Gaming Practices in Curriculum/Pedagogy

I’ve still been caught up trying to wrap my head around video games.  From what I’ve gathered, the use of video games in an educational context still mostly revolves around implementing drill and skill games interlaced with traditional teaching practices.  While this may be effective in increasing specific skills, there are many other gaming motifs which are left out of the equation.  After reading James Paul Gee’s article “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy”, I was left with some optimistic insights on how to innovate a classroom based around successful gaming mantras.  However, the fact is there haven’t been many attempts to implement a potentially resourceful and educational innovation in a real-life classroom setting.

To sum up the article, Gee first states (after mentioning his book in the first paragraph), “that schools, workplaces, and families can use games and game technologies to enhance learning” (p. 1).  He then cites some references which state that science itself supports this notion, as there is evidence that our brains can excel at learning within a computer/video game interface.  He goes on further to cite how motivation can be increased through the use of these games, and therefore deeper learning can occur.  There is also mention of how video games appropriately scaffold certain skill sets during play, which is what any experienced teacher should eventually try to master.

What has confronted me the most on this article is when Gee states that in these games, “players engage in ‘action at a distance’, much like remotely manipulating a robot, but in a far more fine-grained fashion. Cognitive research suggests that such fine-grained action at a distance actually causes humans to feel as if their bodies and minds have stretched into a new space [Clark 2003]…” (p. 3).

How can an educator produce a classroom where students invest in a sort of ‘avatar’, where they produce deep learning while also being engaged in fantasy?  I normally think back to debate activities certain classrooms would hold, and the act of identifying specific ‘lenses’ to look through  as a character in the debate.  Even if I didn’t agree with the debate team I was on, I enjoyed the challenge of forcing myself to think against my intuition.  This, I felt, eventually led to my understanding of acquiring and mastering perspectives.

But that’s just perspectives.  How can a teacher implement this “action at a distance” when it comes to literacy?  I suspect utilizing group and individual roles would be a start.  In an English program, I could envision sorting students into a microcosm for journalism, for example.  I could assign (and redistribute) roles such as reporters, editor, photographer, editor-in-chief, and so on to create an exciting environment where students somewhat forget that they’re students in a classroom, and ‘pretend’ they’re invested in a hot case. 

That’s exactly what Gee wants to see with computer and video games; to allow students to excel by becoming something they’re not, while acquiring learning that they didn’t have before.  As his last line states:  “the real importance of good computer and video games is that they allow people to re-create themselves in new worlds and achieve recreation and deep learning at one and the same time” (p. 3).

Gee, S. (October 2003). What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Computers in Entertainment- Theoretical and Practical Computer Applications in Entertainment, 1(1), 1-4. Retrieved from: http://dl.acm.org.proxy.lib.iastate.edu:2048/citation.cfm?doid=950566.950595