There are two parts to the reflective essay. Part 1 is an analysis of the strengths and
challenges you identified after revisiting your planning process, enactment of
the lesson as portrayed in the video; and your discussion of your video with
peers. Part 2 of the reflective essay is
an explanation of the lessons learned from the planning, enactment and
discussion of this lesson, ones that can be applied to your future teaching.
Each part of the essay is approximately three quarters to one page in
length. Refer to the guiding questions
in previous parts of the assignment
Video games?! I get to write about video games?! As an avid gamer (well at least I was until June 19th, now I have neither the time nor the mental resources to play at all) this is a dream come true! I loved the readings this week. I've always thought that video games are a better way of educating people then lectures or classroom activities will ever be. For example, The Oregon Trail taught me more about the expansion west than any textbook ever could and I learned more about geography from Carmen Sandiago then I did from all my teachers combined. This is not just true for high school either; I remember once in college I was having a hard time grasping the concepts of early evolution until one of my friends turned me on to an internet game called Evolution in which the player controls a single cell organism and must complete a series of tasks to evolve it into the dominant life form in the galaxy. Playing that game gave me real insight into the dynamics and specific functions of evolution. Now, having said that I must say that this increased knowledge was only made possible because I had a strong foundation of knowledge from the information I learned in class.
This being said, I loved the idea of making class more like a video game, however I'm not fully sure I understand how this would be possible. I think James Gee had a lot of good ideas for turning video game concepts into classroom strategies, and Jane McGonigal had some great ideas for turning life problems into video games. However, I think they both missed one important aspect of why people play video games; people play video games to escape from everyday life, that's what makes them fun and not work. I think the question we should be asking if we want to use video game concepts in classroom learning is, "how can we make the classroom a place where students can escape the stresses of everyday life while still encouraging learning?" Once we figure out the answer to this question then we can truly use video game concepts to teach. To summarize this idea, class needs to be an escape from stress not the primary creator of stress in our lives (which it is currently). I don't have an answer to this question, but I think if someone could find an answer it could make a truly positive impact.
As wonderful as the ideas James Gee had, most are already being implemented or are not practical, let me go point by point through his paper and prove this:
1. Identity: This is America, we already stress that students create their own identity, not only as a student, but as a person as well. Gee talks about how video games allow people to upgrade their characters with new skills throughout the game (RPGs for people familiar with video game jargon, and for those who are not this stands for Role Playing Game, and is based on the idea that you can accomplish tasks that allow you to improve the skill of your character). However, the idea of an RPG is based on real life. Teaching students in the classroom is already giving them tasks that build their skills.
2. Interaction and 3. Production: We are already taught to engage students in interactive learning and let them produce their own knowledge through big questions (Think Big History Project).
4. Risk taking: I actually liked Gee's point on this one; students in school are discouraged from taking risks because they will fail. Students should be encouraged to take risks, but how does this play into the classroom? I've played video games where I've failed a boss fight 20 or more times before I beat it. If a student fails to learn a concept over 20 times they will probably give up, and even if they don't the sheer amount of time it would take to produce this knowledge would be counter-productive because they wouldn't have enough time to learn all the other information they need throughout the year.
5. Customization: teachers are already encouraged to customize school experiences as much as possible through differentiation. Furthermore, this is actually a big problem because students are so diverse that it’s hard to teach them all the information they need while allowing each student to work at his/her own pace. If we allow the students too much leeway in writing their curriculum they most likely won't learn nearly enough. I can speak from my own high school years and say that if I had had control over what I was learning I would not have learned more, I would have done as little as possible.
6. Agency: The more control students have the less they will do. This may not be true of all students but it will definitely be true for most students. I know it would have been true for me.
7. Well-order problems: This is already a concept being studied in classrooms. The Big History Project is a program based on teaching classes in proper order.
8. Challenge and consolidation: We already try to challenge students at the appropriate level; we call this zones of proximal development. Consolidation is the same thing as review and that’s been highly stressed (think Willingham).
9. Just in time and on demand: The idea that teachers currently don't give information on time and when it’s needed is frankly insulting and I don't feel the need to pontificate.
10. Situational meanings: Willingham calls this tying semantic meaning to knowledge to be learned and we've already learned to do this in the first month of teacher education.
In conclusion, let me restate that people play video games because they're stress relieving and fun. Class is neither of those things, and if we want to make classes more like video games we should focus more on making class an escape from real life. Furthermore, people like to play video games because they allow us to do things we are not allowed to do in real life like play professional sports, kill people (for anyone who feels appalled that I just said that watch a teenager play Grand Theft Auto for an hour, or even 32 seconds), or fly a spaceship, and I see no way of tying that into the classroom in any ethical or socially acceptable way.
Sorry for the negativity, I'm sure it stems from a lot of deep seated frustration.
E.
Elijah,
ReplyDeleteI really like hearing this from a gamer. I like your skepticism. The only part I was confused about was escaping real life. I thought that was kind of adressed in the TED talk, that this wouldn't be stressful, it would be fun. I might be mistaken. Another way to look at it is that they can still play a game, and then their ideas, strategies, and experience can be applied to the real life situations. I don't think your post was negative at all, and I don't think you should apologize for it. It was well thougth out, and you're trying to look at every angle. Good analysis.
Skepticism is healthy.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I agree with nearly every point you made. That being said, I liked the analysis you did on the points James Gee made in his article, especially the one on risk taking. I've always felt that humans, by nature, will only take small, calculated risks. We're not supposed to approach situations that could lead to failure or really any lessening of success. But we want our student's to extend themselves, don't we? Don't we want them to push themselves and see how much they can learn? Society has told us we need to do that, but not to the point of failure. A video game, like you said, can actually let you take that risk without the real life ramifications of failure. Plus, it shows the power of perserverance and dedication. Those motives don't have to be applied only to educational pursuits to be learned properly.
Elijah, I like what you stressed about the importance of escapism in the motivation of students to play video games. This idea of taking risks and doing things "we aren't allowed to do in real life" is a really intriguing part about the alternative reality that is virtual gaming. In response to your struggle with finding ways to use this in the classroom and to make school not feel like work, but rather escapism, I think an element of play should be something we consider as educators. If we can make learning a thing of nonjudgemental discovery and see if we can get students to be in "flow" with an activity, than we are creating lasting memories from experiential learning.
ReplyDeleteAs Ms. Frizzle once said, "Let's make mistakes and get messy!"
I like your point by point analysis of the Gee article and share some of your skepticism. But, you cite some examples of the educational benefits you've received from video games in the areas of geography and evolution. I'm seeing more applications for the use of technology in education and video games may be one area where new teachers can do some really creative and productive things.
ReplyDeleteThe Angry Birds story in today's class really opened my mind to the potential that is out there.
Kevin, you said, "video games may be one area where new teachers can do some really creative and productive things". I agree that video games can be used by teachers by productive things, I just think that Gee's article got things backwards, instead of looking at how we can integrate video games into the classroom, I think we need to be looking at how we can integrate the classroom into video games. All the examples I used were games that were legitimately fun, but also educational. I think their is a massive untapped market for real video games that provide massive educational benefits. I use real here to mean good. There are a lot of educational video games but they tend to be blatently education and not fun at all. They are also usually low budget. I wan't to see video games that are fun and educational. For example (if you're not a gamer you probably wont get this example and I apologize for that), one of my favorite game series' is the bioshock series, which is set in a 1940's underwater city. The designers could have easily incorporated massive amounts of information about 1940's culture and overall history without hurting gameplay. An idea I have for getting video games to incorporate educational knowledge is an addendum onto the current video game rating system. If we could include a rating system for how educational a game is it would inspire game designers to create more educational games. Parents who saw games with high educational ratings would be more likely to buy these games for their children, and therefore the games with higher educational ratings would make more money.
DeleteShaza, in response to your comment about Jane McGonigal trying to make video games fun while incorporating real life problems, I was simply trying to state that I think a large portion of what makes video games fun is that they don't make us think about real life problems, so i was questioning how effective her games would be.
Abby and Colleen both expressed interest in the idea of risk-taking in the classroom. Let me further expand on my thought by saying that video-gamesque (made that word up)risk taking would be rather unhealthy in real life. In video games one of the first things I do to get the feel for the game is jump off a high ledge to see if I'll die, I don't think we want to instill this kind of risk taking in students. Teenagers already take too many risks, I think we need to keep a real world element of risk taking in the classroom because if they take too many risks in life they'll get fired from jobs and end up with sifilis (a joke, but you get the point I'm sure). Also, Colleen, making classroom learning fun is the thing I think is lacking most in modern education. People want to learn and usually have fun doing it, yet we've established a system that makes learning unpleasant and its my mission to end that as much as possible, in one classroom at least.
wow, you are really into this! We might need to collaborate b/c I want to use it somehow. I so want to make classroom learning fun and video games is a familiar way for students! I am so down with encouraging video game designers to design more educational games! Also we can use current ones too.
ReplyDeleteAny suggestions of ones (non-educational) we could use now? As long as it isn't the Grand Theft Auto were they beat women :(
Your final point -- that if we want school to be more gamelike, we need to make it more escapist -- constructs a really fascinating tension that obviously provoked a lot of commentary from your colleagues. It's a great point, and it's at the heart of my own tension about video games and learning.
ReplyDelete(PS - Not quite sure how to connect the first paragraph to the rest?)