, which prepared me for future learning on the topic. Example; I did not truly appreciate how fermenting beer at a higher than normal temperature could adversely affect the outcome – despite having read it multiple times. Unwittingly, I fermented a beer at higher than recommended temperatures, and when I finally tasted it, and physically encountered the off-flavors that resulted, I truly learned that “lesson”.


 * Weekly Video Game Reflection:**

//Betwixt Folly & Fate://

James Gee tells us that “if learning is to be active, it must involve experiencing the world in new ways” (Gee, 31), and what better way to experience history than through the eyes of those who lived it? That’s the purpose of Betwixt Folly & Fate – and despite being clunky to control and graphically rudimentary, it is a fairly successful approximation of an historical role playing game. Gameplay is similar to any RPG, and contains mostly fetch quests using conversation trees. Controls are muddled, but thankfully there are shortcuts to get from one area of the map to another. The game seems to rely heavily on text, with only minimal use of recorded voice-work.

To be honest, this game would not compete with, say, Bethesda’s Oblivion series, but if I were a student in middle school, playing this game would certainly be preferable to worksheets or textbook readings – though it doesn’t grab your attention in the same way as //The Oregon Trail// – but that may be nostalgia talking.


 * Works Cited**

Gee, James P. //What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning & Literacy//. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print.

Week 2 Journal Entry

 * How might virtual and projective identities be important in your teaching?**

I feel it’s important for students to feel they can succeed in education by projecting an identity onto themselves, and subsequently following through with the belief that they can //become// that identity. I teach at the community college level, so many students enter our programs due to either failure in the role of high school student, or a breakdown of their former job (displaced workers, lay-offs, etc.) – and these students are here to create //new// identities for themselves. As Gee states, these students must be “willing to see themselves in terms of a new identity, that is, to see themselves as the kind of person who can learn, use and value the new semiotic domain” (Gee 54).


 * Describe an experience you’ve had in teaching a student with a “damaged” identity.**

Many of my students have damaged identities – either through being laid off from their jobs, or because they are coming back to school after domestic violence or high school failure. One student in particular had never been to college (or, indeed out of the house) before, due to a difficult domestic situation, and could not really see herself as a college student. I found myself constantly providing reassurances that her questions weren’t “stupid”, and that she wasn’t “dumb” for “screwing something up”. Her identity was wrapped up in those prior identities that had been created by her domestic situation. However, eventually she became more positive about her actions, and as her skills increased, she became more outgoing and confident – I now see her around campus continuing education, and really embracing the new identity of student. But previously, she had been “projecting an identity onto [her] virtual character based on [her] values” – but her character/identity in the class was that of her previous identity, not that of a //student// – so the “game” or class, in this case “taught [her] about what such a character should or might be and become” (Gee 53).


 * 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.**

Gee claims that situational meaning can arise when “past experiences serve as guides for how to proceed in new situations” (Gee, 72) – but what if we are introducing concepts in which the student has no prior experience? In my basic computing class, I talk about computer hardware such as “RAM” – Random Access Memory. I tell the students it helps you run multiple programs at once. I tell them that it is a temporary storage solution. I show them a //picture// of RAM – but what I don’t show them is what it means in a situated manner. To change this, I could perhaps bring in a motherboard and show them how RAM fits into the dedicated slots – I could pass a stick of RAM around the class so they could touch it, and check out the details. We could compare one type of RAM to another – to determine which speed each is. Rather than text and images alone, I feel the addition of a tangible item could help embody the concept – perhaps even allowing the students to each try snapping in a stick of RAM to exemplify “dialog as engaged action” (Gee 85), rather than just dialog alone.


 * Describe a recent learning experience that involved using the probe, hypothesize, re-probe, and rethink cycle.**

I will revert back to my previous semiotic domain of home-brewing and describe a recent experience using James Paul Gee’s cycle. The process of making beer is one in which this cycle occurs often – the difficulty comes because the feedback you receive on your experimentation doesn’t take place quickly, but instead, takes months to figure out what went right or wrong with your decision making process. I recently “engaged in the action” (step one – probing) of fermenting beer at room temperature in my house. I had done so previously and it had turned out great – so I repeated the pattern. The last time I brewed, however, it was a lot colder (winter) and it’s now spring, so the temperature was naturally higher. When I finally got to drink the beer (6 weeks later) it contained off-flavors like banana laffy taffy and cinnamon (urgh!). I hypothesized (step two) that because the beer had fermented at a higher temperature (the only variable I could think of) that the higher fermentation temperature had caused the off-flavors – well, that and a few Google searches! I re-probed the world (step three) by creating the same beer, but fermenting it in a fridge that kept it cooler during the process – hopefully to get the effect of better tasting beer. After waiting another 6 weeks I popped the cap and re-probed the beer – it tasted great! I have now changed my original hypothesis that fermenting at room temperature was OK – it certainly wasn’t! Unfortunately, unlike video games – the process took about 3 months. Imagine pushing the jump button on Super Mario 3, putting down the controller, coming back 6 weeks later and finding you jumped into a fireball. Oops.


 * Weekly Video Game Reflection:**



This week I went retro and played the remake of Prince of Persia HD on the Xbox 360 arcade. James Paul Gee reminds us that “when the character you are playing dies in a video game, you can get sad and upset, but you also usually get ‘pissed’ that you (the player) have failed” (Gee, 80). I can tell you that I got “pissed” a lot while playing this game, rather than sad or upset, when my character died. Unlike modern titles, there is little emotional attachment to the silent but acrobatic characters in Prince of Persia, but they do die a lot. It’s a fun game – and has that “one more try” card in spades, creating a good kind of stress, alongside the feeling that you can do it if you just take another shot – but unlike newer games there is no sort of connection to the main character or RPG elements that make it a complex learning experience.


 * Works Cited**

Gee, James P. //What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning & Literacy//. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print.

Week 3 Journal Entry

 * Give an example of 'Just in Time' information presentation in a classroom activity.**

In one class activity – we discuss and perform the actions of file management. I //could// stand up the front of the class and lecture on the process of creating and saving files, but instead I “drip feed” the instructions as I walk throughout the lab monitoring everyone’s progress. At each stage of file management, there are many ways to get lost or confused, so issuing “Just in Time” information as the student needs it (both to the whole class and individually if needed) allows everyone to complete the steps – rather than be told everything up front, and then expected to repeat it first time on their own.


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

James Paul Gee explains subdomains as “training modules [that] are built as simplified versions of the same world in which the player will live, play, and learn” (Gee, 123), and his Tomb Raider example is a sound one; another situation in which my students find themselves in a subdomain is while training in the computer labs. I teach PC Basics, so users are unfamiliar with the machines, and often fearful of computer technology when they begin the class. In the lab environment, they still have the ability to learn the controls, how the computer works, and what actions the buttons perform, but with the safety net that if they do “mess something up”, our “Deep Freeze” software will restore the computer back to its original state. In the real computer “domain” – if they make a mistake, it can be difficult to correct, and can cause a lot of stress and panic – in the subdomain of the lab environment, they are safe to experiment before they enter the true domain of the workplace.


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

Transfer is when a student is required to “call on experiences they have had in other games, adapting them to the current circumstances” (Gee, 126). The students in my video editing class experience something like this, when they get to the end of all the weekly assignments, and have to create a documentary film themselves. While the assignments are heavily guided, with many steps laid out on how to complete the task, the final project is not; students are given guidelines, and then expected to create a complete video using the skills they have learned. What they find is, that “while school sometimes sets up problems so that earlier solutions transfer directly to later ones [as in the weekly assignments] this rarely happens in other situations” (Gee, 129). In the weekly assignments, they have a set idea of exactly what I am expecting, but in the final project, they have an idea of their own that they must somehow create using their previous skills – many of which need to be adapted because of the new “problems” that arise when not following strict guidelines.


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

According to Gee, our cultural models usually run on “auto-pilot”, and only occasionally, “when cultural models are challenged or come into conflict with other such models, then they can come to people’s conscious awareness” (Gee, 150). In the video game world, this is becoming more and more common. A specific example, in Tell Tale Games’ “The Walking Dead”, you are given many choices that challenge your cultural model. In video games, we normally think nothing of pulling the trigger – we do it more often than any other action, and spend hours mowing down faceless, nameless enemies. However, in The Walking Dead, there comes a time when you are given the option to shoot the child (Duck) of a main character who has turned into a zombie. Obviously, the “right” decision (in the zombie world) is to shoot anyone who becomes infected, however, this is a character you’ve become attached to throughout a couple of episodes, and shooting the child seems monsterous. However, I went against my own personal cultural model and did the “wrong” thing for myself, and what I thought was the “right” thing for the game. But inside I felt sick and guilty about it – and the other character never truly forgave me. Going against my cultural model to do what I thought was expected of me was wrong both personally, and for the game! Oops! That’s why you save frequently I guess…


 * Weekly Video Game Reflection:**

Gee reminds us that “there are times in a video game where players recognize they are learning” (Gee 124), as opposed to the best games in which “learners are not always overtly aware of the fact that they are ‘learning’” (Gee, 124). The CSI: Web Experience was definitely one of the former. From the beginning training, it felt like science class – although the “slides” were short and concise, there were still many school-like functions, such as the end of level “exams” that made me well aware that this was an “educational” title.



In reference to different learning style accommodation, the game was strangely quiet, and was very much focused on text/images alone… although there were cases of fun audio effects, it could certainly have used some narration. Like many point-and-click style games (which I enjoy) it used the probing principle, required players to search the environment for clues and solve puzzles using inventory items.

This is by far the most enjoyable and professional “educational” title I have played this term, although it still felt lacking due to the absence of narration – but that could be because of the web-game format restrictions. Once the “training” missions are complete, it feels far more game-like, which is saying a lot for an educational title!


 * Works Cited**

Gee, James P. //What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning & Literacy//. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print.

Week 4 Journal Entry

 * In a content area of your choice, give an example of a way in which the 'affinity group' "enforces certain patterns as ideal norms" / Describe a classroom activity where students are able to 'leverage' the 'distributed' knowledge of their peers.**

In my digital video class, students collaborate to create a video as a group, each taking on a different role. Together, they form an “affinity group” that has a common goal of creating a video which re-creates a classic movie scene. The main affinity group is comprised of a handful of students, each taking a different role, but other affinity groups combine when members with the same role combine their efforts. For example, all of the “composers” will often collaborate on sharing free online music resources, or, as they listen to samples for appropriate music, they can also keep their ears alert for something required by their partners.

As a student, working collaboratively on a project is an excellent way to let “other people and various tools and technologies do some of our thinking for us” (Gee, 196). Not every student needs to be an expert on each aspect of the video (music, filming, acting, editing), but they can share the load and use Internet technologies to combine their forces. For example, one student is in charge of finding Creative Commons music online and citing it correctly (using an online technology, Knight Cite, to do so), while another is in charge of filming the content, the others acting, and finally, one student edits it together.

What makes this useful for future students, is that each student must leave a trace of their tips and sources for others. If we have 5 groups, that’s 5 different Creative Commons sites that can be referenced by others in the future. This collection of resources grows from one term to the next, based on the input of students only.


 * How might you give students more direct control (as an 'insider' or 'producer') over their own learning?**

I would like to encourage my students to “to be not just passive consumers, but also active producers” (Gee, 208), by having them analyze and subsequently created their own movie trailer and upload it to YouTube. Many of my students are familiar with movie trailers, but would never think they could make one – however, producing a trailer from an existing movie uses many of the editing skills we learn in class, and would definitely put the learner in the role of “producer” rather than just “consumer”. Actively watching a movie trailer to see how they’re edited is very different from just passively consuming it – with the techniques they pickup from this analysis, I feel they could easily produce their own cuts from existing movies, and share it with the YouTube community.


 * Which Principle of Learning do you feel is most-applicable to your teaching, and why?**

In my online editing course, I feel that Dispersed Principle is most applicable to my teaching style. Students are required to search the web for audio/visual resources and “the learner shares it with others outside the domain […] some of whom the learner may rarely see” (Gee, 212). While the students never really “meet” each other, they all benefit from this pooled wiki of resources. They don’t directly benefit (or benefit at all) from adding to the resource pool, but as a whole, they all benefit from the shared resources.


 * Weekly Video Game Reflection:**



This week I played “On the Ground Reporter”, a game which feels very much like a multimedia CD-ROM title from the 90’s with high production values. After a lively introduction sequence, I was quite excited to play, but like the CSI game last week, there is a lot of reliance on reading text, although the videos have colorful narration which breaks up the reading. Frustration set in early with the strange navigation/control scheme that felt at odds with normal movement, but the discovery (finally!) of a translator made the game easier. After being blown up and seeking medical aid (just in time!) I became stuck between two people that would not talk to me – and with the limited options, I almost gave up. Scanning the screen for clues eventually led me to a backpack, containing items I could use to bribe people into talking with me, however, I never felt as if I was actually having any impact on the game world, as there were no real decisions or puzzles, just a progression.

Frustrations aside, I felt I learned a little about Darfur during this experience, although the “game” elements were loose, and it was certainly “on rails”. There was not a lot of the “probing principle” at work here, although you could argue that trying to find the right pixel to click on is probing – I find this the downfall of many point-and-click adventure games… searching for hot-spots isn’t really a puzzle!

The game also features many crossroads which only give the player the //illusion// of choice, and you soon realize you’re “playing” basically a lecture on the problems found in Darfur, rather than making any decisions as a player. Overall, like many educational games, it was disappointing, but seemed more accomplished graphically than most.


 * Works Cited**

Gee, James P. //What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning & Literacy//. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print.