Reading Notes on Gee: Two Views of Thinking/Learning

James Paul Gee writes about two views of thinking in What Video Games have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy. 

“In the traditional view,” he writes, “concepts are like general definitions in the mind (like definitions for words in dictionaries). In the traditional view, the mind thinking through stored “facts” and grand generalization that are like statements in logic.”  

Though I suspect most teachers who teach using a lecture/assessment model haven’t really considered how people think, possibly have never developed a view to base their teaching theory on, lecturing as the primary means of teaching is based on this model, depends on this model to be effective. The hope is that somehow all we have to do is transfer information from one brain to another using (passive) oral communication. (Students of Freire will recognize this as the “banking model” of education.)

Gee goes on to write, “In the view I am developing here, the mind things and acts on the basis of something like stored images (simulations) of experience, images that are completely interlinked with each other (thereby attaining some generality) but that are always adapted to new experience in ways that keep them tied to the ground of embodied experience and action in the world” (91).

While it’s clear that Gee’s definition perfectly fits the experience of a video game, it’s not as clear how we might take full advantage of this view of thinking and conceptualizing the world in the classroom. We can provide bits and pieces—guided group work, service learning, discussion boards—each of these is a strategy to engage students actively, to draw on or even create experiences that, through adapting to these new experiences, students actively learn.

Twitter's "Periscope"

Article about live streaming social media from the New York Times; educational applications? or another distraction?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/27/technology/tech-titans-bet-that-the-world-is-ready-for-the-streaming-selfie.html?utm_source=Trial+Membership&utm_campaign=5d50e11300-&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e8adbd7f24-5d50e11300-223478445&_r=0

The Three Levels of Game Design

I had an interesting meeting with Emmett Tomai, who teaches computer gaming in the Computer Science Department here at UTPA. He had some interesting insights into the history of gaming, including educational gaming, as well as the benefits and limits of educational gaming. We agreed that games designed for educational purposes can be divided into three types.

“Activities” 

These are often modules that provide an activity that reinforces memory of a more traditional lesson, either online or f2f. Very common in elementary school. Here’s the link to just one of the companies that design and sell such simple “modular” games: http://www.abcya.com/

“Distraction” or “Entertainment”

These might be modular or be a long game. The idea of these sorts of games is that there is learning—and there is a game associated with that learning that makes it less boring due to the entertainment value of the game. Think, “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” The learned in these sorts of games is not intrinsic to the game universe, but a byproduct. City Witness, http://www.medievalswansea.ac.uk/en/, is an example of this sort of game. There are rich resources in this game. They are not required, however, to actually play the game. The instructor must step in to use these resources for deeper learning. In the game itself, players ask witnesses preloaded questions. The historical and cultural significance of those questions and answers is enriched by the added materials, but is not necessary to playing the game itself.

Here’s how an instructor might have students play the game, which allows five different answers to the basic, “What happened?” question. Then, do research in those materials in order to support their choice, either in an essay or a classroom debate.

“Interactive”

I don’t have an  example of this level of integration between a game and learning, though I keep looking. In this level of gaming, the learning and the activities are intrinsic, that is, one cannot play the game without learning, and learning means learning how to play the game as Gee insists. Players would advance through more and more difficult levels, and resources such as those in City Witness would be required more and more as players advanced through each level. The activities are not tacked onto learning, neither is the game a distraction to keep students going while they learn. I'd love to see this game developed. 

Medieval Swansea: Online Game

Medieval Swansea is an online game created with a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It can be used to teach medieval history and culture, and is set up as a mystery in which the player takes on the role of the detective. You can simply play the game online, or use the rich resources on the website to explore history and culture in depth.

http://www.medievalswansea.ac.uk/en/

Web Writing Style Guide

The link below is to the Web Writing Style Guide 1.0 published by Writing Spaces. It looks like the Writing Spaces website is no longer active. The most recent news item, an extension of a deadline for the next volume of their open access textbook, was posted in 2011. You might find the Web Writing Style Guide useful for first year or high school writing classes. It's accessible, easy to read, and starts with the basics. Available in PDF and EPUB.

http://writingspaces.org/content/web-writing-style-guide-10-ava

2nd Life

Link to online article on 2nd Life. Article will give you a good introduction to 2nd Life as well as information about how to join.

The essay is an excellent introduction to 2nd Life. While Stephanie Vie introduces 2nd Life to the neophyte, she also critiques the site and its social as well as educational uses, something I'm going to do briefly below. 

Two of the many illustrations in the article show avatars in 2nd life sitting in a re-imagined classroom. One classroom is a rock amphitheater under blue skies. The other is a set of red circles that I interpreted as mushrooms. Avatars are sitting on the mushrooms. The amphitheater looks like an open air lecture hall; the mushroom circle, a class discussion. I have to admit, I find the idea of simply moving a classroom from a physical to a digital space, then doing what you would have done in the physical space, a far from ideal way to do online learning, though I know some are using 2nd Life in more useful ways. 


http://www2.bgsu.edu/departments/english/cconline/gaming_issue_2008/Vie_Second_Life/

"We don't need no stinkin' Learning Objectives!"

How might that change how we teach if we replaced the term “learning objectives” with “doing objectives”? This seems to me to be a particularly pertinent question when teaching writing and online teaching cross paths. 

Few of us who teach writing depend solely on lectures to do so. When we teach in the classroom we devote time to class discussion, small group work, conferences with single students. Lecture becomes secondary. We go to these varied teaching strategies because we know we're teaching students how to do something, write. When we teach them information, that information isn't what's paramount. It's simply a means to an end. That end is doing things, not simply knowing things. 

I don't find lecture and test a particularly useful method in f2f classes. The only value of lecture is transferring of information, something that you don't really need to professor for in the first place. After all, there's a lot more information in that ten pound textbook than there is in 54 one hour lectures.

When we move the lecture and test model online, it's  flaws become immediately evident. It just doesn't work. 

However, this particular rant isn't about lecture and test, it's about how the philosophy behind lecture and test, "learning objectives" get surreptitiously moved online even when the lecture is left behind.

Okay, you might be thinking, but surely there are some classes that really are about simply transferring information. And, I can accept that. What I can't accept is that this is what those classes should be about. 

An example from my own teaching: I sometimes teach Rhetorical Theory. Though I am, as you might argue, trying to teach students information about rhetorical theory, I'm doing so for one reason, and it's not so they will be able to recite that information or regurgitate it on a test. I want them to learn that information so they can accomplish one specific task: they can analyze a text (defined widely to include novels, speeches, television and movies, the layout of a city or classroom, you name it; everything's a text). 

Thus, they may have a lot of "learning objectives" that all lead to one "doing objective." It's that doing objective that's important. Forget a fact or definition? I can live with that as a teacher. Don't learn how to analyze a text? I've failed as a teacher. That one "doing objective is more important than all the "learning objectives" put together. 

I think I'm going to start including a "doing objective on all my syllabi.

 

"Blogs, Essays, or Both?"

Link to informative article about the ways student writing differs depending on whether the assignment is a blog, a journal entry, or a traditional essay.




https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/03/24/blogs-and-essays-can-complement-not-replace-each-other-study-finds#.VRF9tMfA3dw.mailto

"OER and for-profits: Are we selling out?"

An Op/Ed on whether producers of Open Education Resources should collaborate with for-profits:

http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/oer-for-profits-664/?

"Gamification in Education: What, How, Why Bother?"

Link to online journal article, "Gamification in Education: What, How, Why Bother?"

The authors are cautious, though still enthusiastic about gamification. Their article is useful because it provides cautions, outlining possible problems and risks. For them, gamification isn't the end-all, which provides balance after so many articles that are overly optimistic about what gamification can do.

New technology or pedagogy (especially new pedagogy based on new technology) requires an investment in time and resources. The learning curve is steep. Those unwilling to make that investment will be disappointed by the results, and then become skeptics. 



http://www.academia.edu/570970/Gamification_in_Education_What_How_Why_Bother

Link to Online Learning 19.2 March 2015

Link to downloadable PDF to the latest issue of Online Learning.  Several interesting articles, including "Student Satisfaction with Online Learning: Is it a Psychological Contract?" Many in the class have expressed interest in student satisfaction with online learning.

http://onlinelearningconsortium.org/read/journal-issues/

Reading Notes: Active Learning (Gee)

“If learning is to be active, it must involve experiencing the world in new ways.” James Paul Gee

One of the  strengths of What Video Games have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy is how systematic Gee is about the “learning principles” he espouses. Yet, as I read, I find myself jumping on sound-bites such as the sentence above. Such statements end up being the seeds for thinking about how those principles might actually play out in an online class, or a f2f class for that matter.

This sentence got me thinking about f2f classes. How often do we involve students in experiencing the world at all, let alone in new ways? Freshman, I think, get a lot of that. In fact, they are hit in the face with how different college is than high school. When they move into a major they are introduced to a new discourse, what Gee calls a “semiotic domain.” They learn how to think in a certain way, for instance, how to think about literature or political science or psychology. If Gee is right about “active” learning, then when they are introduced to a field of study their learning is active; it requires them to experience the world in new ways. Later, when they’ve come to understand how the field works, their learning becomes passive, focused on simply adding more content. They know how they are supposed to experience the world.

I know this is a radical critique of our current system. I want to mull it over for a while; if it’s true, (IE sufficiently describes our experience) then we have to design each class like another level in a video game, so that each class might build on the previous class—while at the same time involve new ways of experiencing the world.