"I have first wanted to argue that good video games build into their very designs good learning principles and that we should use these principles, with or without games, in schools, workplaces or other educational sites. "

This sentiment is shared by Malone (1980, p. 162) 20 years earlier who also felt that "these same ideas can be applied to other educational environments and life situations". The "learning principles" that Gee speaks of are his "36 Learning Principles" (2007, pp. 221-227) that he slowly develops throughout the book.

I can, however, see a number of time poor, resource hungry teachers struggle with some of Gee's suggestions, especially when they have to work with a rather prescriptive curriculum that changes ever-so-often according to the Government's latest "blue skies" thinking or knee-jerk reaction to some kind of educational or societal failure that needs a "policy plaster" to cover it up.

So, for the next few weeks, I would like to post some of my thoughts around some of the themes and issues that had caught my interest whilst reading Gee's book.

Watch this space...

References

Gee, J.P. (2007). What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy (Revised and Updated Edition). New York, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Malone, T.W. (1980) What Makes Things Fun to Learn? Heuristics for Designing Instructional Computer Games. Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGSMALL symposium and the first SIGPC symposium on Small systems table of contents. Palo Alto, California, United States.

"But all learning is ... learning to play 'the game'. For example, literary criticism and field biology are different 'games' played by different rules. (They are different sorts of activities requiring different values, tools, and ways of acting and thinking; they are different domains with different goals and different 'win states')" p. 7

I have only just finished chapter 2, but I was interested in his notion of "semiotic domains" which he describes as "an area or set of activities where people think, act and value in certain ways" (p. 19). These "semiotic domains" employ a range of modalities (or multimodalities in this case) which would encompass the following:

• oral or written language
• images
• equations
• symbols
• sounds
• gestures
• graphs
• artifacts, etc

These modalities are embued with specific meanings which are communicated in very distinctive ways - in some respects I see these as being very similar to the idea of transliteracy which Sue Thomas (of PART) defines as:

" ... the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks."

Transliteracy, then, becomes an umbrella term to include the likes of literacy, digital literacy, media literacy, information literacy, visual literacy and computer literacy (to name but a few). The idea of images and symbols that have become to represent real-world objects is as old as neolithic man and used by the ancient Egyptians in the form of hieroglyphics (we can include other cultures that made use of glyphics and pictograms here). It is interesting to see how symbols and imagery has come full circle with the power of the pixel and the ascension of nu-hieroglyphics like semacode and data matrix code which contain information tucked away within those barcode-like symbols and can now be captured and translated by mobile phone technology. What would the cognitive archaeologists make of these symbols in 2000 years time I wonder?

References

Gee, J.P. (2007). What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy (Revised and Updated Edition). New York, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Feenberg raises another pertinent statement; especially when you consider the rhetoric that children spend far too much time watching television, playing computer games and surfing the Internet:

"Recent years have seen the proliferation of remedial writing courses in
colleges and the gradual decline of the childhood pastime of reading for pleasure."

The effect of this particular game of dominos would be reverberating across the academic and corporate worlds for years to come as it becomes painfully apparent to the powers that be that a generation of children would be ill-equipped to learn and to work. These discordant ripples continue right upto (and beyond) the Leitch Review (2006).  

In 1998, the UK Government introduced "Literacy Hour" into all Primary schools to try and get the kids into reading. As fate would have it, a certain bespectacled boy with a lightening bolt scar on his forehead was going to do something that no Government initiative could possibly achieve; and that was to get children to read books for fun, a recent study seems to support this assertion.

We digress somewhat. Feenberg's habit for name dropping those great theorists of Goffman, Lyotard and Derrida makes for heavy work. Terms such as "absorption", "engrossment" and "atomisation" are both unhelpful and a little inaccessible to educationalists or technologists alike, unless they are blessed with a sociological / philosophical mindset.

On the role of the moderator, Feenberg suggests that they should be more like a chairperson within a meeting. In the real world, a skilled moderator would be able to exert a physical presence; much like a conductor would with an orchestra. In the online world, one is not able to exert such a presence. Whilst technologies would give the online moderator the ability to "block" unruly participants - which is a bit like being kicked out of the pub by the landlord - it is hardly conducive towards any meaningful discussions or debates; if anything, it will only serve to make the participants feels isolated and alienated.

If we can imagine for a minute, a parent teaching a child how to ride a bike, then letting go so that the bike is under the child's control; so the moderator's role, therefore, should exhibit a similar approach. Indeed, we would redefine the moderator's role to that of a facilitator. The facilitator would, therefore, steer the participants out of the harbour and allows them to go at their own pace and accord; with the occasional nudge of the compass, the participants are gently brought back on the track and continue to make those connections in a more fruitful and organic way.

References

Feenberg, A., (1989). The written world: On the the theory and practice of computer conferencing. In: Mason, R. & Kaye, A. (eds) Mindweave: communication, computers and distance learning. Oxford: Pergamon Press. pp. 22-39.

Kreijns, K., Kirschner, P.A. & Jochems, W., (2003). Identifying the pitfalls for social interaction in computer-supported collaborative learning environments: a review of the research. Computers in Human Behavior. 19, 335-353.

McInnerney, J.M. & Roberts, T.S., (2004). Online Learning Social Interaction and the Creation of a Sense of Community. Educational Technology & Society. 7(3), 73-81.