Article #1: Gee, J. P. (2008). Cats and portals: Video games, learning, and play. American Journal of Play, 1(2), 229.

Description: Gee (2008) suggests that video games, as a form of play, lead to learning through discovery, in a way that is similar to how cats explore their environment. He argues that tools in a video game are knowledge tools because they allow players to interact with and manipulate their environment, much like how cats use their own tools (paws and nose) to do the same. In this way, video games can open players’ minds to alternate realities and new possibilities. 


Analysis: Although players can manipulate their environment in a virtual world in a way that may not be possible in the real world, they are still somewhat constrained by the rules of the game and environment set by the game designers themselves. While this could open players’ minds up to new possibilities, there are also other forms of play (such as art or story) that allow the same without being constrained by the vision of the game creators. 


Question: How might Gee’s (2008) observations about young players’ ability to grasp complex language and rules about the Yu-Gi-Oh card game be transferable to a classroom where students may not all have the same passion and therefore may not want to occupy the same affinity space?


Article #2: Gee, E., & Gee, J. P. (2017). Games as distributed teaching and learning systems. Teachers College Record, 119(11).


Description: In this article, E. Gee and J. Gee (2017) build off a theory of embodied cognition to create a theoretical framework through which to understand how real-world experiences and video game experiences are both forms of conversations between humans and the world, whether the worlds are real or virtual. They note how people’s experiences in the real world and in video games are mediated by the social groups they are a part of. Then, using the Portal video game players as an example, the authors explore how distributed teaching and learning systems are dynamic sites of learning and teaching yet still part of a “learning ecology” (Barron, 2004 as cited in E. Gee and J. Gee, 2017) that is subject to the same inequities in material and social conditions affecting learners’ opportunities to see through their learning interests. 


Analysis: E. Gee and J. Gee (2017) note that “it is in modern DTAL systems that all the tools, texts, media, and worlds that generate or mediate experience for humans can be networked to create a higher order collective intelligence (p.11), but that seems somewhat contradictory. It seems to me that the distributed knowledge network created by a DTAL system would lead to a different learning experience for various people and smaller groups of participants, depending on which tools and parts of the network they directed their attention to; this would work against the notion of a “higher order collective intelligence”. 


Question: How might the introduction of new, competing objects of interest impact the viability of these DTAL systems? For example, how did the creation of Portal 2 affect the DTAL system around the first Portal game?


Bridge: Both articles explore how the world talks back to us as we navigate it. They envision video games as an environment in which people’s minds might be opened up to new possibilities as the virtual world in which these games are situated talks back to players.


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