[UCI-Calit2] Upcoming seminar: Literacy and Video-Game-Like Learning (on behalf on Dept. of Education)

[Anna Lynn SPITZER]

Title:                                        Literacy and
Video-Game-Like Learning

 

Speaker:                                James Paul Gee, Tashia Morgridge
Professor of Reading, University of Wisconsin-Madison

 

Time:                                      2 p.m., presentation; 3:15
p.m., reception; 4 p.m., meeting with graduate students

 

Date:                                       Wednesday, March 23, 2005

 

Location:                                Berkeley Place, Room 1111
(meeting with graduate students is in room 2001A)

 

Abstract:                                  The theory of learning in
many schools today is based on what Gee calls the "content fetish," the
view that any academic area is composed of a set of facts or a body of
information and learning should work through teaching and testing such
facts and information.  However, for some current learning theorists,
"know" is a verb (activities) before it is a noun, "knowledge" (a body
of facts).  However, if decontextualized overt information and
skill-and-drill on facts does not work as a theory of learning, neither
does "anything goes."  This realization has led some educators, over the
last few years, to search for pedagogies that combine immersion with
well-designed guidance.  One area where learning today works very much
in this fashion -- that is, by combining immersion and guidance in
intelligent ways -- is in modern video games.  There has been much
interest over the last few years in the role good video games and
related sorts of simulations can play in learning inside and outside
schools.  This talk will deal with the sorts of learning good video
games recruit, how such principles would apply to schools, with or
without games, and how the issues we confront here speak to current
controversies in the areas of reading and literacy. 

 

Bio:                                         James Paul Gee is the
Tashia Morgridge Professor of Reading at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison.  He received his doctorate in linguistics in 1975
from Stanford University, and has published widely in linguistics and
education.  His book "Sociolinguistics and Literacies" (1990) was one of
the founding documents in the formation of the "New Literacies Studies,"
an interdisciplinary field devoted to studying language, learning and
literacy in an integrated way in the full range of their cognitive,
social and cultural contexts.  "An Introduction to Discourse Analysis"
(1999) brings together his work on a methodology for studying
communication in its cultural settings, an approach that has been widely
influential over the last two decades.  His most recent books both deal
with video games, language and learning.  "What Video Games Have to
Teach Us About Learning and Literacy" (2003) offers 36 reasons why good
video games produce better learning conditions than many of today's
schools.  "Situated Language and Learning" (2004) places video games
within an overall theory of learning and literacy and shows how they can
help in thinking about the reform of schools.  His most recent book,
"Why Video Games Are Good for Your Soul," shows how good video games
marry pleasure and learning, and have the capacity to empower people. 

 

Sponsored by:                       UCI Department of Education,
Distinguished Speaker Series in Education

 

 

 

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