In our Technology in the Art Room class, we are going to be creating a project using the Scratch Software. Many people use Scratch to create their own videogames. The readings for this week all focused on videogames and learning.
In Paul Gee’s article, Video Games and Embodiment, he talks about different ways the player thinks while playing a video game. In many video games the player inhabits the goals of a virtual character, the player is acting as if the character’s goals are his goals. An example of this would be Zelda, you are playing as Link but you are taking on his persona and goals.
Simkins’ article, Critical Ethical Reasoning and Role-Play, discusses role playing video games and how they develop our critical and ethical reasoning skills. This article talked about the usual argument of video games’ effects on children, such as dehumanization and desensitizing violence. Many role playing games allow players freedom to act socially or antisocially. The example given was Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, where the player can become a hired assassin and either murder innocent people and steal from their corpses, or they could become a servant of the law and defender of the weak. The game doesn’t require the player to take one route over the other but it does provide a set of plotlines and rewards for each path. The article goes on to discuss how video games are learning environments. Roll playing video games allow the player to learn to take on the role of character in either a realistic or fictional society. This reminds me of when I worked at a camp once a little boy was talking about how he plays grand theft auto and kills prostitutes, but he said “Its ok I just kill the bad women.”
The Gill article, entitled Usefulness of Video Game Experience for Students Learning and Creating Digital 3-D, reported findings from research which investigated learning outcomes in a high school digital art class which used animation softwear to create short animations. The study was with two classes, an advanced class and a beginner class, where groups of students had the entire semester to complete a short narrative using the program Maya. The teacher provided only minimal lecture and demonstration, and allowed the students to explore Maya on their own. The students were motivated to learn because of their love of visual culture, video games, movies, and TV. Many students used their video game experiences while creating their animations. The classes benefited from teaching themselves the program. I don’t know if I necessarily agree with this. When we were introduced to Scratch, we were just given the entire period to explore it and learn it on our own. I found it very frustrating and hard. I’m not familiar with the Maya program, but maybe it is more straightforward than Scratch. Although I agree that it would probably be beneficial to give minimal instruction and let the students explore and do what they want, I feel that an initial introduction lesson on how to use the program is necessary. When we learned photoshop, garageband, and iMovie, we were given a small introduction to the program. With Scratch, we were just left on our own, and I found it very annoying and counterproductive.
