David+Miller's+Journal

=**Week 1 Questions**= 1. My oldest video game memory is of watching my mother play the original //Legend of Zelda// for the NES. It wasn't until we had a Super NES that I recall playing any games regularly, but once I did it became a very significant pastime for me. I was a big fan of the Nintendo classics like //Donkey Kong Country//, //Super Mario Kart//, //Yoshi's Island//, etc. Nintendo was always my primary frame of reference for video games, but my taste gradually became more omnivorous. I have owned every Nintendo home console that has come out since those days, as well as the Playstations 1-3 and an Xbox 360. On top of that, I enjoy strategy games like //Civilization// and //StarCraft// for the computer, and I was pretty big into //World of Warcraft// for a few years. Suffice it so say, I know about games.

I consider myself a gamer by habit, but I don't really feel connected to the "gamer community" as much as I used to. A lot of the regressive attitudes of male gamers of my generation are really off-putting, and sometimes the mainstream feels like it's dominated by first person shooters (one of my least favorite genres). I'm still a big fan of Nintendo, but I've also been getting more into independent/alternative games lately. I don't know how many hours a week I put into gaming, but it's a lot.

2. Like most people, I have different identities based on different social circles I inhabit. I have an identity within my family based upon my genetic relationship to every other member: oldest son, big brother, cousin, nephew, grandson, and so on. I have an identity based on my relationship with friends and primarily that refers to the things we do together, like our common recreational activities, shared interests and living arrangements, etc. I have an identity as a teacher which is defined in a number of ways: the subjects and ages I teach, the school/district that employs me, and my relationships with other teachers and colleagues.

On a large scale, I have identities that are relevant to my position in the broader society. I am white, male, heterosexual, cisgender. I am a natural born U.S. citizen. I am a Californian (but also an Oregonian?). I am irreligious. I am a native English speaker. I have a college education. I have progressive opinions. All of these identities matter at some point or another as I relate to other people in society.

On the more personal side, I have identities that are more relevant only to myself and those closest to me. I consider myself an intellectual. I consider myself a gamer. I consider myself a writer. These things don't really matter in the big scheme of things, but they're important to my own understanding of myself.

As for virtual identities, as a video game player I am of course accustomed to vicariously living through dozens of different alternative identities. On social networking sites and blogs, both of which I do some activities on, I am experienced in crafting profiles and avatars, something that definitely crosses over with video games. On the internet, my identity draws somewhat from other aspects of my real life, but perhaps the biggest component is my opinion on various issues, because the internet is above all else a medium for the exchange of ideas.

3. Gee's expanded definition of literacy is very important for understanding and explaining the challenges that many students have with different types of texts and different classes. I think that, as a history teacher, it is necessary for me to have a full understanding of the kinds of texts and materials I am using to teach my students. I will need to expend a lot of energy not only teaching "content" to my students, but also teaching them to become fluent in the language of social studies classes at whatever level they've reached: different types of sources, the linguistic habits of textbook writers, the effect of bias on the meaning of words in historical accounts, etc. The skill to properly read historical documentation is just as important as the knowledge of what a particular document describes as historical fact.

4. One new domain that I entered into somewhat recently was working as an English teacher abroad, in South Korea. If teaching is one big semiotic domain, then it is composed of several sub-domains, and I found myself in several new ones working there: teaching ESL, teaching younger students than I was accustomed to, teaching content areas I was not experienced in, etc. In addition to simply doing my job, I had two new cultures to deal with: Korean culture, with all the bureaucracy related to immigration and housing as well as my interactions with ordinary Koreans; and the foreign teacher ex-pat community. The foreign teachers were largely Americans but not exclusively so, but they were united by similar experiences and they interacted in particular ways. Living there I had to acclimate to different means of travel, different social customs of politeness, different foods, a different language, and of course different prevailing notions about teaching methods and practices. In short, my identity as a "foreign teacher" in Korea was quite different from my identity as a "teacher" in the U.S.

5. I tried to check out all the educational games for Windows that were assigned this week. The first I tried was //Ludwig//, a game that I thought had an interesting premise. However, I was put off by two things: the somewhat sluggish controls, and the overly intrusive tutorial cut scenes. I have always found it somewhat unproductive when a tutorial takes the control out of the player's hands, especially when it does so every few steps just to tell me something that I could easily learn while still being able to move around. I also thought the menu screens were a little too dense to be effective at teaching science in conjunction with the "main game". It's a shame though, because I wanted to like the game more, as it looked like an intriguing world to explore.

I had more fun with //Evolver//. The tutorial sections felt less intrusive, and I thought the player control was decent, though I couldn't figure out how to turn down the mouse sensitivity, which was way too high. Getting the controls just right is very important for enjoying a first person game, and the "sweet spot" is a little different for everyone. The gameplay was really easy to pick up, and the puzzles were straightforward yet appropriately challenging for their math-teaching goals. On a different note, I appreciated how the player could choose characters of different genders and ethnicities for their avatar. That kind of representation is much needed for education in STEM fields, and it just feels more inclusive for students.

I tried to play //Fair Play// as well, but it wouldn't load properly in my browser. Weird.

On my own time this week, I mostly played two games: //Earthbound// for Super NES (emulated on my Wii U) and //DuckTails Remastered// (also for Wii U). I've been playing //Earthbound// for several months now, and I finally finished it this week. It's a classic role-playing game, though really atypical in a lot of ways that are surprising, and force the player to sometimes use novel strategies. For example, one of the characters has an ability in battle called "pray", which usually has random effects. Sometimes it heals all the characters, sometimes it causes negative status effects, etc. It's generally not worth using often, but I found myself losing badly to the final boss, so I started using "pray" in the hopes I might get a few health points back. To my surprise, it damaged the boss, and every subsequent use did exponentially more damage, until I finally won the fight. //Earthbound// is full of situations like that where solutions to problems and puzzles are rarely repeatable, and different enemies may require very different strategies to defeat.

//DuckTails// is a more straightforward action-adventure game, where gameplay consists in collecting things (key items and money), navigating obstacles, and defeating enemies by jumping on them. It is quite difficult, as you only get a very limited number of tries before you have to start over from scratch, so there's a lot of repetition involved. I did manage to complete one of the six levels so far this week.

Lastly, I'm not sure if some will count it as a "game" or not, but I use Duolingo every day. It's a web program for learning foreign languages, primarily through translation of text to and from the target language. The program tracks your stats and rewards your progress with currency to exchange for items from their store, like special courses and cosmetic doodads. I'm currently using it to learn Spanish, German, and Irish, which believe you me is quite a challenge. Any foreign language teachers who might be reading this, I encourage you to find a place for Duolingo in your curriculum.

=**Week 2-3 Questions**= 1. I think it's very important to keep in mind how a student's "virtual identity" in the classroom is influenced by their "projective identity", and in particular the way that projective identity is influenced by their other virtual identities. When we teach multiple subjects in a school, we are asking students to shuffle through multiple specific identities (within a larger identity of "student") in the course of a day, every single day. It's important for teachers of one content area to validate all of those identities, and that's where I think interdisciplinary lesson plans are helpful.

2. In my first student teaching assignment I had a girl in my class who had a reputation for being antisocial and for not participating in class. As a result she was socially unpopular and marginalized within the classroom, to the extent that some students even decided to mock her openly in front of me. I think her identity as a student was "broken" in the sense that Gee uses this term, as her attitude suggested that she subscribed to other people's notions about her. Finding a place for her in the various group activities I had planned was difficult, because she did not want to participate even with students who agreed to accept her in the group: there was too much mistrust. Interestingly, at the time my assignment ended, she told me that I had been one of her favorites for the few weeks I was there, because I had gotten her to do some work. I found it interesting that she considered that the mark (or at least a mark) of a good teacher: her discomfort with the school environment was not due to an aversion to learning, and so an identity as a student was still in the realm of possibility for her. I suspect this is the case for many students who don't fit easily into the roles the school expects them to play.

3. A term with situated meaning in social studies might be "source". In general language it means an origin point or even a cause, but in history (as well as journalism) it refers specifically to a witness, an expert/authority, or a physical representation of the knowledge/opinions/culture of those people. Understanding the distinction between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources is important to making good accounts of what happened in history. It's also important that students understand that "source" typically does not mean "cause" in history: one might say "having children was the source of all my miseries", but this does not comport with how "source" is used in history.

4. Living in South Korea, I had to use this method a lot to figure out a lot of things, because I could not understood the written language. Printed directions were not useful to me unless I could find a translation in English. This was problematic when I tried to perform sensitive tasks like withdrawing cash from an ATM. I had to use what knowledge of the Korean language I had to navigate menu screens, until I could locate the button that translated to English, all the while being careful not to give any commands I might regret. In the process I improved my (still meager) command of Korean, and learned to identify words like "language".

5. I played a little bit of //Civilization V// this weekend, which is a game I love and hate in about equal measures. I am not skilled enough at it to play at high difficulty levels, and I am very particular about how I like the history of my civ to play out, such that if a war goes badly for me and I lose even a single city, or I am blocked by another civ in my attempt to access a resource, I will probably quit. I think acting that way is probably having a negative impact on my improvement.

I've nearly reached the end of //DuckTails//, but I haven't played it as much as I wanted to because my friend and I moved into a new apartment over the weekend.

I also played a lot of //The Cave// this week, about which I'll say more in my entertainment game project.

I played all the advanced levels of the //ReDistricting Game//, and I have to say it was kind of fun. It also made me feel a little icky when it asked me to perform wanton acts of gerrymandering, and rewarded me for subtly thwarting the will of the voters. I almost would say it put too much of a smiley face on political corruption. The interface was simple, and I think with a little demonstration most students would have no trouble jumping right in.

//Mission US// was interesting, and I liked how it had a way of making players choose how to act in particular moments. The story is pretty linear, so in a sense your choices don't matter a lot, but on the other hand it allows the player to consider a historical moment from multiple perspectives.

=Week 4-5 Questions= 1. In a social studies classroom, "just in time" information would probably take the form of data that can be used as evidence in a specific question. For example, in a civics lesson on the operation of the U.S. presidential elections, students would probably begin with certain background knowledge of the electoral college, including the requirement that the winner receive an actual majority of votes. This knowledge, however, is not sufficient to explain the outcome of the election of 1800, where both of the top two candidates failed to achieve a majority. When asked to speculate how that election was decided in real history, the students may not be able to draw the correct conclusion, until they are referred to the specific section of the Constitution which says that in the event that no candidate receives a majority, the House of Representatives picks the next President. That information is irrelevant to most elections and only becomes important in particular historical cases, so it makes sense to introduce it when discussing particular cases.

2. Historical linguistics could be considered a "subdomain" of history, and across any significant time span in history one can always talk about changes that take place in a given language, or the evolution of one language into a daughter language. In many cases, this evolution mirrors significant events and movements that are important to the larger domain of history. I personally like to incorporate historical linguistics into as much of my teaching in history as possible.

3. One important skill in social studies is the ability to read maps (also an important skill in many video games, of course). A good map of course is usually more than just a picture of a territory: it includes certain kinds of visual iconography that convey meaning beyond what is apparent in a realistic view. In this way, maps are similar to many single-panel comic strips. A teacher who wanted to teach map literacy might begin by demonstrating certain kinds of iconography in the context of narrative panels, before introducing the same images in map-reading assignments.

4. Speaking of comics, I have always enjoyed reading them. However, I was brought up with a bias against the idea that comics could be read as literature; in my mind, they belonged to the category of "fun" and not "serious content". Before I entered college, I was aware that comics (and other things like television and other pop cultural media) were sometimes studied in college classrooms, but I fit this information into my schema by thinking of these classes as "easy" classes designed to boost attendance or give students a breather from more important work. One of my first college English classes, however, challenged this assumption directly. We read comics by Joe Sacco, whose works are undeniably literature; for credit I went to see a lecture by Scott McCloud, who directly made the case for comics having literary potential, as literary merit was found in content and not "form". This substantially affected my previous cultural model, which assumed that certain prestige forms of media were more important than others.

5. I did not get a chance to play any of the educational games listed for the journal yet, though I plan to check them out before the end of this week. I played a lot more of The Cave, in order to see all of its myriad endings. I also played my choice for the educational game review (Pandemic II) quite a bit, in order to get my head around all of its mechanics.