{"id":2541,"date":"2014-07-15T10:05:44","date_gmt":"2014-07-15T17:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/?p=2541"},"modified":"2014-07-15T10:05:44","modified_gmt":"2014-07-15T17:05:44","slug":"all-fun-and-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/2014\/07\/15\/all-fun-and-games\/","title":{"rendered":"All Fun and Games?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was intrigued while reading the Gee article on gaming and education because I did not have a lot of experience with games. The extent that I had personally engaged in games was with Spyro or The Sims when I was younger; at first I did not think that these or any other \u201cfun\u201d games had any connectedness to education. This article really did prompt me to look at gaming in a new way, beginning with the line \u201ckeep in mind that a game such as Full Spectrum Warrior is a game when I buy it off the rack, but it is a serious learning tool when a soldier \u201cplays\u201d the professional-training version.\u201d (p. 34) In this sense gaming could quickly become, at the very least, an introduction to multiple different occupations. While there are things that have taken the form and made fun of it, such as Goat Simulator (where yes, you play as a goat, doing goat-like things), there are also titles such as Surgeon Simulator or Train Simulator that attempt to mirror actual occupations. I can definitely see life-based simulation type games being used in the future in a class such a Planning during career exploration. They may be used for serious study or training, as mentioned in the above quote from Gee, or perhaps just to peak interest in possible routes students could go – for instance, when I was younger and thought being a landscaper would be cool, my favourite part of The Sims was designing the yards for my Sim\u2019s house.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gee also makes the connection between creating new environments or scenarios within games and having input in their classroom curriculum. While at first I was at a loss at how he made this connection, perhaps this creation\/production aspect might manifest itself in choosing assignments. For instance, for a final project the teacher may give the students a set of four choices to select from, or the choice to create their own; just as in video games, students are either working within a set of parameters in order to create, or making their own scenario and following through on where that takes them. Gee\u2019s discussion of agency correlates to this, as it gives students a sense of \u201cownership over what they are doing,\u201d (p. 36) something that I\u2019m sure we have all learned the importance of. After fighting some losing battles during my practicum with students who, even after being given these options for final projects, still did not care enough to do them, applying the principles Gee lays out may not always work. However, the article has helped me make some very strong connections between education and gaming, and I think that at the rate society seems to be going, these connections are going to become both more apparent and more important as time goes on.<\/p>\n

\n

Work Cited:<\/p>\n

Gee, James Paul. \u201cGood Video Games and Good Learning.\u201d Phi Kappa Phi Forum 85.2 (2005): 33-37. Web. 14 July 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was intrigued while reading the Gee article on gaming and education because I did not have a lot of experience with games. The extent that I had personally engaged in games was with Spyro or The Sims when I was younger; at first I did not think that these or any other \u201cfun\u201d games […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19749,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564429],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gaming-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19749"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2542,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2541\/revisions\/2542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}