Post #10- Education, exercise, and Bogost vs. Gee

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Now that we’ve come to a close on Bogost’s book, we have hit the pedagogy chapters, the ways in which videogames have the potential to be used for teaching, in educating.  Bogost and Gee would seem to disagree on many points in the conversation regarding videogames and learning, although that might be the result of their very different approaches to education. 

                Bogost begins his third section of the book with an outline of two very prominent educating methods—behaviorism and constructivism.  Behaviorism is very popular is school systems, focusing on the reinforcement tactics such as students receiving A’s for good work and F’s for poor work.  Those who adhere to constructivism focus often times on the individual, their learning experience, and their ability to “play” or “do” in order to learn, bringing in past experiences as building blocks.  We see this method a lot in kindergarten and the Montessori schools.

Education           

    These two popular theories are at odds within the education system in America and thus pose various different problems for video games.  Because both systems focus on different aspects of games, we seem to hit an impass.  How can games be useful in the educational system? 

And this is also where Gee and Bogost seem to veer off—although I believe that Bogost might merely be a more elaborate build up of Gee’s.  According to Gee, good video games allow a players to engage in embodied learning—that is, video games, when played actively “situating meaning in a multimodal space through embodied experiences to solve problems and reflect on the intricacies” (241) of the world (both real and imagined.  Bogost, in this chapter, argues that no meaning or experience is general, but rather, because video games are rhetorical, there must be a correlation between particular worlds and relationships.  Hence, why it seems as though Bogost is building and refining upon Gee, rather than driving a clear divide between him and Gee.  This, of course, leads Bogost into his definition of procedural literacy as “any activity that encourages active assembly of basic building blocks according to particular logics” (257).  If this is the case, perhaps what we are creating within Second Life and Minecraft are helping to grow/build out procedural literacy. 

                Continuing along with the concept of schooling and education (two ideas which Bogost claim are completely separate and I must admit, I agree), Bogost transitions into the value systems which are instilled within the traditional school system and work places.  These two cultural institutions help to drive home the ideas of consumption and value in work.  We go to school so our parents can work so they can purchase products that advertisers say we need.  Children, in school (and essentially at home), learn the value of work so that they can then go out into the world and work and consume.  It’s a vicious cycle.  But, if games provide a strong internal rhetoric through the procedure of the game, these values (including ones that have to do with faith) can be examined—looked at under the hood, so to speak.  Games such as Animal Crossing help the player to explore and think about the culture of consumption, giving the player the tools to make decisions about consumerism.  Bogost also speaks about the game Cold Stone Creamery: Stone City which “exposes the corporate business model” (261).  Like Animal Crossing it helps to expose a system through its procedural rhetoric.

Exergames

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I found the section of exergames to be particularly interesting, though I had trouble seeing them as hosting any sort of procedural rhetoric.  Of all the video games we have spoken about, I am most familiar with these, being an avid DDR player and having the Zumba game, as well as Wii Fit Plus and the Biggest Loser Wii game.  Bogost leads us through a history of these games, attempting to posit that video games have long since been infiltrated with physical activity (though I feel that this was a major stretch). Bogost suggests that games such as DDR allow players to be both the exerciser and the personal trainer.  The game uses procedural tactics to general feedback from the motivating (or sometimes unmotivating) voice.  However, despite the fact that some games might have some procedural rhetoric, our culture and values might be what persuades us from actually engaging in these games.

Persuasive Games and Evaluation

Persuasive games, those that employ procedural rhetoric and probe the player into starting conversations (with themselves or others) about the procedures exposed by the act of play, must submit to evaluation just as any other game.  However, unlike other games or products where a counter can be ticked everytime someone plays, these are best evaluated by their ability to conjur up conversations and critic—which is exactly their purpose, according to Bogost. 

Within the constructs of our institutions of education, politics, and advertising, games with a strong procedural rhetoric are the games which take Gee’s concepts of embodied experience and allow a closer and particular experience to be had.  As Bogost claims, “videogames get to the heard of things by mounting arguments about the processes inherent in them” (339).

Questions:

1)      Would you consider our game design within Second Life to be more constructivism than behaviorism?  And, because of the problems inherent in both, is there a way we can use aspects of both within the game?  Or do we want to?

2)      Through the creation of our projects in Second Life and Minecraft, how would you say our procedural literacy is growing?

3)      Is there a way to reconcile Bogost and Gee?  They seem to have some very different ideas via the educational potential of games, but I wonder if it is possible to find an example where both of their ideas are present. Maybe there isn’t, but I’m curious.