Gaming and Literacy - two words I would never have put together!

Minecraft is all I hear about in my household!  Creepers and crafting are about all I understand of this game my daughters are obsessed with.  We are not a big gaming family.  I, for one, get terribly motion sick with anything 3 dimensional moving about on a screen.  I am ok with Mario Kart as I am behind the wheel, but put me on the toboggan run in Mario and Sonic Winter Olympic Games and I will be sick after about 10 minutes!  So reading about Gaming has sparked my interest as it is something I had never really thought of before, especially in terms of it being used for educational purposes.

There seems to be an awful lot of literature out there in cyberspace (by that I mean the library database at QUT!) about computer games.  Some say they are bad, some say they are good, I am still undecided, however I do say they have a place in schools.  I could easily write this entire blog about how bad games are, because there is plenty of well documented journal articles suggesting that.  Or, I could also fill this entire blog up with the positives of gaming.  Instead of taking a stand one way or the other, I am simply going to talk about a few that I found interesting.

Bijvank, Konijn & Bushman (2012) point out that adolescence is the time where young people are risk takers and this provides them with a thrill - a sense of excitement - sensation seeking is what they call it.  Video games provide adolescents with these feelings of excitement through participation in a virtual world doing things that they would not be doing in real life, and most of the games they are playing are violent.  These researchers hypothesised that the boys in their study who had lower educational ability were more aggressive and would be more attracted to violent games than boys with higher educational ability.  Their findings did support their hypothesis.  This is just one study and is not my personal opinion.  More reading would be required to prove these results are accurate for all boys who have lower educational ability.  They also go on to say that because of these findings, boys who have a lower educational ability should be directed towards games that are not violent so that they do not act out some of these gaming scenarios in real life.  I suggest that perhaps these games may be a good outlet for these boys to get their 'sensation seeking thrills' rather than looking for them in the 'real world'.

Video games are played by adolescents the world over and are the fastest growing form of entertainment.  Adolescents are known to play games for hours on end if left to their own devices.  Adachi & Willoughby (2012) discuss some of the positives associated with game playing.  Adolescents show initiative and motivation in game play.  There is a social benefit to game playing as many games involve collaboration and interaction with other players online.  Concentration and cognitive effort is required and gaming also provides adolescents with opportunities for problem solving, learning new skills, and as the games intensify in difficulty as the player moves up levels, they are confronted with more challenging problems and situations.  This has certainly got to be more beneficial than just watching TV!

Beavis & O'Mara (2010) illustrate how computer gaming can be used as a new literacy in the classroom.  They discuss how critical analysis of video games has been carried out by a teacher called "Mark" who structured a unit of work around "exploring the twin themes of representational violence - 'violence as text' - and retrospective reflection on students' earlier gaming selves" (Beavis & O'Mara, 2010, p.67).  Other examples of how gaming can be incorporated into the English curriculum are also provided and demonstrate how computer games can be seen as valid literacies if used wisely.  Beavis & O'Mara also illustrate the multi-literacies involved with game construction and present a case study where students learned to construct and make their own games.  Students in this case study were learning many new skills from this 'new literacy field'.

Now I must stress that I am a science trained teacher and really know nothing about the English curriculum nor anything to do with teacher librarians, but I am encouraged to see that gaming is being included in the curriculum by some very innovative teachers who are interested about what kids are into.  I am also grateful for the opportunity to learn about these 'new literacies' and feel able to discuss such findings with other teachers, especially those who are instructing my precious gems.

References:

Adachi, P. C., & Willoughby, T. (2012).  Do Video Games Promote Positive Youth Development?  Journal of Adolescent Research, 28(2), 155-165.  Doi: 10.1177/0743558412464522

Beavis, C., & O'Mara. (2010).  Computer games - pushing at the boundaries of literacy.  Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 33(1), 65-76.

Bijvank, M. N., Konijn, E. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2012).  "We don't need no education": Video game preferences, video game motivations, and aggressiveness among adolescent boys of different educational ability levels.  Journal of Adolescence, 35, 153-162.

Image Retrieved from: http://media.photobucket.com/user/MRKAKA1125/media/games.jpg.html?filters[term]=computer%20games&filters[primary]=images&sort=1&o=68

 

Web 2.0 - Participatory Culture

Image Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

My 14 year old daughter has been nagging me for the past year to have her own YouTube channel.  I have constantly been saying 'no'.  Why have I said 'no' you may ask?  The answer is simply that I did not know anything about YouTube channels, despite watching the odd cat video from time to time!

My reading of Jenkins (2006) made me aware that I could be letting my teenager down, and has made me question whether I am creating a participation gap for her, after all, ALL her friends have YouTube channels, so she tells me!  Jenkins (2006) is right in suggesting that young people acquire the skills they need to interact with popular culture all by themselves.  I am witness to that.  My daughter is totally self taught in all things computer savvy.  She talks the talk and leaves me feeling bewildered sometimes.  I have tried to keep up, but she aces me every time.  She has mixed emotions about my new found knowledge in this wonderful world of teens and popular culture, and I hope to nurture her into a responsible cyberspace citizen.

So what is Jenkins (2006) telling us about participatory culture?  Based on an American study "more than one half of all teens have created media content, and roughly one third of teens who use the Internet have shared content they produced" (Jenkins, 2006, p.2).  Kids have stuff they want to say; kids have things they want to create and share and they want to share it via Web 2.0., whether their mums like it or not!

There are ethical concerns, of course.  We cannot expect teenagers to understand the intricacies of copyright; plagiarism; privacy act; but we can educate them about respecting others and using good old-fashioned common sense, like: "If you haven't got anything good to say, then don't say anything at all".  Humans are flawed and no matter what measures we put in place to protect our children, someone will come along who breaches those measures and causes the hurt we so want to protect them from.  I realise that sometimes these situations can be frightening or even life-threatening, but they are in the minority.

Crook (2011) discusses the desire of today's youth to have full access to Web 2.0 literacies in their classroom, however Crook (2011) points out that for legal reasons this is just not happening and that this can build up resentment in the students because they perceive it as a punishment.  He also reminds readers that students are very capable of finding ways to avoid any blocks that teachers may put in place to prevent them from accessing sites, which then leads to bans and restrictions that fuel the gap between teacher and student.  Due to the fact that digital devices prevent my daughters from getting much done outside of social networking or gaming, I recently installed a blocking device, however it has been a waste of money as my eldest quickly found a way around it.

Web 2.0 literacies are an excellent tool for communication and distance education, but need to be introduced to the classroom after careful thought and consideration of the pitfalls.  Web 2.0 is definitely the way of the future and as time marches on, young people will move into positions of responsibility and we will see the natural progression of change and see Web 2.0 become an integral part of learning and communicating at school and at home.

References: 

Jenkins, H. et al. (2006). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: media education for the 21st century. MacArthur Foundation. http://digitallearning.macfound.org/site/c.enJLKQNlFiG/b.2108773/apps/nl/content2.asp?content_id={CD911571-0240-4714-A93B-1D0C07C7B6C1}¬oc=1

Crook, C. (2011).  The 'digital native' in context: tensions associated with importing Web 2.0 practices into the school setting, Oxford Review of Education, 38(1), 63-80.  Doi: 10.1080/03054985.2011.577946

 

What's popular with kids these days?

I thought I knew what today's kids were into - after all I have one of their representatives living in my home - my very own 14.6 year old daughter!  But how wrong I was!  Up until doing this subject, I have to admit that, I was pretty much in the dark when it came to what teenagers were into.  I only discovered what 'trending' meant 6 weeks ago and my knowledge of social media sites consisted of Facebook and Instagram.  Yes I had heard of the Hunger Games and Harry Potter, both of which I also loved, but video games I knew nothing about with the exception of Mario Kart!

This experience has helped me bond with my daughter, although I believe she preferred her mother to be in the 'dark' and feels as though I have robbed her in some way, but it is fun to discuss things together and discover that sometimes I know just a little bit more than her about certain subjects!

My Pinterest board: Youth, culture and popular texts, shows the things that my daughter and her friends have interest in.  They do not necessarily all use, listen to, read, or watch all of these things; nor possess all of them, but they do represent what they know about and are interested in and what they know others are into.  So click on my link and check out what's cool in my teenager's domain.

Link to my Pinterest Page:
Youth, Culture and Popular Texts - Pinterest Board

Photo retrieved from:  http://blog.europeana.eu/2012/03/pinterest-for-glams-europeanas-experiment/