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What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy
James Paul Gee begins his classic book with "I want to talk about video games--yes, even violent video games--and say some positive things about them." With this simple but explosive statement, one of America's most well-respected educators looks seriously at the good that can come from playing video games. In this revised edition, new games like World of WarCraf...more
Paperback, 240 pages
Published
December 26th 2007
by Palgrave
(first published May 16th 2003)
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Mr. Gee has become the leading (or only) academic to discuss games in serious theoretical terms. This short and effective book gets to the gristle of the matter, drawing heavily on linguistics to show how the skills learnt and refined in games might revolutionise classroom education.
I support Gee’s findings entirely: the education system is in desperate competition with games, and unless new approaches—drawing on the problem-solving and independent thinking skills children learn from...more
I support Gee’s findings entirely: the education system is in desperate competition with games, and unless new approaches—drawing on the problem-solving and independent thinking skills children learn from...more
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Dan
rated it
·
review of another edition
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
teachers, video game makers, gamers, cognitive psychologists
This book is about how video games are becoming a new type of literacy. The book goes on to discuss how video games are very good at teaching users how to do complex things quickly, and that some of the techniques employed by video games could be adopted by educators to teach children.
This is reminiscent of how children were trained to be soldiers with video games in the book Ender's Game.
It is a dense book to read, it is somewhere between a textbook and nonfiction. Des...more
This is reminiscent of how children were trained to be soldiers with video games in the book Ender's Game.
It is a dense book to read, it is somewhere between a textbook and nonfiction. Des...more
Work is play and play is work...this is something I started because of my new job, but it's also something I would read for fun as well. I like the fact that Gee (now in his 60s I think) was a hardcore linguistics-type professor, then one day watched his toddler son beat him at a video game and decided to switch fields to study video games and its social/cultural/learning implications. A few years later, he started publishing seminal article and books which really helped validate the field of ed...more
I'm just reading this for an exam (I chose the book myself, i had bought it a few years back because I thought the topic interesting). I must say, as much as I wanted to like it, it it horribly written. Most parts are very dry and unnecessarily laden with scientific jargon. It is also overly wordy. The ideas themselves are excellent and interesting, but written in a way that exactly the people who could and should make use of them will probably never finish the book. It also lacks practical exam...more
Gee argues that video games are not a sign of the end of civilization, education, and critical thinking as many (including myself) assume or have assumed. On the contrary, he argues, playing (good) video games involves deep learning, learning new languages, and thinking in critical ways that can actually be applied to "real" disciplines like science.
Gee argues that there is much to be learned from the way people learn when they are playing video games, and that much of thi...more
Gee argues that there is much to be learned from the way people learn when they are playing video games, and that much of thi...more
Richard
marked it as to-read
·
review of another edition
Recommended to Richard by:
The Economist
Shelves:
cognition,
non-fiction
Not yet a review, since I haven't read the book, but…
Most of us have an instinctive fear of societal change. We might not prefer to think so, but the tendency to worry about the unknown is more-or-less built into the human brain as a survival trait. So when things change — whether they be mores, fashion, or technology — we can usually find reasons to be mistrustful, even if we have to invent them, or have to risk obvious hypocrisy. I've got a number of baby-boomer friends that compla...more
Most of us have an instinctive fear of societal change. We might not prefer to think so, but the tendency to worry about the unknown is more-or-less built into the human brain as a survival trait. So when things change — whether they be mores, fashion, or technology — we can usually find reasons to be mistrustful, even if we have to invent them, or have to risk obvious hypocrisy. I've got a number of baby-boomer friends that compla...more
I read this book for two reasons, that is, that I wanted to read more of James Paul Gee's work and the fact that I have some interest in video games. I found this book refreshing in the sense that Gee admits that he is what he refers to as a middle age baby boomer who is not part of the video game culture who is merely trying to make sense of the medium as a means to understand why so many young people spend HOURS and HOURS playing games that seem to be just a waste of time? And the thing is tha...more
I wanted to like this book. Really I did. As technology and the internet continue to infiltrate into every aspect of our lives, I hoped this book would help me to see how I could apply some of the video game design principles that obviously appeal so much to my students to my own teaching. After all, like most educators, my goals are to keep students engaged, and to master content through authentic learning experiences. But this is where I felt Gee's book fell short.
I found it ...more
I found it ...more
In What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, James Paul Gee argues that there is a reason that video games are popular and school is not: children learn from video games in ways that educators should understand as ways children should be learning: "video games are potentially particularly good places where people can learn to situate meanings through embodied experiences in a complex semiotic domain and mediate on the process" (26). Gee argues that the content of v...more
There's a certain way I've noticed academic texts (even ones written by initiated gamers) handle discussions on video games. It's a stilted kind of charming meant to explain the world to people from a wide range of gaming backgrounds. I've engaged in it myself on a number of less common academic topics, including superhero comics and Katamari Damacy. This kind of defamiliarization is a pretty neat thought experiment: it loosens the glue that sticks the labels to my perception of reality, or some...more
Throughout the book, Gee goes into detail on 36 different principles of learning, how they are exemplified in video games, and why they are so important to learning. I may not be an educator, but in my personal experience as a learner, I will say that these principals appear to be accurate. Many of them were things that great teachers helped me do, or that I discovered on my own. Ultimately this isn't a book about video games, but a book about education and teaching. Video games just provide...more
An interesting, if a bit dry, primer on learning theory as seen through a pastime that has few defenders in academia.
I confess that I plan to finish this book on the plane, but so far, it validates what I have always believed - that most everyone can learn if they are motivated and have a purpose for learning. I agree with the author that the best learning occurs when it is both frustrating and life-enhancing.
For example, kids who have attention problems in school can spend hours playing a difficult video game. This shows that learning experiences (teachers, students, products, etc) that do not eng...more
For example, kids who have attention problems in school can spend hours playing a difficult video game. This shows that learning experiences (teachers, students, products, etc) that do not eng...more
Rachel
rated it
·
review of another edition
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
gamers, baby boomers who don't understand gamers, instructional psychologists
This book is about how video games use teaching techniques that make learning easy and fun. They have to - otherwise they won't sell. We can learn good teaching techniques from video games - introducing material in a context that isn't boring, introducing material as it is needed or used (think tutorials), encouraging problem-solving, and much more! Good video games encourage users to interact with their virtual worlds and not just blindly blast to their goal. While kids who play video games don...more
This is a really great book.
Jim Gee calls into question the methodologies many teachers use to instruct their students (by making them retain facts and then re-articulate them). Gee says that learning should be goal-directed problem-solving that uses many interconnected skills (as in video games) and that assessment should be taking place within the learning, not as post-learning evaluation.
Traditional schoolwork, says Gee, is akin to giving kids a manual to a video game...more
Jim Gee calls into question the methodologies many teachers use to instruct their students (by making them retain facts and then re-articulate them). Gee says that learning should be goal-directed problem-solving that uses many interconnected skills (as in video games) and that assessment should be taking place within the learning, not as post-learning evaluation.
Traditional schoolwork, says Gee, is akin to giving kids a manual to a video game...more
What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2007) by James Paul Gee might be one of the most valuable and timely titles I have read in recent years. Coming to video games late in life, initially to "help" his son with gaming, Gee began to see connections to his professional life as an educator in the virtual worlds created by video games.
Specifically, Gee identified 36 learning principles often found in the best (most challenging, most fun, best designed,...more
Specifically, Gee identified 36 learning principles often found in the best (most challenging, most fun, best designed,...more
James
rated it
Shelves:
action,
character-studies,
arts,
children,
culture-and-politics,
entertainment-and-recreation,
games,
psychology,
general-science-math-technology,
writing,
management-and-business,
computers,
economics,
employment,
fantasy,
gender-issues,
history,
mythology,
reference,
relationships,
science-fiction
Wide-ranging in its range of topics and in its implications. I bought this book because I'm interested in using games as a tool in my profession, psychotherapy; before I settled on this field, I trained as an educator, and drawing on that background, I wish I'd read this when I was studying teaching and learning theory (of course, at that time it hadn't been written yet.)
Gee makes a very persuasive case that we should be paying a lot of attention to the increasingly effective ways vi...more
Gee makes a very persuasive case that we should be paying a lot of attention to the increasingly effective ways vi...more
I learned more about education from this book than I have perhaps any other. Strangely, though, Gee never addresses the fact that video game players play roles that are mostly incompatible with or at best irrelevant to most subjects in education. In other words, video game users may enjoy video games more than tradition education not because it provides richer, better-structured learning experiences, but because it, in an imaginative realm, allows them blow up shit.
One of my firsts read books for my masters research, this book was so important to situate myself over the knowledgement about games and learning. I agree with most of learning principles wrote by Gee. Some of them was not a surprise, but, in this world full of authors and common sense persons that always say NO to vídeo games culture, it's Important that someone argues the positive things about this object.
Read MAR 2007
I would consider this an "academic" take on the gamining world as it relates to learning. Definitely a book to read when you can focus and concentrate. Gee includes 39 learning principles which are helpful. See these on http://snitwp.blogspot.com/search/label/...
I would consider this an "academic" take on the gamining world as it relates to learning. Definitely a book to read when you can focus and concentrate. Gee includes 39 learning principles which are helpful. See these on http://snitwp.blogspot.com/search/label/...
Andrea
rated it
·
review of another edition
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
teachers, people who like video games, people who don't like video games
Recommended to Andrea by:
Rachel
Shelves:
non-fiction
This book isn't so much about what you learn while playing video games (though that is also discussed a little), but more about how video games teach things well, and we should use some of the same principles in schools. It really made me think about my schooling and video gaming -- what things do I still remember, and why? How can you really internalize something, and not just read it enough to parrot back content?
Emily K
rated it
Recommends it for:
gamers, english majors,parents, anyone who is interested in games
Shelves:
theory,
video-game-theory
For someone who knows nothing about video games, I was hesitant when I began reading this. What? How can video games teach us anything about learning?
I was pleasantly surprised by the learning principles hidden within video games, intrinsically built into video games.
If learning was structured more like video games, perhaps learning would be more effective and fun.
I was pleasantly surprised by the learning principles hidden within video games, intrinsically built into video games.
If learning was structured more like video games, perhaps learning would be more effective and fun.
This is a great book for educators, non-gamers, and gamers to get some insight into what kind of thought processes actually occur during gameplay. The concepts are also applicable to other areas, such as work as well. Interesting.
A great read for those of you who may be skeptical about video games and their worth or waste. Gee demonstrates how video games utilize learning theory to hook and motivate players. An truly interesting read.
A fascinating read. This is the most provocative book I've read so far. It made me think back to how I have changed my teaching method over the years. Despite what people think of the way video games are wasting the brains of youth, there is much to learn from how the media is involving young people to form their identities, create affinity groups, and work out challenges in order to reach success. There will probably be much more scholarly work on this area to come, but Mr. Gee does a highly co...more
his book does not vindicate video games as the only or preferred platform for learning. However, the tenets of video games--simulation--role playing--contextual learning--provide stark contrast, according to Gee, to what many students experience in the classroom.
I began this during the summer of 2007, as I was beginning to explore the relationship of game theory to the educational landscape. Several authors, including James Paul Gee, believe that young people learn to move to increasingly complex and more challenging levels in video games without any adult's instruction. Therefore, if educational content were embedded in video design, instruction should be successful and engaging. More on this as I read on. A recent interview with at Edutopia Online pro...more
LOVE that someone has realized and articulated that learning can occur when a child is engaged in 'gaming'.
Generally a good book; quick read, in reality. Outlined notes to follow (at some point).
If you design learning experiences, this is an absolute must read! Seriously...read this.
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James Gee is a researcher who has worked in psycholinguistics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, bilingual education, and literacy. Gee is currently the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University. Gee is a faculty affiliate of the Games, Learning, and Society group at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and is a member of the National Academy of Edu...more
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“An academic discipline, or any other semiotic domain, for that matter, is not primarily content, in the sense of facts and principles. It is rather primarily a lived and historically changing set of distinctive social practices. It is in these practices that 'content' is generated, debated, and transformed via certain distinctive ways of thinking, talking, valuing, acting, and, often, writing and reading.”
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