Ruth's+Journal

Week 1 My first video game system was classic Super Nintendo, which still travels with me where ever I go, along with it's classic games Super Mario and Donkey Kong. After newer systems began being released I tried to find the entertainment and satisfaction that I got with the SNES, but atlas I did not fare well in the third dimension. In fact I took this class because my husband is thoroughly engrossed in (console) video games, and I have in fact come to dislike them quite a lot. I don't dislike them for the content that most critics have brought to light (the violence and misogynistic themes found in some games), rather I become upset with, really, how effective the games are at drawing him into another world that he can get lost for hours on end. There are benefits and drawbacks to his hobby (one that is shared by millions of people). First, I see it as a great way for him to interact virtually with his (real life) friends that live thousands of miles away. On the other hand, I think it is a place where he can be social without ever having to leave the house, which I feel is problematic. The video game systems have replaced any reason for him to seek out any other human interaction because he can experience it all through the television. My second concern is with the time he spends engaged in these activities without knowing it. If he is really into a game or after a specific goal, he can spend unaccounted hours in front of the television without a recollection of how much time has actually passed. It becomes a very solitary behavior in which he hones out the rest of the world. Although I think it would be wonderful for our students to be able to constructively pass an entire day in the classroom without dreading the long hours that they are there, I also fear that the more and more time they spend in front of the computer the more disconnected they become with the real world. And where there is an argument for all of the ways that video games simulate real life, I feel that it is exactly that, a simulation, and that nothing can replace a real life experience in a child's education. Of course this is all coming from a visual artist's perspective, someone who would always prefer a hands on project to one based in cyber space. So ultimately, the reason why I took this class is to develop a better appreciation and understanding of the benefits of video games and how they could possibly be incorporated into my tactile classroom someday. At the present time I don't take on, what I would consider, any virtual identities. Although I have a Facebook page, I do not update or interact consistently with it and primarily use it as a means of communication with people I am unable to see on a regular basis, like friends or family. In reality, I feel that my identities are limited too, because for the time being my life is so consumed by one primary occupation, being a student. So I identify myself as being an artist, a (soon to be) teacher, a wife, and a student. These are the things that occupy all of my time and what I enjoy doing the most, which to me is what constitutes and "identity".
 * Describe your background and history with video and computer games.
 * What are some of the real and/or virtual ‘identities’ you take on?

I really appreciate and agree with Gee's definition of literacy. I believe that there are certainly more than one ways of being literate and most of the time there are more than one way of being literate in a specific discipline, or semiotic domain. With such a strong emphasis on literacy in schools today (which I think mostly center around linguistic literacy), our classrooms are having to get more creative in the content that they are teaching because in a lot of cases a teacher who does not primarily teach language arts will have to incorporate more reading and writing into their classroom. This is all important, but what I think we as educators, and certainly myself, need to keep in mind is the fact that literacy goes beyond reading and writing and can come to include the understanding of technical terminology, processes, and deeper meanings of theories and ideas that lie within a content area. When evaluating my students literacy, I need to remember that just because they may not be able to spell or read something correctly does not mean that they are not partially literate in that subject area. An example that Gee used in the book was that a rap artist may be able to devise beats and lyrics for a song still means that he his literate in some areas of music even if he/she can't write the lyrics down or map out the sheet music for the instruments used. So then what is being literate? Must someone understand all of the components of a semiotic domain to be considered literate? A similar situation presents itself to me every day in my art class. I have to evaluate whether or not my student have achieved an acceptable level of literacy by looking at not only their work of art (whether or not is successfully conveys what the artist meant for it to) and whether or not they can give their reasoning behind why they created what they did (do they have the verbal and linguistic capabilities to justify their creation)? Both are important aspects in creating art and they can be looked at separately or simultaneously in order to determine a student literacy in that certain art form.
 * What impact might James Paul Gee’s definition of ‘literacy’ have on your teaching?

Well I think the newest semiotic domain that I have experienced most recently that has involved the highest learning curve is the field of education. Since beginning the MAT program last June I have learned so much about a field that I had only had one perspective of before, and that was as the opposite role than I am taking on now, being the student instead of the teacher. Although I may have had a vague notion of what it is like to be a teacher, I had never experienced it for myself and was certainly not aware of all the jargon and intricacies that went on before and after you, as a student, leave the classroom. This is especially true in the world of being an Art teacher. Although I never thought this would be a walk in the park, I figured if I had enough passion for the craft that it would come easily. Just like any other teacher, we have to put in just as much time and effort into lesson planning based on the standards, we have to devote hours into researching and honing our knowledge of the lessons we are presenting, we have to prepare the materials for our students to use, frequently having to create a new project to have as a visual aid for our students to use. It is most definitely not clock in and clock out kind of job, your work follows you home, you are constantly learning new things yourself, and there is always a innovative, novel method of teaching out there for you to explore. On top of all the new practices I have learned about, the vocabulary that accompanies educational speech is extensive and unique all on it's own. For the first semester of my program I learned a lot, but I struggled a lot too with professors using word, acronyms, and theorists that I had never heard of in their speech like everyone should know this. This is something that I will take not of in my practice, unless previously explained and assessed for comprehension, never assume students know any domain specific vocabulary. The likely hood is that they do not and you will lose your students very quickly in a lecture if they do not know what you are talking about.
 * What experiences have you had learning in new ‘semiotic domains’?


 * My experience with video games this week is pretty limited to what we played in class, which only included Resilient Planet. I did enjoy the primarily because it did walk me through step by step what I had to do in order to accomplish the tasks it set out for me. I understand that this type of hand holding could be a little frustrating for seasoned gamers, unlike myself, who would have more of an instinct to explore the game on their own, but for me and possibly for younger students, which I believe the game was targeted to, the clearly defined directions were helpful. I also notices and liked that the game used repetition in both it's verbal and non verbal direction to help the player better understand the learning target and goals of the game. I am sure this is standard on most games, but for this one, it was very explicit, however not obnoxious at all. I really enjoyed the education video game and hope that we get to practice more with them in class.


 * Week 2**

In teaching, the influence of the teacher onto the student has a strong impact on how the student feels about him or herself. When I am teaching, if I am projecting a positive, creative identity towards my students, they are likely to reciprocate that attitude in their own lives, therefore becoming more positive and creative in their artwork. If I consistently say that everyone is an artist, despite a good number of students grumbling that they can “do” art, my intent is not for them all to become professional artists or create perfect works of art, but for them to put forth an effort in their work and hopefully develop the belief that they are not doomed to fail, but that their thoughts and ideas are just as valid at anyone else’s in class. Ideally, they can take on the alternative identity of a practicing artist and begin to think and develop ideas outside of the box, therefore developing skills that professional artists use every day along with just about any other profession out there. When a student expresses outwardly having a damaged identity, it breaks my heart! I have experienced one student in particular that struggled with extremely low self esteem due to bullying and intellectual disabilities. I assumed that by me offering encouragement and positive affirmations, she would begin to see herself in a better light, however the more I tried to encourage her, she constantly found ways to counter act my feedback by passing it off as sympathy or finding a way to say “yeah but….”. Although this student truly had a gift in art, she struggled in other areas of school and convinced herself she was doomed for failure (and she was only in 8th grade). Unfortunately because I was not in the classroom very long and this student missed a lot of school, our interactions were inconsistent and infrequent.
 * How might virtual and projective identities be important in your teaching?
 * Describe an experience you’ve had in teaching a student with a “damaged” identity.

Like I said, these types of students who are at a disadvantage due to the cookie cutter educational experience they are forced to participate in, break my heart because most of them want to succeed but have a difficult time keeping up with their peers. I truly think that some of these students would greatly benefit from a peer or “Big Brother/Big Sister” relationship that would help them see that they are smart and can succeed if they put their minds to their goals and keep a positive attitude all of the time. After my experience with this student and after attending a number if IEP meetings, I have developed a desire to help these children out either through tutoring or volunteer with an organization like Big Brothers Big Sisters. I want these children who come from disadvantaged situations to know that they are valuable. A situated meaning that I can think of immediately are not words but rather the tools used in pottery. One of the great things about artists is that generally they are very resourceful and can use just about anything they can get their hands in an alternative meaning than what it was originally intended for. For example, while working with clay, people often use forks and knives to make texture and decorate objects; however in another context, say the kitchen, these tools would be used for something vastly different. These situated uses are best understood and developed through hands on experience. To simply explain these uses to someone who has only one concept of what a fork and knife are used for the concept might be confusing, but once students can use the tools hands on they will develop a much deeper understanding of their function in the context of pottery. Although this learning experience happens for every teacher, every semester, it was very evident to me as I started out taking over my mentor teacher’s class. Every semester teachers get to learn about a new set of students, all with their own challenges and management techniques to adapt to and “learn how to play”. The process is very similar to figuring out playing a game in the way that Gee describes when it. At the beginning of the semester, when the teacher experiences a new group of students, he/she will probe the situation. They will begin evaluating what type of student they have in their classroom, they will identify students who might be challenging and others who they can use to their and the classrooms advantage, such as students who are willing to share and help their peers. In one of my classes, I identified a handful of students who would be particularly challenging. They will immediately begin hypothesizing how they will work with this group of students and develop different strategies about how they will make their classroom function as smoothly as possible. I initially thought that by starting out stern, but not authoritarian, would show them that I was to be taken seriously and that just because I was a student teacher didn’t make me any less of the manager of the classroom. Over time, I realized that this was not going to work with these students, most of them continued to act out and be disruptive in class. I then had to reprobe my situation and determine new techniques that I could use to obtain different results. After I tried different methods of interacting with these students (being more personable and receptive to their requests) I was able to realize what was going to work and what was not. Every day I try something new with these students to see what will get them to work and not interrupt those around them.
 * 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.
 * Describe a recent learning experience that involved using the probe, hypothesize, re-probe, and rethink cycle.

Again, because I don’t really play games, my primary experience with gaming this week was from class. I played the Mission US game based on the Revolutionary War which aimed to teach players about the difference between the patriots and the loyalists in the American colonies. I was not as impressed with this game as I was with the Resilient Planet, Mission US was to boring for me, i.e. not interactive enough. The primary activity you were involved in is reading character dialogue and clicking your way through a relatively simple town map. I played the game for an hour and it did not seem like it was going to move into anything more interesting than it was offering off the bat. So over all I would say Pro: the game has interesting information that it delivers to the player and helps them better understand the history and loyalties in early America, Cons: you aren’t able to interact with your surroundings very much or move around the map and explore anything besides very specific targets. If I was an antsy middle school boy, I don’t think this game would capture my attention for very long because it would does not challenge my mind or desire to problem solve not nearly enough.
 * **This week in gaming…**

**Week 4/5**

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

I think “just in time” information occurs frequently in the art classroom. In some cases, projects have many steps that students need to follow in order to make a successful final product. If all of the information was given to them on the first day they were introduced to the project, by the time they got to step six they will likely have forgotten how to perform it accurately or at all. For example, the work sample that I am doing right now is teaching the students how to make clay rattles but in the mean time we are also creating stamps to decorate our rattles with and we are also learning about different cultures who use rattles in their society. The actual clay rattle construction is more than a week into the unit so if I had given the students the steps to create the rattle and how to accurately attach the two sides on the first day, by the time we got to making the rattle I probably would have had the majority of my students performing the task incorrectly. Too much time would have lapsed for them to remember all of the crucial steps they needed to know by the time we got to the rattle construction. Therefore I present important information to my students when they need it so as not to cloud their mind with information that they have no use for at the time. And although this process of learning makes sense for all ages, I think it is especially critical that we teach our youth this way because they are still learning how to process and organize information in their brains and we cannot expect them to know how to put all of the pieces of the puzzle together as naturally as we can in our adult minds. I do have to admit, though, that this has been one of my biggest hurdles while I have been learning how to become a good educator. I forget that the students have never done the process that I am teaching before or that they do not know how to devise the simple paths that I can see without explicitly instructing them how to do so.


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

So as I understand the concept, a //subdomain// is an experience where the learner develops knowledge for a task by first completing it in a sort of training session, where they can then move into the larger (real) domain and use that skill to help them be more successful. If my understanding of these concepts is correct, I like to use this technique when introducing my students to clay. I think the idea of working with something three dimensional is a fun and exciting prospect for students who have been working with pen and pencil for a majority of the time, but clay can be challenging, especially for someone who has never used it before. So I like to put my students through a sort of “training session” before I introduce them to the larger project, so that they are better prepared to handle the possible complications while using the material. For example, with my clay rattle project I introduced the students to clay by having them make clay stamps. Although they were not explicitly aware of it, I was allowing them to get the feeling for the clay and to get an idea of what handling the clay was like (ie. the drying effect their hands had on the clay). They were working on a much smaller scale than they will be with their clay rattles so it was easier to recover from mistakes and they would learn how to fix them if the same problem presented itself during the bigger project. In this way, the //subdomain// would be the clay stamp, the introduction to a new material. This would then lead them to have a better understanding of the clay itself and how to work with it when it came time to enter the //real// domain, the making of the clay rattles.


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

What I teach in the art room relies periodically on earlier learning and is often coupled with new concepts that the students then use to create their work of art. Initially, the students learn about the elements and principles of design. The elements are explained to them as the foundation or building blocks of how one creates art. People use these and apply them to the principles of art to convey their thoughts and intentions. Therefore, the elements can be looked at as the “early learning” and as we go through the semester they have to use this early learning and apply it by using the principles of design (the more complex problems). I help my students transfer those earlier lessons to new projects by giving them multiple opportunities to practice what they had learned in a multitude of ways. For instance, one project later on in the semester might have to do with combining the elements shape and color and transferring that knowledge into a project that uses pattern and movement. Later, another project might cover movement and emphasis, therefore allowing students multiple chances to practice their earlier learning and transferring what they know from other projects to new ones in an interesting, unique way.
 * **Describe a learning experience you've had where one of your 'cultural models' was challenged.**

Although this learning experience was not in a video game itself, it has revolved around video games. It has been the learning experience that I have had while taking this class. As I mentioned before, I came into this class trying to make sense of the spell that video games have on some people, initially not putting much value into them or their ability to be used as a learning tool. So talking a class that was meant to shine light on the usefulness of something I found to be relatively useless was quite a challenge to my cultural model. However, after listening to a few lectures and experiencing how far educational video gaming has come since my experience with the Oregon Trail, I can now see that there is value and credibility to many of the educational and some of the entertainment games as well. And although I still do not advocate for people (namely my husband) to spend endless hours in front of a TV or computer monitor, I now understand that it is not because the game has magical power over an individual but that because video game developers have found certain psychological principles that they use to engage our minds into their world and it can often be difficult to break free from those created domains. I do hope to see that as our society is moving more toward digital media that they invest in quality educational gaming, but also remember that nothing can replace person to person interaction. I would like to see both forms of learning interwoven together, with groups of students working collaboratively on things like web quests and educational video games. It would be essentially the use digital media coupled with real, face to face dialogue and discussion, just like our class has been doing.


 * This Week in Gaming:**

This week, while looking for educational games that might work with my content area, I found a game on the internet called A Closed World. The website describes it as “a digital game that deals with queer issues, something that's very uncommon in games right now.” The game begins with a monologue of a woman posing the question of how much of your life is affected by the one important question of whether you are male or female. Upon choosing your preference, the next screen gives you directions on how to play the game. While you play the game, you wonder around a forest and interact with demons, which represent people in your life. You interact with them by having conversations regarding your sexuality. The goal is to defeat them before you “lose your composure” (ie the amount of life you have). You combat their negative words by either interacting with them using logic, passion, or ethics. Each of these will either reduce the amount of life they have or they will reject what you throw at them and you will begin to lose composure. I did not play the game all the way through, but I thought this game would be a good tool to teach and reinforce tolerance and the students might have to create a work of art based on a time in their life where they encountered adversity or hardships.