Video Games and Learning

I've decided to try to write everyday, for at least 15 minutes. Why? Well, part of it is to document that I *am* actually doing a lot of work -- which in my case as an academic means "thinking" and "reading" and "reflecting" (even "regarding" things" -- as my blog name suggests).

Today, I've been reading Jim Gee's _What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy_. I'm not surprised by it, as I've been a fan of Jim's since I first took a class with him. This book reviews a lot of his ideas, and applies them to the semiotic domain(s) of video (and computer) games. The really cool thing about this book, that the other books of his that I've read didn't offer, is that my own dear mother is reading this book at the same time that I am. Besides being my mother, she's what I'd call a great "traditional" teacher -- she rules her class; her students are well-behaved, and once order (the Discourse of her classroom) is established, then content learning takes place. She related following story to me: My older brother had problems with his kids squirming all over the place when he took them to church, so he asked our mother how she kept us (her four kids) behaved in church -- a setting that required the very unkid-like behaviors of sitting still and being quiet for overly extended periods. She said that when we were still too young to remember, she would take us to the back room (a room for parents with unruly kids to view and hear the service via window and speaker) and there she'd spank us. So we quickly learned to sit still in church.

Anyway, she's reading the book with me, and we've been having email exchanges about it. Very nice to be "on the same page" as my mother even though our values and attitudes have grown (semantically) apart.