Multiliteracies in ELA Classrooms

Blog post #2

My sister’s fiancé is a serious, serious gamer. He has friends he socializes with more online, in Ventrilo, than he does face-to-face, and when he does see his friends in person it is frequently to play games beside each other in LAN parties. He becomes so engrossed in these alternate realities that he even forgets to eat. Admittedly, I have tsk-tsked and haughtily wagged my finger at his hobby, wondering why he doesn’t do something more worthwhile. After reading this article, I began to question what I mean by “worthwhile”. Why do I consider the hours he spends on games to be a waste of time, especially after this article outlines all the different kinds of learning that occurs in gaming.  I then asked my husband what he thought about it, and we talked about how he enjoys games, but feels like it’s a waste of time because he has nothing tangible to show for all the hours he put into this virtual reality. At the end of the day, there’s no short story written, or pictures from a day outside, or a drawing in a sketchbook. Why did he and I both consider learning, in which there is no concrete end-product, a waste of time?

In my practicum school, the teachers were frequently frustrated because the students in the school were overall very mark-hungry. Many of the students in the school only cared about getting an “A”, but showed complete disregard for the learning that needed to happen in the process. I was a lot like these students growing up. I worried and stressed about my report card and so did my parents. I could work hard in a class and only manage to get a “C”, but that “C” would not be as highly regarded to my parents as a class in which I put in very little effort to get an “A”. To them and to me, the end product was more important that the mistakes and successes I encountered along the way. A quote in this article that resonated with me was “How can we make learning in and out of school, with or without using games, more game-like in the sense of using the sorts of learning principles that young people see in good games everyday, when and if they are playing these games reflectively and strategically?” (37). I think this question is really important because schools do need to make learning more game-like, in emphasizing that learning is fun and the end result not as important as the process.