Week 4&5...Gee Article

After reading the “Gee Article” I realize that he made numerous ponts about how good video games can be related to school, and how their learning techniques can be improved. In the article he mentioned several games such as “Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind” and “Rise of Nations” are good games that can be used to improve the learning process and technique used in the schooling system. He included certain factors that make this possible, factors like Identity, Interaction, Production, Risk Taking, Customization, Agency, Well-Order Problems, Challenge and Consolidation, “Just in Time” and “On Demand”, Situated Meanings, Pleasant Frustrating, and System Thinking, etc. He gives great examples of how the are related, he explains how “good video games incorporate good learning principle”. Using the factor of identity, he explains that nobody can truly do any deep learning unless u submerge yourself into the  new identity, including the new world and seeing how things work. And after he asks, “Why should the identity of being and doing science be less appealing?” (as he relates the gaming to the subject of Biology and the character being a science student). He goes on to make many other interesting points using the factors, but he also brings me to a point where I must disagree, not because he’s wrong but due to the fact that I’m mistaking his words. He talks about the production and agency of gaming and he relates them to schooling, using production he says “players help “write” the worlds they live in-in school, they should help “write” the domain and the curriculum they study”. I understand his point but it brings up the question that if we knew all that we wanted to study and the helped “write” it, what is there to learn from something we already know? He also talks about  the agency of gaming where he says that players have a real sense of what they are doing, and i agree, but he loses me with the relation to school. I’m not too sure I understand what he means by “ownership”, but i do know that we, as students, have no ownership in school. I think the only thing we had ownership over was the choice of our classes we’re taking in college, but any other grade such as elementary, junior high and high school, we didn’t have any say in our schooling. But other than those two conflicts, I agree with his arguments.