Final Blog Post

For my final revision I decided to overlay previous found poems onto the prezi. Really this final project is a gathering of projects from this semester merged into one project. It takes the ideas of juxtaposing images of video games with images that represent Gee's ideas together, but now with words that Gee has said relating to video games and learning. Gee seems to be the main source and academic mind behind video games and learning, but Marc Prensky also has works out on the web. Just google video games and learning. The search result will give you Gees papers and a couple links to Prenskys books. For my prezi I now realize that I should have taken pictures of the game of my own gameplay, but at this point I cannot because my games are at home. I believe that when crafting the final prezi I really listened to what others were doing with their project, and tried to think of ways I could incorporate their ideas into my project. I am sure that there is more I could have incorporated without it becoming too crowded. I think that it is important to look into video games and how some of the principle concepts of them applied to that of learning. The reason that I find this so interesting is because I have always had some interest in video games, and if we could replicate that same idea with learning it could make us that much better as people. Here is my MLA citation for all of the sources from this project.

Mini Project 3

For this mini project I am going to do a screencast of making a found poem. I am sorry there is no sound, but I do not want my annoying roommate to interrupt this important project. In this video I will go through and highlight the different parts where I pulled the words that went into the found poem. I think the key to creating a good found poem is to not read the article. I know that this sounds counterintuitive, but I think that in order to make a poem with words that pop you need to only notice the words that pop out at you. Here is the video .

Found Poem #2 

First Video Game
Problem Solving
Hard, Long, and Complex
Theoretical Linguistics
Good Learning Principles
Set of Facts
New Domain
Context of an interactive
Consequences of Failure
Playing Styles
Hands On
Virtually Routinized
Taken-for-Granted
Cycle of Expertise
Just In Time
Regime of Competence
Smart Tools
Use Games in School

This project relates an educational article to key words that relate to video games and learning. Really the words that are chosen in this poem are words that just stuck out to me. I would have elaborated more during the video, but I did not want any background noise of my roommate to interfere with the video.

Mini Project 2: Found Poem

Found Poem

Good Games
Initial game levels
Complex problems
Hidden Tutorials
Cognitive Science
Good generalization
Confronted too early
Creative solutions
Cycle of expertise
Repeatedly confronts
Taken-for-granted
Motivation
Action at a Distance
Playing a character
Value like scientist
Just in time
Be producers
Lowest common denominator
Too often in schools

Here is the link to the article where I pulled all of these wonderful words from article.

I decided to do a found poem for this weeks mini project, because I like the idea of randomly taking words and just making a somewhat nonsense poem. I think one of the reasons I enjoyed doing this mini project is because I like to see what words I key on or what words pop out to me, or even phrases. Lacy did bring up a very interesting idea that I would be interested in doing later on(just not tonight). She had an idea about showing a video that goes through and highlights the words that were choose for the found poem. What do you think about this idea?

Revised Mini Project 1

Here is my revised Prezi. It is very similar to the one last week, but I did add a few pictures to the overall presentation. The reason I did this is because I realized that the pictures did not readily explain the significance between video games and learning. After doing some research when I got home, I stumbled upon a Gee article that defines many different ideas that relate learning and video games. I wrote down notes in a google doc, because I did not have my daybook handy at the time, I then went on to find pictures that represented the main ideas. Some of the pictures I choose to relate to the main ideas are a little bit abstract, and might only make sense in my head. If you see something and are wondering which of Gee's ideas it relates to please let me know in a comment. Here is the google doc with the project reflections that also has the notes as a link in the last paragraph. Project Reflections.