The Long Zoom: Games and Invention
Podcast:
This podcast addresses Steven Johnson's presentation on The Long Zoom. Specifically, I ask about the roles that games can and cannot play in education. How we can use games effectively, and when have we gone too far? What can games do, and what can't they do? How can we help students truly come to understand the long zoom "way of seeing" the world? What, other than games, can help students incorporate the long zoom into their thinking?
The song is "Baba O'Riley" by The Hit Crew (Teenage Wasteland album).
The clips of Steven Johnson are from Fora TV ("Steven Johnson and The Long Zoom").
(15 votes)
Comments
The Blank Page and the Game Space
Heather,
I share your concern about how much emphasis the classroom should place on gaming --especially, when we take into account the addictive nature of some of the games Johnson talks about. However, for a moment I want explore the connection you make between gaming and the blank page.
In the podcast, you liken gaming in the classroom to the dreadful "blank page" by way of rhetorical and/or compositional invention. And of course, on a deeply theoretical level, and as graduate students, we both agree: no text is authentic, or original, or genuine. No text is free of source material, so to speak. As you state in your podcast, "After all, nothing is really new. Everything, like this podcast for example, is in conversation with other pre-existing ideas." (approx. 4min). On this point, you're right. However, when you posit that a game, with its preset interface, does not follow the same inventional rules as the blank page, you may find yourself in a contradiction. After all, if we both believe that a text is the culmination of several other texts or ideas, then the blank page isn't all that different from the game space. Game interfaces are visual representations of that ether of ideas and texts from which new texts emerge; they are also blank pages. I can understand that your students, as well as my own, probably haven't considered that the blank page is actually a space for response and connection (for many, it may be a space for pulling teeth). Of course, gaming for many students is much more exciting and visually stunning than the blank page, but the dynamic is the same, if only slightly more enticing. Even so, it seems we might embrace a technology that makes the inventional strategies so apparent.
Yet, whether students are aware of it or not, these pre-existing ideas manifest themselves in whatever argument, narrative, proposal, etc. comes into being in such a space. The game space is predicated on the same principle. So the student sitting in front of her computer screen, staring at a blank word document, experiences a very similar dynamic to the student beside them, who begins to play the Sims or Spore. The former is charged with the task of creating something out of a pre-existing network of ideas, as you and I both agree. I submit to you here that the latter is charged with the same task, albeit in a different format.
-Josh-
Inventional Imperative?
Hi Heather,
Like Josh, I’m on board with your concerns about the pedagogical efficacy of games and your critique of Taylor’s “author node.” And, like you, I feel compelled to distinguish between the inventional potential presented by the messy real world and that of any relatively pristine game space. I am, however, somewhat uncomfortable defending this distinction, at least in any absolute terms. In other words, I am open to the possibility that, having never played the Sims or World of WarCraft or almost any other computer game released in the last ten years or so, I harbor some unsupportable bias against games as self-contained inventional spaces. I am also willing to imagine games that match the complexity of reality, and thus offer a similar inventional space to that of the real world. (The immersive games discussed by McGonigal seem to come closest to this ideal—especially when, like Push, Nevada, they escape the limits set down by their creators.)
But maybe I should say that I *was* uncomfortable defending the distinction between real and virtual invention. After listening to your podcast I am at least a bit more confident. I’ll explain.
By comparing Snow’s cholera research to rhetorical invention (filling the “blank page”), you suggest, I think, that writing can and perhaps should involve something like an ethical imperative, an understanding that what we do as writers draws on and impacts the real world, the lived experiences of others, and sometimes (without being too dramatic about it, I hope) actual lives. The comparison made me think of Edward Said’s notion of “secular criticism,” which he describes as a “worldly” endeavor that resists hermetic theorizations and hegemonic social systems by “acting on behalf of . . . alternative acts and alternative intentions whose advancement is a fundamental human and intellectual obligation.” We don’t just want to teach our students to invent, but to appreciate what Said might call the “eventhood” of their inventions, to appreciate that the texts they write, like any others, are “a part of the social world, human life,” and the historical moment in which they are produced.
This humanistic dimension of rhetorical invention (if I can conflate invention and criticism for the moment) is simply unavailable within any game space, no matter how complex. The idea of any invention carried out entirely in game space strikes me as almost essentially hermetic—impotent even. Game design is, of course, another story altogether; as is moving *by analogy* from events in World of WarCraft to real world epidemiology (Clark and Blue). The former is, I think, undeniably like writing. And the latter seems to me closer to (and, in a sense, the reverse of) Snow’s research, which, as Johnson points out, relied at least partially on creating a model from the available mortality data.
Anyway, great podcast—very stimulating. I didn’t notice any technical issues. Excellent sound quality, nice pacing, effective use of audio clips from Johnson’s presentation.
Best,
-j.
Electives as Play
Like you, Heather, while a personal experience somewhat salvages my view of games in the classroom, I can’t help but still harbor some doubts. Therefore, I agree with your concluding point as articulated by Johnson’s wife: that while games can teach valuable skills, some valuable for their relevance to 21st century problem solving and some transferable to more traditional academic tasks, we need not completely abandon traditional learning experiences.
Your mention of grammar games prompted me to think about other writing “games,” specifically about electives and extracurricular activities often considered non-academic, and the resulting student-produced work considered mere play. When I advised the yearbook, the school still offered it as an elective course. Before I experienced the class firsthand, I would never have bought into the “Yearbook is my hardest class!” claim. After seeing the students produce a 300+ page, full-color book funded wholly on business and personal advertisements and book sales, however, I think the claim has merit. Perhaps doubters like my former self think that Yearbook doesn’t require the critical thinking of other classes. Perhaps they think that students taking pictures are merely playing (and of course some are). But I argue that through photography, they are also prewriting, thinking about how this photograph can enhance their already-written copy, how this photograph’s shape must fit the space for it, and how its subject must fit into our goal of representing the student population’s racial and gender make-up, four grade levels, and of course, more than just the homecoming court. Not to mention the five-step peer-editing process every 2-page spread endured. Sure, they rarely wrote more than 1 to 3 paragraphs per spread, but those brief compositions spent a week in revisions, and I read every word (For more on the value of brevity, check out the recent NYT article “Teaching to the Text Message”). Or the collaborative, social invention process of planning out each spread to match the annual theme. While I agree with your caution at the impossibility of a total “blank page,” planning the book did require a great deal of invention.
I wonder often how English classes can tap into the educational wealth of electives to fuel traditional learning approaches. If only I could institute a similar proofing process in all my writing classes, which also requires that students also care greatly about their writing. If only my students could always write with the promise of delivery and circulation among a truly interested (yet intensely and vocally critical) audience. If only more students could occasionally experience the threat of legal and institutional repercussions limiting school publications, the demands of working with real businesses (the publisher, the local sponsors, the school photographer) and their deadlines, and tangible financial penalties (rather than arbitrary points) for missing them.
Yearbook couldn’t address everything my students learned in my English classes. But it did offer them a lot that my core class didn’t.
See Andy Selsberg’s “Teaching to the Text Message.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/opinion/20selsberg.html
A Biased View
Heather,
You did a great job with your podcast. I liked how you weaved the Johnson segments throughout. I too have my doubts about using games in the classroom. And like j. part of my discomfort with the idea of integrating games in the classroom may be due to my own unfamiliarity with games. I have never played any of the games Johnson mentions.
That said, however, I do think Johnson has a particularly compelling argument for integrating games in the classroom because of the way that games mimic the theory of the Zone of Proximal Development and can thus lead to catered learning to the individual student. Johnson’s argument is also compelling because of the valuable 21st century skills games can help students develop: the ability to process large amounts of information; adapt to new interfaces; build virtual connections with people; learn new social skills on the fly; etc. I believe Johnson is right when he explains that this skill set will be very useful to our students and it will be a skill set that they implement daily in their workplaces.
I agree with you and Kristen in that we can use games in the classroom to help our students develop skills, but we also need some traditional academic learning as well. I’m sure I am biased, but the skills students learn in an English classroom are also essential to any workplace. Critical reading, analyzing, writing, presenting, and communication skills are essential in any work environment, and I believe that these skills may not be able to be developed through many of the games Johnson mentions.
That said, I do think there are things we can do in the classroom to address the threat of “blank page.” One way to address the “blank page” could be to turn it into a game of sorts. Many theorists argue for the use of inquiry-based instruction in the classroom as a way to promote a problem-solving style of learning. Although it may never make a learning task as authentic as Kristen’s yearbook class, inquiry-based approaches can make learning tasks more relevant to students because they must actively engage in the process rather than simply respond to a prompt. Additionally, I am currently reading a book by Kathleen Yancy titled /Reflection in the English Classroom/. In her book, Yancey discusses how teachers can help their students use different forms of reflection to learn about the way they write and to improve their writing over time. Reflection adds its own game-like dimension to writing and the writing process as students self-evaluate their progress and try and problem solve as they go along.