Double Journal Entry #12

1. The main argument withing this chapter is whether video games increase learning of the person playing them. The author suggests that video games have strategies behind them that can increase learning.

2. Patterns and principles constitute theory of learning.

3. The author needed the motivation to want to succeed with the game. Without that, then there was no point in trying.

4. By not succeeding with the game, that means he failed. Failing in school means low grades and when a student receives a low grade, their self esteem lowers. Do you think receiving low grades makes a student, especially a young student want to keep trying? Unfortunately, failing doesn't make people want to try harder the next time.

5. A horizontal learning experience could be better for at risk students so that the student can stay at the one "rung" for a while and work on really understanding that concept.

6. At risk students often get the "dumbed-down" versions of things to catch them up to basic skills but these students need to be challenged. Yes, they need to know basic skills but they need to be challenged because they can learn and they know more than we think.

7. The school's need to let students take on their full identities and make students feel challenged, but not defeated, just like video games do.

8. Students feel disconnected in school but they do not feel this way in the games.

9. The tutorial let the student assess how they should learn but in school, the students get assessed and then the teacher's decide for them what the best way for them to learn is.

10. The sand box tutorial lets the player get a feel for what the game is going to be like. School isn't like that. We don't get to have a test-run at school. Time is so precious in school that we barely have time to get through everything we need to get through in order to make a living for ourselves on time.

11. We need to use genres in good learning because a genre is a type of thing.

12. You learn as you play in a lot of instances.

13. Skills tests in school are normally not developmental and evaluative.

14. RoN lets the players work in groups.

15. Dewey-1. The create motivation for an extended engagement.
      Vygotsky-12. They offer supervised (i.e. guided) fish tank tutorials (simplified versions of the real system).
       Gardner- 10. They teach basic skills in the context of simplified versions of the real game so that learners can see how these skills fit into the game as a system and how they integrate with each other.

       Bandura- 14. They give information via several different modes (e.g. in print, orally, visually). They create redundancy.

       Skinner-15. They give information "just in time" and "on demand."