So Lets Play

I have enjoyed playing video games since I can remember. Matter of fact, I can't remember a time in my life when I wasn't playing video games. This is why I chose this book, and this topic of study. I have to admit, going into this reading, I am ready to push the boundries of literacy not only from a theoretical perspective, but also on a practice level too. I am a teacher of language arts at a local middle school. I have been employing video games into my classroom for a year now, and I can say it has been a remarkable journey so far. Thus, I am looking to keep that journey moving. This book should provide me with some more theoretical backing to my practices next year as a teacher, so lets play.

Chapter one of the book is about video games and story telling. This is a great place to start. As a language arts teacher, experiences, stories, and life are what my curricula is all about. Much like our lives, we are a story. As students in school, we read and write about life, stories both fiction and non fiction. The first basic principle to get across here is this, video games are just another medium for learning. Within video games, we can live, learn, solve, and question whatever is around us. It is very similar to anything you are very familiar with; however, video games can provide us with a medium that seems endless in its possibilities. So, lets get some things squared away before we get started.

First, why even consider video games as learning tools? How can this even relate to storytelling to begin with? First start by watching this short video by James Gee who talks about video games as problems which need to be solved.

What I find to be very self evident, as I am an avid video game player myself, is that as I play almost any game, I am thrust into a world, similar to Earth or not, that stimulates my thinking in ways that promote critical thinking and learning. Now whether I am learning anything of value depends on many different variables that I will not get into right now. What is important to take away here is that when anyone plays video games, they are interpreting meaning from the medium, and most likely storing that experience in their brain, in hopes that they will use that experience to help them in any situation in the future. That's learning, taking something in order to use it later. This is to be very broad, but yes, we are blogging now, and this isn't my dissertation.

Second, why is it that storytelling is chapter one of this book? Well, I think talking about living life and thinking of the imaginary stories we have as kinds, and still do as adults, brings up a very salient point; we all have imaginations, and it's what we do with our minds that makes us who we are. For those who read books, or watch movies, or make haikus, or construct origami, we are constructing knowledge through a medium that requires us to read and write. It is right in-line with our talks about reading and writing being a construction of knowledge or composition of thought. As for video games, we are reading when we play video games. We are writing when we play video games. Starting off with the comparison of storytelling and video games provides readers with a common relation that many people can understand. If you have not played a video game, this may not make sense, but if you have played a video game, I think you will understand. If you have not played a video game lately, you should.