Good Video Games and Good Learning: Collected Essays on Video Games, Learning and Literacy, 2nd Edition (New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies)

Good Video Games and Good Learning presents the most important essays by James Paul Gee devoted to the ways in which good video games create good learning. The chapters in this book argue that good games teach through well-designed problem-solving experiences. They also prove that game-based learning must involve more than software and technology and engage with the design of passionate-affinity spaces where people mentor each other’s learning and engagement. In the end, the book offers a model of collaborative, interactive, and embodied learning centered on problem solving, a model that can be enhanced by games, but which can be accomplished in many different ways with or without games. Cover Contents Chapter 1: Games and Learning: An Interview Overview Chapter 2: Good Video Games, the Human Mind, and Good Learning Introduction Video Games and the Mind Good Video Games and Good Learning I. Empowered Learners 1. Co-design 2. Customize 3. Identity 4. Manipulation and Distributed Knowledge II. Problem Solving 5. Well-Ordered Problems 6. Pleasantly Frustrating 7. Cycles of Expertise 8. Information “On Demand” and “Just in Time” 9. Fish Tanks 10. Sandboxes 11. Skills as Strategies III. Understanding 12. System Thinking 13. Meaning as Action Image Conclusion Chapter 3: Pleasure and Being a Professional: Learning and Video Games Introduction The Projective Stance The Professional Projective Stance and Ways of Seeing Learning Chapter 4: Stories, Probes, and Games Chapter 5: The Old and the New in the New Digital Literacies Chapter 6: Can Technology-rich Learning Close the Digital Participation Gap? Endnote Chapter 7: Looking Where the Light Is Bad: Video Games and the Future of Assessment Beside the Point The Answer Is the Test The Wheel What We Assess How We Assess Why We Assess What We Need Oh Brave New (Virtual) World! Take One: Build Them Like the Pros Take Two: Use What the Pros have Already Built Take Three: Build Your Own Pros A Journey of a Thousand Miles Acknowledgments Join the Conversation Chapter 8: Affinity Spaces: From Age of Mythology to Today’s Schools Introduction: From Groups to Spaces Social Spaces: AoM Affinity Spaces Chapter 9: Nurturing Affinity Spaces and Game-Based Learning Games and Learning Affinity Spaces Features of Affinity Spaces Content, Knowledge, and Choice The Pareto Principle Chapter 10: Our New Out-of-School “Schools of Choice and Passion” The Problems with School A New Formation for Learning Passionate Affinity Spaces Features of Passionate Affinity Spaces The Future of Schools and Coleges Chapter 11: “Surmise the Possibilities”: Portal to a Game-Based Theory of Learning for the 21st Century Introduction Games and Learning What to Learn, Not Just How to Learn Back to Portal Words and Symbols as Knowledge Tools Teaching References Index