Embrace the Inner Gamer

I just participated in a NCTE education chat about video gaming and I must admit I am a little disappointed. Many of the teachers discussed how they incorporated the history of video gaming and the cultural influences of gaming on our current demographic. Though I do value these comparisons, I still felt that many of the teachers were hesitant to fully embrace gaming. If you don't know already, I am a huge advocate for video games. I must preface this by saying that I am also a huge advocate for responsible video game usage. I was very disappointed in the chat. I posed the question, "How many of you play video games? How many of you assign video games for homework?" The answer, none. There was one teacher who played video games on rare occasions but never assigned a video game as homework. This blew my mind. Why wouldn't you? My class and I have just begun reading 1984 and I have decided to incorporate the Ayn Rand inspired Bioshock game series because of the game's use of propaganda and the way that the story is told exclusively through a first person perspective. Similar to Winston in 1984, you never really know who is watching you or what hand you are playing in the larger governmental game. I am also an advocate for graphic novels and will be incorporating Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and Alan Moore's V for Vendetta. I think it is vital to student learning to incorporate a multiplicity of genres, texts, and technologies. It fuels student learning and contextualizes information in a way that is sometimes unattainable. With this in mind, Josh Jones and I did a presentation on the value and benefits of gaming and how a teacher could tap into such an invaluable resource and use it in their own classroom. Here is the first half of the presentation on incorporating video games into a classroom. Eventually I will Jing-a-fy the presentation adding more examples and depth but for now please feel free to watch the presentation. Also, if you are wondering how you could incorporate a specific game into a lesson or assign a game as homework, ask me. I have a plethora of video game resources for you to tap into :).

http://prezi.com/-jmtvb2sgyth/video-games-embrace-the-gamer-within/?auth_key=afda27e25f56a9b613a8bd2a2f8b70776350bd4a

If you would like to see the second half of the presentation please click on the link below. You will then be transported to Mr. Josh Jones' blog.

http://englished4life.blogspot.com/

I also have a list of resources and educational games on my class website as well as a plethora of other resources for students and teachers. Please feel free to check it out.

https://sites.google.com/site/mssadeghipoursclass/useful-links