Gamasutra - Analysis: Games Create 'Passion Communities' For Learning - The Diigo Meta page

• 25 Jul 08
  

  Damien DeBarra

  Games SeriousGames JamesPaulGee

• 24 Jul 08
  

  Cindy Marston

  Article about James Gee (professor of literacy at ASU) and his ideas on the value of games for learning.

  games learning

• 23 Jul 08
  

  maike online

  game learning learning2.0 research videogames web2.0 community delicious

• 22 Jul 08
  

  Sarah Sutter

  Article about Prof. James Gee's presentation at the Games, Learning & Society conference in Madison (July 08), the talk was titled "Beyond Games & the Future of Learning".

  gaming learning passioncommunitites

• 21 Jul 08
  

  liam odonnell

  "Professor James Gee cites titles from Portal to World Of Warcraft to explain why games are uniquely suited to create 'passion communities' where learning can thrive. "

  mmos education videogames learning gaming virtualworlds worldofwarcraft wow seriousgames teaching research

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  anja c. wagner

  Zusammenfassung eines Vortrages von James Gee

  game learning research forevideo

• 20 Jul 08
  

  Graham Stanley

  evogaming

• 17 Jul 08
  

  Jose Luis Cabello

  aprendizaje juegos

• 15 Jul 08
  

  Eloise Pasteur

  Video games are better learning environments than traditional classrooms (to those on the "education in SL list, "Well, D'uh!") but still worth reading and thinking about.
  
  Derived from a lecture by Prof. Gee

  Second Life education passion communities engagement immersion

  • Gee sees the current U.S. educational system as inadequate to the task of addressing the problems of an increasingly complex world. He stated that “21st century learning must be about understanding complex systems,” and he believes many video games do a better job at this than the antiquated sender-receiver teaching model that dominates American classrooms.
  • Gee sees two separate educational systems operating today: one a traditional approach to learning; the other what Gee calls “passion communities.”
    
    
    
    In Gee's view, the latter produce real knowledge. Video games, virtual worlds and online social networks provide environments in which these passion communities can form and thrive
  • 6 more annotations...
  • • Passion communities encourage and enable people of all ages to do extraordinary things. Gee believes the 'amateur knowledge' that arises from this immersive involvement often surpasses 'expert knowledge,' and cited fantasy baseball as an example.
      
      
      
      The boundaries between the 'fantasy' game and the 'real' game have been blurred because fantasy players' expertise in statistical analysis has had a measurable impact on how MLB teams evaluate players.
    • Passion communities exist, according to Gee, to “give people status and control, not always money.” He recounted the story of a young girl who began making clothes for her Sims characters. When she wanted more textures than the game provided, she taught herself to use Photoshop to create her own.
      
      
      
      Eventually, she moved to Second Life and began selling her own original designs. When asked if she planned to pursue her interest in fashion, she said no. “I want to work with computers because they give you power.”
    • “This is an alternative learning system that teaches more effectively than most schools,” Gee observed. “We need to learn how to organize a learning, passion system community. Game designers know how to do this.”
    • “Education isn't about telling people stuff, it's about giving them tools that enable them to see the world in a new and useful way.”
    • Gee sees broad implications for students in this regard. “Give students smart tools and let them use them and modify them to suit their purposes.” Such self-motivated learning moves students away from merely consuming knowledge and encourages them to produce knowledge and apply it in meaningful ways.
    • Gee clearly situates video games within an overall theory of learning and literacy with genuine power to transform students and equip them to address complex problems.

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