James Paul Gee of Arizona State University is a brilliant person with a compelling case for using video games in the service of assessment and learning without trying to separate the two as with the standard model practiced in the United States. He is a member of the National Academy of Education and is the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University. His specialty, “New Literacy Studies,” is 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.
In this video he makes some interesting points
- Creativity is a necessity of a global economy
- Those who know how to memorize facts traditionally have been privileged above of those who are good at solving problems.
- People naturally want to be productive in their own way
- Games are a connected to larger storyline. They’re extensions of other media which can ignite a passion for books, card collecting, forming social connections, fan fiction writing, and creating alternative worlds that compliment the original work
- Games introduce a language on demand instead of forced on you.
- Games treat words as tools to solve problems.
- Games inherently combine learning and assessment.
- Textbooks and game manuals should be treated equally
- Learning with a peer often produces better results than learning from an expert
