Gee

james gee

[|what video games have to teach us about learning and literacy]

argues that playing well designed computer games is good learning via 36 learning principles, such as (Appendix):

1. active and critical, not passive learning

3. Semiotic principle Learning about and coming to appreciate interrelations within and across multiple sign systems (images, words, actions, symbols, artifacts etc) as a complex system is core to the learning experience

4. Semiotic domains principle Learning involves mastering, at some level, semiotic domains, and being able to participate, at some level, in the affinity groups or groups connected to them

etc.

He refers to these as principles of cognitive science .... "the views about thinking current in cognitive science stress the importance of //active inquiry// and //deep conceptual understanding//" and contrasts that with school ..."things that are not politically popular any longer in schools, driven as they are by standardised tests and skill-and-drill curricula devoted to 'the basics' " (p.3)

But then he goes onto say that he is influenced by these 3 areas of research (page 8): 1. situated cognition - learning is situated in a material, social and cultural world 2. New Literacy studies - learning has social, historical and political implications 3. Connectionism - humans are powerful pattern recognisers


 * the problem of content** (p. 9)

These attitudes are compelling, in part because they are deeply rooted in the history of western thought, but, nonetheless, I think they are wrong. The idea is this: Important knowledge (now usually gained in school) is content in the sense of information rooted in, or, at least, related to, intellectual domains or academic disciplines like physics, history, art or literature. Work that does not involve such learning is "meaningless". Activities that are entertaining but that themselves do not involve such learning are just "meaningless play". Of course video games fall into this category ...

The problem with the content view is that 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 social practices that "content" is generated, debated and transformed via certain distinctive ways of thinking, talking, valuing, acting, and, often writing and reading.