Video Games

I guess I am not completely sure on what we are suppose to blog about; however, it says video games in the syllabus…so I am thinking it is in regards to our initial readings in Gee’s book. I have to be honest, when I first saw the book we were reading I thought to myself, “what does video games have to do with teaching”. I didn’t think there was anything I was going to learn. On the contrary, I have already learned a lot about teaching and learning after just 29 pages. I am surprised that I understand and can see Gee’s correlations with video games and learning. One claim Gee made was that we all read and think differently based off our semiotic domains. Gee states, “since reading and thinking are social achievements connected to social groups, we can all read and think in different ways when we read and think as members of different groups” (3). Although this is a claim I have not totally thought about on my own, I guess it is something I know intuitively and would therefore agree with this claim. Another claim made by Gee was video games are a way of learning. I am pretty anti-video games for kids yet when you really think about Gee’s quote, you can see his stance. He states when talking about the challenge of video games, “wouldn’t it be great if kids were willing to put in this much time on task on such challenging material in school and enjoy it so much” (5)? An interesting point when you think about how video games are very challenging and it can take many many hours to pass each level and finish the game. Often in the classroom, teachers tend to dumb things down because they are now being forced to “teach to the test”. This is an interesting claim made by Gee and one where I can surprisingly say, “yes, I agree”! In conclusion, I am intrigued to continue reading thru James Paul Gee’s book, What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy, and I am interesting in learning what Gee has to teach me about this new concept/theory.