Friday's class made me think more about the fact that Gee is more interested in applying the learning principles of good video games, rather than necessarily incorporating games into classroom curriculum. I think this is an important distinction that may be overlooked when reading his work. It's intriguing to me that he uses gaming as a model for how learning in school should occur; it sort of seems backwards. It seems like instead of drawing out principles, they should be infused in. What I mean to say is that, as with curriculum standards, we should have the learning principles we want incorporated into our classrooms already defined with an action plan for implementation to accompany them before we realize halfway through the "game" (or class) that we might actually be learning something. Because Gee is drawing these principles out--maybe even attributing them to the games--and using gaming as a catch-all model, it's hard for me to believe that his theory covers every good learning principle that students should encounter. There must be something that these games can't account for.
Now, a few words on podcasting: I honestly didn't think I would have as much fun as I did. Even though I still find it strange to listen to my own voice, the activity made me think more about how the tone and strength of my voice can affect the effectiveness of creating a "commercial" or podcast, and how my voice can affect my presence in the classroom. I knew this was going to be a struggle for me, but I hope to use this opportunity as practice for developing my presence!
PODCASTING WAS A BLAST!
ReplyDeleteI was actually having the same thoughts about games myself, and I think games do account for all aspects of good education. In fact I think games do it better than we ever can.
What I'd really like is if we could have a few classes on ideas and methods to use in order to pull the aspects of games that could work in education out and into the classroom. It's a great idea to me, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to do it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I feel your pain in terms of needing to work on presence. My problem isn't so much with my voice, as with my nervous ticks and twitches that I display when I'm in front of crowds... Watch, if you hadn't already noticed them, you will now. I'm much better at it than I used to be; my parents insisted that I take a speech class in high school. It was actually really useful for me.
You made an awesome point about using podcasts to evaluate and mold your presence. I definitely had never thought of that, but I love the idea because I too am quite worried about how I'll sound in class and how my voice will affect my presence. Thank you for that little nugget :)
ReplyDeleteAmanda, I take your point about how Gee's article made you think that things were inverted somehow. I can't pretend to speak for him, and I certainly applaud the inclination to think carefully about our learning goals for our students, and to let those goals be central to our planning.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, though, I hope that one of the aspects of your work that will be a consistent source of interest (and many surprises) will be delving into what your students take away that was outside of your intended plan (as well as discovering, as we all do, that despite our best-laid plans, the tight connection between our curricular intentions and student learning sometimes goes amiss). Over time, what a friend once called post-hoc observation can be a deeply interesting source of valuable information, and can even be a vehicle for more fully bringing our students into the process of their own learning.