97% of teens ages 12-17 play computer, web, portable, or console games. Additionally: • 50% of teens played games “yesterday.” • 86% of teens play on a console like the Xbox, PlayStation,

or Wii. • 73% play games on a desktop or a laptop computer. • 60% use a portable gaming device like a Sony

PlayStation Portable, a Nintendo DS, or a Game Boy.• 48% use a cell phone or handheld organizer to play

games.

According a Pew Internet Study:

Lenhart, Amanda, Joseph Kahne, Ellen Middaugh, Alexandra Macgill, Chris Evans, Jessica Vitak. Teens, Video Games and Civics. Pew Internet & American Life Project, Sep 16, 2008, http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2008/Teens-Video-Games-and-Civics.aspx, accessed Nov 9, 2009.

Visual literacy may be defined as the ability to recognize and understand ideas conveyed

through visible actions or images, as well as to be able to convey

ideas or messages through imagery. – James Aanstoos

In the arena of education, video games:  • "should not be regarded merely as teaching aids

       or tools for learning" (like MathBlasters) We need to:

• "equip students to understand and to critique"• "teach about games as a cultural medium in their own

       right, just as we teach about film, television, or literature • "involve enabling students to create their own."

Buckingham and Burn:

What does it mean to be game literate?

"Can somebody who is simply hopeless at game-playing be considered game literate?"

Functional: the ability to use the technology 

• load and save a game• use controls effectively• navigate through the space and levels• utilize menus and options• customize characters• understand conventional images

Reflexive: 

• Analysis• Evaluation• Critical reflection  

 "cannot be confined simply to the acquisition of skills, or the mastery of particular practices; it must also entail a form of critical framing that enables learners to distance themselves from what they have learned, to account for its social and cultural location, and to critique and extend it." (ibid.)

 

What does it mean to be game literate?

 

"any account of game literacy needs to address both the elments that games have in common with other media and the elements that are specific to games (whether or not they are played on a computer)"

"any account of game literacy needs to address both the elements that games have in common with other media and the elements that are specific to games (whether or not they are played on a computer).” (ibid.)

THE POWER OF STORY   

THE ELEMENT OF PLAY

THE CULTURE OF GAMING

The Power of Story

“Proust saw reading as a kind of intellectual 'sanctuary,' where human beings have access to thousands of different realities they might never encounter or understand otherwise. Each of these new realities is capable of transforming readers' intellectual lives without ever requiring them to leave the comfort of their armchairs.”(Wolf, 6)

Proppian character types1. The villain — struggles against the hero.2. The donor — prepares the hero or gives the

hero some magical object.3. The (magical) helper — helps the hero in the

quest.4. The princess and her father — gives the task to

the hero, identifies the false hero, marries the hero, often sought for during the narrative. Propp noted that functionally, the princess and the father can not be clearly distinguished.

5. The dispatcher — character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off.

6. The hero or victim/seeker hero — reacts to the donor, weds the princess.

7. [False hero] — takes credit for the hero’s actions or tries to marry the princess.

Remember Radway? "Reading is itself constituted by a set of variable

strategies and procedures that change from situation to situation. As an act and event like any other, it is an activity that takes place always within a specific social context. To think of reading in this context-specific way is to stress its hybrid nature as well as its social character and to render it eminently visible as a practice, that is, an activity, a set of deliberate and complex strategies engaged in by communities of people."

THE ELEMENT OF PLAY

• “[Play] is a structuring activity, the activity out of which understanding comes. Play is at one and the same time the location where we question our structures of understanding and the location where we develop them.” - James S. Hans, The Play of the World

• “Play is free movement within a more rigid structure.” - Katie Salen, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals

“Ludic” activity -

Category of play

Formal (games) or Informal (peek-a-boo)

Games represent one type of ludic activity

– a goal – a quantifiable outcome

THE CULTURE OF GAMING

"There seems to be little place in some conceptions of critical literacy for aspects of pleasure, sensuality and irrationality that are arguably central to most people's experience of media and of culture more broadly. An emphasis on critical distance fits awkwardly with the emphasis on immersion and spontaneous flow - and even the pleasure of addiction - that is frequently seen as fundamental to the experience of gaming." (Buckingham and Burn)

• Rule

Katie Salen, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals:

rules of a digital game = rules of a non-digital game:

the actions players take

the outcome of those actions

However,

Digital games have “internal functioning of formal game logic” (i.e. the way code selects the next block to appear in Tetris)

This is also part of the rules of a digital game

• Economy

• Social relationships

Flickr Image - Sean Dreilinger

“the activity of gaming is part of the texture of people's daily lives and social relationships.“ (ibid.)

 

“Trying and failing to retrieve the answer is actually helpful to learning...Getting the answer wrong is a great way to learn.”--Henry L. Roediger