NCTE 2018 Recap - Where are the Video Games and New Literacies?

I had a great time at the National Council for Teacher of English in Houston, Texas. It was my first time, and it was really a chance for me to get an idea of the size and scope of it all. The conference was set in a large convention center, and I don't think I saw many people twice. The conference proceedings for NCTE were over 300 pages, and that was a little intimidating as I sat down in my hotel room Thursday night trying to figure out what sessions I would go to all weekend. It seemed like it was going to be impossible to figure out where I go because there were so many options every hour across the convention center. For example at any given time there might be 20 different sessions going on, if not more, and deciding on where to go was tough. Day-by-day, session-by-session, I found myself exploring all that NCTE had to offer. One particular area of the conference that was pretty interesting was the exhibit hall.

The exhibit hall was full of an amazing array of stakeholders involved in language arts education today. Corporations like Pearson, Scholastic, McGraw-Hill, Penguin, etc. were there to strut their stuff. The sessions at NCTE were centered on the theme of raising student voice. So, many of the sessions discussed literacy practices and traditional literary values I think that had been continuously pressed on the attendee for years. There seemed to be a big push on young adult literature and getting students to be more excited to read. There was also a big push to have students write more to build a voice and to explore traditional text in ways that help build learners. In all of the hundreds and hundreds of session there were only a few that delineated from this focus bubble. It was easy to see, NCTE was again primarily focuses on print-based literacies and a light dose of digital literacy, media literacy, and multimodal literacy. The idea of video games, virtual reality, and augmented realities as new literacies in the English classroom was held down.

Since the theme of the conference was centered on student voice, it would have seemed commonplace to have recognized the need to involve video games and virtual reality as mediums of interest involved in English education across this country, but there was basically very limited examples of this found in the conference proceedings. I found one session with Dr. Rick Marlatt who was looking at research with digital games and literacy. He was working on using Fortnite in the English Language Arts classroom as a place to act out and experience literary events. Meeting him afterwards was great because we shared some common interests and understanding towards our field of study. We both agreed there needed to be a larger presence of digital games and media in the conference sessions, but agreed that it was part of our work as researchers to push the field forward.

The basis for this was on the simple fact that students love video games, and now most adults. I felt the conference neglected to entertain this elephant in the room that seems to be video games, virtual reality, and augmented reality as places where students are spending their time making sense of the world. Many of our students are spending significantly more time in the digital world learning and exploring then they are in the real world like school, where what they're using to learn with is outdated but still commonly grounded in the interest of the student. I am hoping that by next year the conference acknowledges the ever-growing change with English education and the inclusion of video games within its practice. I would like to see constructive conversations framed around experts in the field who have a grounded understanding in the trends with video games, digital media, and their applicability in English Language Arts classrooms today. There are dozens of scholars who understand this concept well, and there are thousands of teachers who employ these strategies today without much guidance from any higher organization than their school or instructional coach. These are the innovators of today these are the teachers who seek to push the literary paradigms of tomorrow in their classrooms today. I hope to be a part of this change as it seems every day the idea of adopting more digital media like video games and virtual reality is becoming unavoidable and more interesting and acceptable by the day.

Time to See Things Differently in K-12 Literacy Education

• Edited on August 6, 2018

Miles Harvey, Ph.D.

K-12 literacy teacher training needs a technological paradigm shift and a pep talk.

As the average age of a video game player nears the average age of a teacher in this country, it appears necessary to bridge the media literacy gap between in-school literacies and out-of-school literacies. It’s time to prepare our next generation of teachers to meet the needs of our next generation of students. A new wave of literacy is upon our teachers, and many of them have little to no idea about how to address, use, or facilitate learning with technologies like virtual, mixed, or augmented reality in the classroom. For example, the idea that we teach print-based literature, but ignore video games as literacy is a travesty. Furthermore, the idea of using VR games as literary vehicles is an outlandish one to some teachers. Thus, I chose to center my dissertation research on this very topic.

How do we as teachers prepare students for that in which we are unfamiliar? Teachers need access to modern multimodal literacies in the teacher preparation program they are a part of, especially for those teaching language arts in K-12 classrooms. Students read and write in different ways than they did even five years ago, and the way they compose their thoughts through media has taken a huge leap forward in recent years. Coding is the new cursive, and even though code has no culture, I still refer to it as a language at times.

Teacher training needs to be ahead of the curve, and that’s why I use the PS4 VR, code.org, and other technologies in my graduate classes to help new teachers understand the way we make meaning in society is changing. The literary strategies of yesterday are often projections of student needs rather than culturally responsive interventions for student learning.

The literary strategies of yesterday have their place in schools, but they should not supersede the futuristic needs of students in and out of the classroom.

There’s Nothing So Good Education Can’t Ruin It

By: Miles Harvey, Ph.D.

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

The future of games as literature looks bright. Things are starting to change, and slowly, education is embracing game-based learning on a larger scale. The research is there to back up the idea that video games, especially in the language arts classroom, are ready to be used as learning vehicles. Slowly, teachers will start to embrace to use of video games, virtual reality, and augmented reality as literature in their classroom. The average age of a video game player in the United States is now 35 (ESA, 2016), which is very close to the average age of a teacher in this country, which is 42 (NCES, 2012).

The idea is that children who were once known as gamers and readers are now becoming teachers and researchers. This natural progression from casual gamer to professional is bringing some exciting changes to many disciplines. One in particular is the world of education. More and more, teachers are able to relate to their student’s gaming interests by saying, “Oh, I play that, too.” The bridge between out-of-school literacies and in-school literacies has been constructed, and now it is up to those willing to cross it.

During my dissertation defense in March of 2018, Dr. Christopher Holden from the University of New Mexico asked me a great question. He first stated, “There is nothing so good that education can’t ruin it.” He then asked, “As your ideas about using video game as literature gains more traction, how might the education world negatively impact the adoption of this idea?"

I had thought about this in recent years as I studied literacy, video games, and taught language arts and media literacy at a local middle school. For years, I had been immersed in rhetoric surrounding the world of literature from the perspective of teachers, principals, policy-makers, test developers, and various other stakeholders who all wanted to have a say in what it meant to read. There is definitely a need for various stakeholders to have a say in what students read, but things have gotten a little messy over the years. For example, the idea of banned books, grade-specific texts, young adult literature selections, or literature cannons of prescribed readings have taken away the freedom from language arts teachers across the country to get students to read what they think is important. I have a hard time believing that ninth grade teachers prefer to read, “Romeo and Juliet” every year. Nonetheless, how does this tie into the implementation of video games as literature in the classroom?

As video games are adopted and better understood by teachers, principals, policy-makers, test developers, and various other stakeholders, they will become standardized just like other literary tools. Yes, there will be banned games, grade-specific games, young adult games, and a cannon of games prescribed for students. What will be the new “Romeo and Juliet” of video games for ninth grade students? The projections of the future make me cringe, as my hopes for the implementation of video games as literature gives the teacher more freedom then shackles. I can’t imagine students being tested on their efferent stances on their gaming experiences. Rosenblatt (1978) who championed the idea of reading for the experience and not for the test would probably agree on this. I hope my future students will not be tested on their gaming fluency or gaming speed. It doesn’t make sense to test a student on playing games, as the game is the ultimate test itself (Gee, 2007).

So where do we go from here? How do we keep gaming for literary experience in the right hands so that students do not lose the enjoyment of playing them before school ruins them? How do we resurrect the enjoyment of students who were once nose deep into their favorite books and now put their nose up in the air as school has taken those books and turned them into assessment tools meant to drill and kill? How can we keep the mediums of the imagination into places where experience reigns supreme?