Blog #3 + Reflection

Gee: Schools tend to care only about what is inside students’ heads as their heads and bodies are isolated from others, from tools and technologies, and from rich environments that help make them powerful nodes in networks (202).

Albanese: For the most part, I would say that I agree with this statement. However, I feel as if Gee is oversimplifying the problem for many reasons, including three very significant reasons which I feel Gee has carelessly neglected. First, I believe it is safe to say that as of recent years, those concerned with education have taken multiple measures to try to correct this issue by actively educating teachers (with professional development) and teachers in training (with improved teacher training programs) about the benefits of collaborative and cooperative learning, which would encourage them to implement activities like reciprocal teaching, the jigsaw and others like it, in their classrooms. However, making a widespread transition into new methods of teaching doesn’t happen overnight, it takes time and patience. And second, as far as seeking other people for assistance, I think it is important to find a good balance between collaborative and cooperative learning, and independent learning. I don’t think it is wise to encourage one way of learning over the other because it is highly important for students to become experts in both arenas. We most definitely want students to know how to reach out to the right people for help, when help is needed, to know who and where to go to for that assistance, and to be able to work along with others cooperatively and productively. However, I believe it is equally important that they learn how to seek out knowledge on their own, without always relying-or relying too much on others. Third, it is difficult to assess how much students have actually learned when they are allowed to consult other people and use all sorts of tools. Yes, learning how to use tools is very important in and of itself but in order to excel in the world students need to learn how to be creative and figure some things out without the help of another person or a tool.

Gee: We must more and more come to see ourselves not in terms of a linear progression up a ‘career ladder’ in one single job but as a ‘portfolio’ composed of the rearrangeable skills and identities we have acquired in our trajectory through diverse projects inside and outside of ‘workplaces,’ as we move from job to job, project to project, and career to career in a fast-changing world (203).

Albanese: I believe that the ideas found in this passage of the text can be applied to people in today’s economic crisis. Those individuals that were laid off should personally understand the relevance of this quote. Many of those who were laid off were forced to find jobs in new careers. Every day many others leave one career to enter a new one by choice. Therefore, it is important that people see themselves as Gee has described as opposed to limiting themselves to only one expertise.

Gee: They allow players to customize the game to fit their learning and playing styles (216).

Albanese: I found this quote interesting because it reminded me of how, in the way schools are set up today, teachers are the ones who customize lessons to fit different learning styles as opposed to students doing the customizing for themselves, as they do in their video games.

Gee: In fact, it is a crucial learning principle that people learn best when they have an opportunity to talk (and write) about what they are learning (219).

Albanese: This closing statement by Gee, coincidentally, seems like a really convenient and great segue into the ideas of WAC.

Williams: Do you tend to center everything? A centered alignment is the most common alignment that beginners use –it’s very safe, it feels comfortable (36).

Albanese: When I read this statement, I was able to identify with it. I do usually center everything. It was interesting to have this pointed out. Now that I am aware of this tendency, I can consciously work to eliminate it.

Williams: This text is justified. Some people call it quad left and right, and some call it blocked- the text lines up on both sides (40).

Albanese: I have never heard of justified text prior to reading this passage and if I have seen it before I wouldn’t have known it. However, now that I have both seen it and learned its title, I can identify it and apply it in my own work, when applicable. This text is helping us begin to enter the discourse community of designers.

Williams: First paragraphs are traditionally not indented. The purpose of indenting a paragraph is to tell you there is a new paragraph, but you always know the first one is a new paragraph. On a typewriter, an indent was five spaces. With the proportional type you are using on your computer, the standard typographic indent is one em (an em is as wide as the point size of your type), which is more like two spaces (45).

Albanese: I never knew that ‘first paragraphs are traditionally not indented.’ This is the first I have ever heard about that. However, after reading the explanation, it seems to make perfect sense to me. I also never knew what an ‘em’ was prior to reading about it. This is good to know.

Pratt: Literacy began for Sam with the newly pronounceable names on the picture cards and brought him what has been easily the broadest, most varied, most enduring, and most integrated experience of his thirteen year life (1).

Albanese: I believe that this was an excellent example of literacy. Not only was Sam able to become a part of a new discourse community, but he was also able to experience various other types of literacy through this discourse community. He was also able to make many relevant connections between this discourse community and various other school related discourse communities.

Russell: But from the first ‘literacy crisis,’ in the 1870s-precipitated by new discipline-specific writing requirements and the entry of students from previously excluded groups into the nascent mass education system- the academic disciplines have taken little direct interest in writing, either by consciously investigating their own conventions of scholarly writing or by teaching their students those conventions in a deliberate, systematic way-despite a century long tradition of complaints by faculty members and other professionals about the poor writing of students (3).

Albanese: This passage reminds me of the intense debate we were having the other night in class- concerning whether or not teachers of other disciplines, aside from English, should teach and evaluate writing in their classrooms.

Russell: But the WAC movement has deep, though rarely exposed, roots in the recurring debates over approaches to writing and pedagogy-especially in the American tradition of progressive education (3).

Albanese: I was surprised to read this fact because I have always thought that the progressive education movement was more focused on trade and job preparation and not as much on academic aspects of education. However, when I continued reading and discovered that it was Dewey that was for the WAC movement, I was not as surprised because Dewey seems to have always been one step ahead of all the other educators of his time.

Russell: In the committee’s final report before it disbanded (for lack of departments willing to use its services), the chair, Ralph Rader wrote: When student writing is deficient, then, it is deficient…in ways having directly to do with the student’s real control of the subject matter of his discipline and not in ways having to do with the special disciplines of English or speech departments. To raise the level of student writing…would be in effect to raise the student’s level of intellectual attainment in the subject matter itself. To say this is to indicate…the reason for the lack of the response to the committee program: faculty are by and large satisfied with the intellectual attainment of their students. The committee is suggesting, then…that faculty should not be so easily satisfied (8).

Albanese: I completely agree with this statement made by Ralph Rader. I think he very eloquently explained the importance of writing to learn and writing across the curriculum.

Russell: Indeed, a 1988 survey of all 2,735 institutions of higher education in the United States and Canada found that, of 1,113 that replied, 427 (38 percent) has some WAC program, and 235 of these programs had been in existence for three years or more (17).

Albanese: This is a perfect example of what I stated earlier in this blog entry. I believe that widespread educational reforms do not happen overnight, they take a lot of time to come into common practice.




Reflection

I find that the 2x entry journal is very useful in the sense that it allows us to chose particular direct quotes and immediately reflect on them by using our own personal reactions and ideas, as opposed to writing a summative journal that focuses on the overarching themes or the big picture. It provides us with the opportunity to pick and chose elements of the readings that we can best connect and respond to. I enjoy writing this type of journal because it is both useful and refreshing.
I would certainly implement this type of journal writing into my own future classroom because I believe that it has much to offer students. Aside from allowing them the freedom of choosing which ideas to reflect on, it also provides them with an opportunity to develop better paper writing skills, in the sense that they can practice defending their ideas with evidence from the text. I feel it is an excellent alternative to the typical journal structure.

Blog #2

Gee: Ironically, though, the process that is basic to young children’s learning and to adult’s expert practice is too often discounted and unused in school learning (92).

Albanese: It is likely very clear to anyone reading this book (especially those who have reached this chapter) that Gee is very openly and overtly critical of learning in schools. This quote is just one of the many, many, MANY, examples found in the book of him making one of these criticisms. Although I do see his points and cannot completely dispute them, I still question if he is being objectively fair. His agenda is so evident that one cannot help but question his claims. His argument seems to lack balance. Are schools really as ineffective and flawed as Gee claims?


Gee: 15. Probing Principle: Learning is a cycle of probing the world (doing something); reflecting in and on this action and, on this basis, forming a hypothesis; reprobing the world to test this hypothesis; and then accepting or rethinking the hypothesis (105).

Albanese: This learning principle is similar to both Piaget and Vygotsky’s theories of child learning. Both theorists believed that a critical element of learning for children was interacting with their environment. Each of their theories was similar to Gee’s Probing Principle in the sense that they each involved the learner exploring their environment, creating a hypothesis, testing that hypothesis, and either confirming or discarding that hypothesis.


Gee: In the end, my claim is that people have situated meanings for words when they can associate these words with images, actions, experiences, or dialogue in a real or imagined world (105).

Albanese: What Gee is describing here sounds a lot like the concept of meaningful learning, which refers to the idea that the learned knowledge (let’s say a fact) is fully understood by the individual and that the individual knows how that specific fact relates to other stored facts (stored in your brain that is). This can be accomplished through making connections between the material at hand, in Gee’s example ‘words,’ and something more concrete and established to the learner, like prior knowledge or a personal connection. In English Language Arts classrooms, we already encourage students to do this by asking them to make text-to-self, text-to-world, and text-to-text connections.


Gee: Now they believe that transfer is crucial to learning but not at all easy to trigger in learners, especially in school (126).

Albanese: I was just reading about this same exact theory in another text, which I am reading for another course. The text is entitled, Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas by Patricia L. Anders and Barbara J. Guzzetti, which coincidentally makes many references to Gee and specifically this Gee text in particular. Anders and Guzzetti are in agreement with Gee about many of the concepts which he discusses in this text. Transfer is one of the concepts which Anders and Guzzetti discuss in chapter three of their text.


Gee: The problem is that often students continue to make this ‘mistake’ even after they have taken a good deal of physics and learned that it is a ‘mistake’ (169).

Albanese: Here Gee is talking about misconceptions, which is another concept that Anders and Guzzetti discuss in their text. In fact, Anders and Guzzetti devote much of the latter portion of chapter three of their text to discussing the concept of misconceptions in great detail. Once again, they are in agreement with Gee, stating “Conceptual change is difficult; it is the hardest teaching you will ever do. Several studies have shown that learners hang on to their previous understandings with great tenacity” (Anders & Guzzetti, 82). I have chosen this quote because it offers an explanation for the Gee quote I have listed above.


Gee: Cultural models play a crucial role in school. Let me give you a specific example from a science classroom (166).

Albanese: All I would like to say about this quote is that it annoys me that Gee continuously uses the science classroom as an example throughout the entire book thus far. This is merely one of the many examples where he uses the science classroom as an example to explain one of his theories or learning principles. If he is trying to demonstrate that learning in video games can be compared to learning in all content areas, then he should consider using a different content area aside from science for once. In my opinion, he has even had several opportunities where he could have possibly used the English Language Arts classroom as an example, but decided, instead, to use the science classroom as an example, over and over again.


Gee: Certain circumstances can, however, force us to think overtly and reflectively about our cultural models. We certainly don’t want or need to think overtly about all of them. But we do need to think about those that, in certain situations or at certain points in our lives, have the potential to do more harm than good (154).

Albanese: As I was reading this particular portion of text, it made me think of something that I believe would be one such example of what Gee is describing in the quote above. I am not sure if I am correct, however, as I understand it, I believe that the media’s portrayal of perfect or even acceptable body image, especially for females, is a cultural model which ‘we do need to think about’ because it does ‘in certain situations or at certain points in our lives, have the potential to do more harm than good,’ by leading to such extreme measurements and disorders as Anorexia and Bulimia.


Williams: Very often in the work of new designers, the words and phrases and graphics are strung out all over the place, filling corners and taking up lots of room so there won’t be any empty space (15).

Albanese: This first sentence of the chapter jumped out at me, reminding me of that awful website we looked at as a class. I forget the name of the website. However, I remember she had gowns and thousands of links to related and unrelated things. Both that website and the Peter Pan website we looked at seem to fit the description Williams is making here.


Williams: Robin’s Principle of Proximity states that you group related items together, move them physically close to each other so the related items are seen as one cohesive group rather than a bunch of unrelated bits (15).

Albanese: This principle definitely seems logical and simple enough. It makes perfect sense to me.


Williams: Once you become aware of the importance of the relationships between lines of type, you will start noticing its effect. Once you start noticing its effect, you own it, you have power over it, you are in control (26).

Albanese: Once again, as I have already stated in my prior blog, Williams sounds like a motivational speaker here. It is almost kind of humorous. ‘you own it, you have power over it, you are in control,’ the only thing that is missing here is the exclamation point.


Williams: And it’s okay to set the type smaller than 12 point! Really! (27).

Albanese: I actually learned something here. I had thought it was never okay to use a font size smaller than 12 point on any document. I am still unsure if that is a good idea. I feel it may be too small and that people may have to strain in order to read it, especially those with less than perfect eyesight.

Blog #1

Gee: Finally, all design features discussed so far work to ensure that a good video game operates within the learner’s “regime of competence.” By this I mean that the game is felt as challenging but not “undoable” (67).

Albanese: The “regime of competence” that Gee speaks about in this section of the text sounds very similar to Lev Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development and the ideas surrounding it. The zone of proximal development (ZPD) is the difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can do with help. The help which Vygotsky was speaking of was the help of an adult. However, I believe that a video game can serve as an aid to help students learn as well, if implemented properly of course. I wonder if Gee was thinking of zone of proximal development when he came up with the concept of “regime of competence.”

Gee: I believe, for example, that the identity of Pikman recruits relates rather well to the sort of identity a learner is called on to assume in the best active science learning in schools and other sites (37).

Albanese: This quote from the text is a continuation of Gee’s discussion concerning the idea that students will actively learn best when they can assume a new identity that is interactive with the material at hand. I agree with this argument. However, I resent the fact that Gee repeatedly uses the science classroom as an example. While reading this section of the text, I immediately thought of one particular example of how this concept can be used in an English Language Arts classroom setting.

Elbow: We can see better the interactions between their thinking about course material and their thinking about other realms of their life, between their thinking and their feeling. We get better glimpses of them as people (292).

Albanese: I particularly agree with this statement by Elbow. In this case it becomes easier for teachers to decipher whether or not students are truly grasping and comprehending course material to spite difficultly in other arenas, such as exams and formal writing.

Elbow: Researchers have trouble finding good evidence that [teachers’] comments on student writing actually help students learn more or write better (292).

Albanese: At first read, I was truly surprised and fascinated by this statement. However, after I read Elbow’s explanation of why this may be so, it made perfect sense to me. He described the conditions in which teachers write comments and in which students read comments. I found these descriptions to make perfect sense. I suppose I just never thought about the issues in those ways prior to reading about them.

Murray: We have to respect that student, not for his product, not for the paper we call literature by giving it a grade, but for the search for truth in which he is engaged. We must listen carefully for those words that may reveal the truth that may reveal a voice. We are coaches, encouragers, developers, creators of environments in which our students can experience the writing process for themselves (5).

Albanese: I like this quote and am in agreement with Murray’s sentiments. I also believe that the process of writing should be valued just as much, if not more than the final product at early stages of student writing. This portion of the text sounds like a pep talk for writing teachers or a motivational speaker.

Murray: Implication No. 4 The student should have the opportunity to write all the drafts necessary for him to discover what he has to say on this particular subject (5-6).

Albanese: The idea of students being able to write as many drafts as necessary is a wonderful and ideal one. However, it is just unrealistic for the average public school English Language Arts classroom. Although, both teachers and students would enjoy and benefit from the opportunity, time will not allow for it. There is so much to teach in an English Language Arts classroom that teachers must budget their time wisely. Unfortunately, both teachers and students must devote much time to practicing for standardized tests. It is just not possible to spend so much time on one assignment.

Williams: Once you could name something, you’re conscious of it. You have power over it. You own it. You’re in control (12).

Albanese: I found this quote to be an interesting observation. I have never thought about it before, but I suppose it is true. I thought the Joshua tree example was a good example because it was very simple, straight to the point, and easy to get right away. It reminds me of when small children learn to name certain objects for the first time and walk around pointing out that object whenever they see it. It seems like this is the same concept, only on a higher, more sophisticated level.

Williams: When gathering these four principles from the vast maze of design theory, I thought there must be some appropriate and memorable acronym within these conceptual ideas that would help people remember them. Well, uh, there is a memorable-but rather inappropriate-acronym. Sorry (13).

Albanese: After reading this quote, I scrolled back up the screen to try to figure out what that ‘memorable-but rather inappropriate-acronym’ might be. After immediately realizing what that acronym was I had a short laugh. I appreciate the humor Williams uses to convey his intentions. Now I think I will remember that acronym whether I would like to or not.