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. 

Week 3

This week we have to examine the words "play", "game", and "simulation", explain in our own words and how do they relate to one another. When I think of the word "play", i think of just innocent fun, nothing that would affect somebody in a negative way and shouldn't cause any harm. Simply from thinking of the word "play", i think of the word "game", simply because they are to be played. Games are activity played or done for amusement, from my experience in games, when i hear the word game, I automatically think of modern gaming such as Xbox and PlayStation. Thinking of how I played games growing up and today, games aren't real, they're just a simulation, you can imagine that you are a character within the game. All these words are connected because when you think of one, you automatically think of the other two. All of these words would provide a child with long term entertainment, gives them a chance to live a differnt life for a short period of time, as long as they play the game, their life is a simulation of an alternate character. But with adults, playing games may provide a different result. For a adult to play a game, it would be to get away from the life that they live for a temporary period of time, they want to live a different life so they can get away from their own.

Week 2..."The Matrix"

We just finished watching The Matrix in Dr. J's class, even though I've seen it more than enough times, he wants to explain it in his own way. He relates it to Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" which is about a civilization that lived in a cave throughout their entire lives and don’t know of anything else outside of it. One individual got lose and is trying to convince the others that theirs a world outside of this cave. In the case of the movie, Neo would be the individual that gets set free and he eventually sets free other minds that were trapped in the Matrix (more obvious in Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions). I agree with Dr. J's opinion of the movie, they are similar in a sense, the Cave would be the matrix (the world those with their minds trapped live in), the free individual would be Neo.

Bloggin'

This blogging thing is not the easiest thing in the world you know. Im spending all this time just creating this thing that I'm honestly not interested in. Maybe i can get used to it and learn to like it in the future, but for now, I'm just tired of trying to understand this blogging process. Give me some time, maybe a few days and hopefully I'll have it down packed......MAYBE