Jourdan's+Journal

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= Journal #1 =

I have been playing video games since I was young. My dad was the one who brought video games into our household. When he was young he used to play board games and D&D with his brothers and friends. The first I game I really remember playing was Mario Paint on the Super Nintendo. The first game I remember watching my dad play was Warcraft on the computer. I remember asking him to go back to the guy with the “horsey”. The first game that I remember beating was The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. Since then I have played many different games. Legend of Zelda has always been my favorite and I will always have my dad to thank for my loves of video games.

I’ve never really thought too much about the virtual identities I’ve taken on. I don’t often play online games with strangers. If I play something that is multiplayer it is usually with friends. I do enjoy really getting into the story and playing the main character. However I still make choices that are pretty consistent with what I might choose to do in real life. That usually means that poor Link is a serious sissy when it comes to spiders.

I really like Gee’s definition of literacy. I think it’s consistent with my feeling that everyone brings something unique and equally important to the table, just by virtue of being themselves, Gee’s definition of different forms of literacy reminds us that there are so many valid ways of understanding and communicating.

I love the idea of different semiotic domains. I think it validates each activity that uses specific definitions and provides a sense of community for those involved in it. It was fun to think about all the different semiotic domains that I have some or a lot of fluency in. Some of the ones I can think of are video games, programming, literary analysis, hockey, and horses.

The two games that I played this week were Evolver and Ludwig. I played about 30 min of both. Evolver was the first one I played. For the most part they did a pretty good job with the tutorial. They did a good job of providing both a written explanation of what the keys and buttons did and story related instructions. The only thing that tripped me up was when they told me to charge the antenna and weren’t very clear about where the antenna was. I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to charge a control panel before I figured it out. I actually ended up giving up on the game before the demo concluded (I believe) because on the first non-tutorial level, at the very end, I fell off a bridge because I wasn’t paying attention to the light pattern and fell into a canyon. I spent about 5 minutes looking for a way out and could find no way other than starting the level over. Since I was already frustrated that the game kept randomly exiting me out of the game window I decided to give up and try a second game. Ludwig actually ended up being quite fun. I love the sense of humor employed in teaching me how to play the game. There was a great story behind what my character was doing, why he was doing it, and how he got there. I also felt that the controls were relatively intuitive. The only thing that seemed a bit confusing was upgrading my robot but I felt confident that I could have figured it out with more gameplay. I was actually quite sad when the demo ended because the game idea of discovering natural phenomenon was really interesting. I also ended up playing Lego Jurassic World this week. This was the first time I had played a Lego game. The learning curve was actually pretty interesting. Whatever you do, don’t try to play with a keyboard and mouse. Things went much better once I connected a controller. Since I was playing this just for fun I was kind of obstinate and ignored the helpful “DNA guide” which made for an …. Immersive learning experience. Basically by that I mean I punched a lot of things until stuff worked. It was fun. Still not sure if there’s an overarching goal in the game after 3 hours but the humor is fantastic and I have a lot of Lego coins

= Journal #2 =

I actually really love this idea of protective identities and the influence that they have on learning. As I was reading this section in Gee’s book, I thought it would be neat to use “character creation” as a very visual and solid way for students to create a new successful identity in class. As someone who is working to be an language teacher I thought it would be a cool idea if the students in my class created a “virtual’ identity that was good at literary analysis and comprehension. This character of course can have other unique characteristics that the students decide upon to make it relatable to them, but the point is to have them start creating a new identity that is successful in a language arts classroom.

I had a student that I worked with named Ian that struggled with various subjects in school because he didn’t feel that school was useful to him. He had a tough home life that made school feel unimportant. Looking through the lens of damaged identity, he probably couldn’t imagine an identity for himself in which the skills he learned in school actually fit where he thought he would end up. Knowing this now makes me wish I could work with him to create a bridge between his current identity and one where he is successful in school.

My content area is high school language arts. I feel that situated meaning is one of the core element of literary analysis. Looking deeply at how each word is working within the sentence and being aware of each word’s duplicity in meaning is important and powerful. Lessons in poetry specifically area are often quite helpful in getting this idea across.

I actually recently wrote a research paper for a class and this was the first time that I had written something that took a lot of research and reflective thought, but did not compare two or more pieces of literature. It was quite an interesting experience and it did involve a lot of probing and rethinking. I had an original idea of what I thought my critical question would encompass and what I would find to support that, but throughout everything I read I found myself frequently reassessing everything I knew and wanting to know quite a bit more.

I technically played three games, ReDistricting, Mission US and Quandary. However, I really only played the ReDistricting game for a very short amount of time. It did a poor job of giving player feedback which left me frustrated and confused. I enjoyed both Mission US and Quandary because of their plentiful use of narrative. Quandary did a good job of showing me how to play the game for the most part. The sorting of the cards into categories was straightforward and the narrative gave me good clues. However, the part where you are supposed to “influence” some of the colonies opinions with facts was not so clear. I never did quite figure out how to do that part effectively. Mission US was my favorite and I actually sunk quite a bit of time into that one. It certainly encourages a probe and rethink philosophy. I ended up with a “‘negative” result and quick ending quite a few times, but rather than feel discouraged I was more excited to play the game using the knowledge I had gained through my errors.

= Journal #3 =

1. “Just in Time” is the idea or method that new information should only be introduced right before it’s needed. Good examples of this are often found in math classes. A new formula or method is not introduced to a student until right before they are going to use or practice it.

2. Language arts and literature is actually a great example of subdomains of the real domain. The purpose of introducing students to literature is to get them thinking about how what they are reading in class can relate to things that they are experiencing in their daily lives and seeing in the society and culture around them. A good way to incorporate this in the classroom is to have discussions about how the students see themes in their reading that they also might see in another domain of their ‘real’ life.

3. Transfer according to Gee is when a student or learner is required to “call on experiences they have had in other games, adapting them tp the current circumstances”(126). In a language arts class a good way to get students to transfer their learning is to look at a book that they’ve already read (maybe even just for fun) and see if you can get them to find similarities between that book and the book that is currently being read for class. When the students start to make simple connections between the books (maybe both protagonists are the same gender) they then might be able to slowly build deeper and more complex connections between the texts.

4. It was hard at first to think of a ‘cultural model’ that was challenged at during a learning experience, but then I brought my thoughts back to video games and realized I could think of a moment. Skyward Sword is a game in the Legend of Zelda series. It is quite different from any of the other Zelda games because it used the Wii remote as a large feature of the game (unless of course you count Twilight Princess, which technically was on the Wii but honestly you’re cheating yourself if you don’t play the GameCube version). Anyway, in Skyward Sword, your sword actually becomes a rather important tool in the game, much in the same way that a lot of the other items that Link finds in his journey are more than just weapons, but tools to solve a puzzle. I kept forgetting this though and it made for a frustrating experience in solving some of the puzzles. I realized that my old way of thinking of Link’s sword (my ‘cultural model’) was getting in the way of my learning.

The games I would like to talk about for this model are Radix Endeavor, Oncology, and After the Storm. I did not play Oncology for very long. I imagine that part of that was just because I wasn’t interested in the content, but I also noticed that the game did a poor job of employing the ‘Just in Time’ teaching method. It seemed to swamp me with information in a disorganized manner when it came to the mechanics of the game. Additionally, I felt that it often gave poor guidance as to how to receive the optimal results in the contouring scenarios. It was very difficult to find 100% of the cancer. Maybe that was for a reason though?

On the other hand Radix Endeavor is a wonderful example of the ‘Just in Time’ principle. The quests were line up perfectly to provide me with knowledge of my different tools and how to use them, without me feeling like I had to learn it all at once. After the Storm seemed like a neat game as well. I think it might be a powerful way not only to show the aftermath of a storm and it’s impact on the people who live there, but it also gives a good glimpse into the life of working for a Journalism company. What a wonderful way for teenagers to explore that career field!