Victorias+Journal

=Week One= = For this week's game I played Betwixt Folly and Fate because I am coming from a social studies background. I really liked that this program was developed by Colonial Williamsburg so that students could understand what a colonial village looked like and how people behaved without having to go across the country. Along with this, I really thought that this program would be a good tool to compare and contrast this experience of Colonial Williamsburg with a primary document from the time period so that they could see where the game is correct and where it is not as detailed about how life was for groups, such as, free African Americans = = Overall I am much more comfortable with playing computer games over video games. The only Xbox game I have ever successfully played is this game called Siberia from a couple of years ago where this lady goes to a world of auto toms and tries to find the last of the mammoths. I really liked the story and the graphics. However, most of the time I like to play games where there is a mystery involved in that you have to solve by discovering clues throughout the game. A couple of years ago I also really liked to play games like Jane’s Hotel and Cake Mania where the object of the game is to provide some service in a certain amount of time ; in order to, earn a certain amount of money. = = My virtual identity is typically my real identity. Usually my username reflects my name so that if there are people I know in the room, they know it’s me who is in the room. Typically my virtual identity is my account through Facebook, the games on Facebook, and my email. = = One of James Paul Gee’s ideas of literacy is that people develop ideas about literacy based on their social background (Gee, 2007). Gee believes that as readers we connect literacy based on how we view the piece of literacy (Gee, 2007). The example that Gee uses is that people read the bible in different ways (Gee, 2007). A person can either read the bible as a guide to appropriate behavior or as a historical document (Gee, 2007). Gee’s ideas of literacy is clearly visible in my class. It is amazing what students can come up with. One day I had them read a letter written by a flapper and I had interpretations all over the board. The two most common was this is a liberated woman because she’s going out dancing with guys to she’s a person with loose morals because she drinks. I think this example clearly shows how different our students can interpret a reading based on their social background. = = Gee writes that video games are an example of visual literacy because of the variety of symbols involved in the game (Gee, 2007).Students have to be able to read the maps featured in the games to figure out where they need to go to achieve their mission and they must be able to identify symbols to determine their significance in terms of the game to be successful. = = The experience that I have had with semiotic domains has not been extensive as I am sure Gee would advocate there needs to be in the classroom. I do try to have lots of visual photos about what we are learning, but I don’t typically use graphs or people in the classroom. Print literacy is still a very important part of the classroom that I am student teaching in. However, I can see the benefit of including more semiotic domains in my class. = = =

Week Two

= = =For this week I played both of the social studies games. The first game I played was the Mission US game. I thought that this game would be useful as a review tool before a class, but I didn't really see what the point was of the game itself. There was also alot of information that seemed ............ beyond the scope of a history class and overly broad. I really liked the second game called redistricting. It was fairly easy to understand what I needed to do and pretty easy to do it. The only thing that I didn't like was that there seemed to be alot expected from each round and it was hard to keep track of everything that was expected of me. It would have been nice to have a checklist or something to the side of the chart.= = = =Chapters 3 and 4=

Virtual identities are the identities that people take on in a game. This can help student teaching because it can help students take on a role that they are not familiar with ie being a slave in Civil War America. A projective identity is when the played tries to make their personality connect with the personality of the character in the game. This can help students see a character's perspective with the past and what the current student feels about a issue.

Often times in social studies I come across students with damaged identities about history classes. In the past the class was deemed too irrelevant to the student or too complex. To combat those feelings, I try to appeal to students interest such as including more art projects and real world applications.

A situated meaning in the classroom. in social studies was when I had students create a pro or anti prohibition poster. They were able to use the materials and vocab that they had already learned into creating something meaningful. One of the things that I really liked that the chapter said was that students need to be to be able to do things with what they learn. I know that this can not happen everyday, but I do try to make sure that during every unit students get to connect what they are learning to the bigger picture of things.

A recent learning experience that I plan to use the cycle is an upcoming class I am teaching on healthcare in sociology. For the first part of the cycle, students will be introduced to the topic of the HIV epidemic .During the second part of the cycle, I plan on having students hypothesize the short and long term effects of HIV on the world. This is the second part of the cycle. The third part of the cycle, students will learn about the HIV epidemic by reading a magazine article on HIV. For the last part of the cycle, students will look at their original hypothesis and see if they were correct or not.

Journal Three


==‍I didn't get to spend as much time playing as many games as I would have liked to these last two weeks ;however, I did play two. One was We the Jury which I talked about in my educational review report and the CSI game. I am a CSI fanatic, but I had never played one of the games before in my life. While it wasn't as hands on as I would like I felt like this could easily fit into a science or CSI class which they do have at my mentor school. One of the things that i really liked about this game was the fact that it wasn't just alot of text and then you answered questions, but it let me look at photos and different descriptions so that I could make some educated guesses - isn't that part of what science is all about? This game also led itself to be very teacher friendly. If I was teaching a lesson with a objective with this game I could easily do it. I also liked that you could start at begininer if you knew nothing about CSI techniques or go to a more advanced level. If students were ahead in class I could easily point them in the direction of moving ahead to that level instead of staying in the beginner level.==

==‍1) An example of Just in time presentation activity in class would be to present the steps of a project in class in multiple steps so that when it came time to develop the final product, students would easily be able to do it. One of the examples from my own class has been a Great Depression journal project. Instead of just saying to students write me a bunch of journals, in the classroom, we had students practice using writing skills , such a writing a description or telling me what a person is feeling in a Dorthea Lange picture, with each topic involved in their journal. Once it came time to write the journal the students had all of the information avaliable,as long as they had been doing the work.==

==‍2) A way that I could teacher a subdomain of a real domain in the classroom would be to have a preview assignment before the begining of a new unit. This would provide students the opportunity to look at what they will be asked to learn about before they actually experience it. To preview students to a new unit, I do alot of activites like picture walks or brainstorming with clips or photos. Another way this could be done is through previewing the language before a unit. This would also prepare students to use the right vocabulary during the unit.==

==‍3) A technique that I could use to transfer early learning to complex problems would be one of the projects that I have observed in one of my history classes. In the sociology class that I was observing students had been going through a set of notes on how to collect data and what a folklway was. Students had to take what they already knew and they had to develop a strategy for a way to break a folkway and at the same time collect data on people's reactions. This became complex, particularly for the younger students, because they had to look at data and then use math to create some sort of chart or graph along with apowerpoint to share their data in.==

==‍4) A learning experience where one of my cultural models was challenged was when I see my brother play any of the Medal of Honor games especially the ones about more modern warfare. They were glorify war and are very negative towards the other side. This is something I don't agree with and it really goes against my beliefs, but I could see the other sides perspective as well.==