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_professor pixel

• Computers and English
• Matt Barton

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_yes, even violent ones

• I want to talk about video gamesyes, even
  violent video gamesand say something positive
  about them. (1)

3
_social construction

• You cannot read or think outside of any group
  whatsoever. (2)
• Groups work to encourage people to read and think
  in certain ways. (2)

4
_three discourses

• Situated Cognition
• Human learning is fully embedded in a material,
  social, and cultural world. (8)
• New Literacy Studies
• Reading and writing should be viewed not as
  mental achievements but as social and cultural
  practices with economic, historical, and
  political implications.
• Connectionism
• Humans are powerful pattern-recognizers. We think
  better with patterns than with logic or abstract
  principles.

5
_anti-social schools

• Children are expected to read texts with little
  or no knowledge about any social practices within
  which those texts are used. (16)
• Producers (people who can actually engage in a
  social practice) potentially make better
  consumers (people who can read or understand
  texts from or about the social practice).

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_semiotic domains

• By a semiotic domain I mean any set of practices
  that recruits one or more modalities to
  communicate distinctive types of meanings. (18)
• Cellular biology, literary criticism
• People need to be able to learn to be literate in
  new semiotic domains throughout their lives. (19)

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_internal and external

• Any domain can be viewed internally as a type of
  content or externally in terms of people engaged
  in a set of social practices. (26)
• Internal Error God breathed life into the
  word.
• External Error Oh, youre a social linguist.

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_design grammars

• Each domain has an internal and an external
  design grammar.
• Internal DG The principles and patterns with
  which one can recognize what is acceptable
  content in a semiotic domain.
• External DG The principles and patterns that
  determine what is an acceptable or typical social
  practice and identity within the affinity group
  associated with the domain.

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_There isnt any content

• Important knowledge is information in, or at
  least related to, intellectual domains or
  academic disciplines like physics, history, art,
  or literature. (21)
• Work that does not involve such learning is
  meaningless.

10
_everything in particular

• The problem with the content view is that an
  academic discipline, or any other semiotic
  domain, is not primarily content. (21)
• It is primarily a lived and historically changing
  set of distinctive social practices.
• There really is no such thing as learning in
  general. (22)

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_everything in particular

• When we learn a new semiotic domain in an active
  way
• We learn to experience the world in new ways
• We gain the potential to join a social group
• We prepare for future learning and problem
  solving in the domain and related domains

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_critical learning

• For learning to be critical
• We need to learn not only how to understand and
  produce meanings in a particular semiotic domain,
  but also how to think about that domain at a
  meta level.
• We need to know how to innovate in the domain.

13
_learning to play

• How are good video games designed to enhance
  getting themselves learned well and quickly so
  people can play and enjoy them even when they are
  long and hard? (6)
• The theory of learning in good video games is
  close to what I believe are the best theories of
  learning in cognitive science. (7)

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_videogames

• Video games are potentially good places where
  people can learn to situate meanings through
  embodied experiences in a complex semiotic domain
  and meditate on the process. (26)
• Video games situate meaning in a multimodal space
  through embodied experiences to solve problems
  and reflect on the intricacies of the design of
  imagined worlds and the design of both real and
  imagined social relationships wand identities in
  the modern world. (48)

15
_finger

• Three types of player identity
• Virtual Identity Your identity as a virtual
  character in a virtual world.
• Real-world Identity Your identity as a
  non-virtual person playing the game.
• Projective Identity Your projection of your
  values, aspirations, and directives onto the
  virtual character.
• This tripartite play transcends identification
  with characters in novels or movies because it is
  active and reflexive.

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_learning identities

• People cannot learn in a deep way within a
  semiotic domain if they are not willing to commit
  themselves fully to itthey must see themselves
  as the kind of person who can learn, use, and
  value the semiotic domain. (59)
• The learner knows she has the capacity to take on
  the virtual identity as a real world one. (66)

17
_situated meaning

• One good way to make people look stupid is to ask
  them to learn and think in terms they cannot
  connect in any useful way to images or situations
  in their embodied experiences in the world. (76)

18
_the story in videogames

• The story line in a video game is a mixture of
  four things
• The game designers choices
• How you cause these choices to unfold by the
  order in which you find things
• The actions you carry out
• Your own imaginative projection about the
  characters, plot, and world of the story

19
_Hamlet died! Insert coin to try again.

• When the character you are playing dies, you may
  get sad, but you usually get pissed that you
  have failed.
• The emotional investments you have in a
  video-game story are entirely different from
  those you get in a book or movie. (82)

20
_like I was there

• One intriguing thing about video-game stories is
  that I am so involved at the level of that the
  larger story line often seems to float somewhat
  vaguely above me.

21
_the cycle

• Playing a good video game requires the player to
  engage in a four-step process
• Probe the virtual world
• Form a hypothesis about what something might mean
  in a situated way
• Reprobe the word with the hypothesis in mind
• Reflect on result and rethink hypothesis

22
_learning principles p. 49

• Active, Critical Learning Principle
• Learning environments should zoom in and out
• Design Principle
• Know and appreciate design
• Semiotic Principle
• Learn what signs are and how they relate
• Semiotic Domains Principle
• Understand semiotic domains and be able to
  participate in groups
• Metalevel Thinking about Semiotic Domains
• Ability to make connections

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_learning principles p. 67

• Psychosocial Moratorium Principle
• Low consequences encourage risk-taking
• Committed Learning Principle
• Practice and commitment are linked
• Identity Principle
• Learning through taking on identities
• Self-Knowledge Principle
• Translate virtual knowledge to your life
• Amplification of Input Principle
• Low input, high output
• Achievement Principle
• Learners at all levels rewarded proportionately
  for effort

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_learning principles p. 71

• Practice Principle
• More fun More practice
• Ongoing Learning Principle
• Constant cycles of learning make roles overlap
• Regime of Competence Principle
• Gain skills to overcome challenges

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_learning principles p. 107

• Probing Principle
• Learn as you do
• Multiple Routes Principle
• Situated Meaning Principle
• Text Principle

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_learning principles p. 111

• Intertextual Principle
• Multimodal Principle
• Material Intelligence Principle
• Intuitive Knowledge Principle