A few things that James Paul Gee wrote truly interested me and left me pondering about my own identity and existence. He mentioned that when creating a gaming character there exist three separate identities: "the virtual, real, and projective." "All three operate together, at once, as a larger whole" (49). So much of an individual actually gets projected unto a virtual character. Creating a new person makes one question their own values, morals, beliefs, and priorities. Actually it could be like sitting in a psychologist office from the safety and comfort of your own home. Evaluating yourself can help put life into perspective and also thinking strategy can help a person develop critical thinking skills. Many students in classrooms today would much rather spend hours thinking of a game plan for their virtual character rather than analyzing Romeo and Juliet inside an English classroom. Video games can be used to teach valuable lessons, however, it can never replace the true value of literature. Students need an escape from the realm of the canonized educational curriculum and within a proportional time frame playing strategy video games might not be such a pointless escape.
I don't know if I agree with Gee. I feel like when people, adults and children, play games they don't focus on anyone or anything else. I have witnessed in so many different players the glazing of the eyes, the nonresponsiveness to people around them, etc. In terms of video games I have never seen anyone do critical thinking in the way that literature promotes. I can agree more with Buckingham wanting literacy to include media other than books, but for me video games are not included.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea that through media we have the chance to develop something that students will spend hours thinking about. What does that look like? Would a virtual Romeo work? What if we asked a student to create an avatar based on the Shakespearean boy? We could grade them based on if they used direct evidence from the text to create their character. OOH that gives me an idea- what if we had kids make a fake profile for the protagonist of a novel, like a facebook for Jane Eyre, with family names and everything. Okay I am excited now- I might use this in the project. Thanks for your post it gave me some good ideas.
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