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 * Today I will be speaking about __What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy__ by James Paul Gee.

Author Information:
 * Qualifications: James Paul Gee has worked as a researcher in psycholinguistics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, bilingual education, and literacy. He is currently working at Arizona State University as the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies. Gee is an affiliate of the Games, Learning, and Society group at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a member of the National Academy of Education. He studied at the University of California at Santa Barbara to receive his B.A. in philosophy and at Stanford University for his M.A. and Ph.D in linguistics. He has taught as a professor at Stanford University, Hampshire College, Boston University, and the University of Southern California. In addition, he has done research at Northeastern University and Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Holland.


 * Reasons for writing the book: In the first chapter of the book, Gee shares with the reader a little about himself and how he even began thinking of or writing about this topic. He mentions how as a father, he watched his son play video games and he would try to ‘coach’ him to make the game seem slightly easier. While doing so, he realized how much thinking and learning goes into succeeding in a video game. Since Gee is a linguist focused on language, learning, and literacy, this intrigued him to the point that it became a main focus of his and he began playing video games more and more often.


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 * Gee is a very well-known and respected professor across the country. He is known for his research in the field of education and literacy and interest in how all different types of video games can be used to benefit a student’s social and cognitive learning.

Book Summary
 * __What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy __by James Paul Gee goes into depth about the good that can come from playing all types of video games. Gee shares with the reader how he got into video games and realized how beneficial they are as well as his thought process regarding this very intriguing topic. Realizing that video games are made to be long, difficult, and something you must learn to play, Gee states that “…the theory of learning in good video games is close to what I believe are the best theories of learning in cognitive science” (pg 4). Going into the main focus and goals of the book, he mentions three areas of current research that would be explained through the discussion of video games. These three areas include: 1. Situation cognition 2. New literacy studies and 3. Connectionism. Gee says “…I believe that these three areas capture central truths about the human mind and human learning and that these truths are well represented in the ways in which good video games are learned and played (pg 9). In addition to speaking about the three areas of research, the remaining chapters of the book also discuss and embed the 36 principles of learning built into good video games. In view of the fact that it will take forever to mention and discuss all 36 principles, I will leave that up to you to find out for yourself exactly what all 36 principles are. The chapters however, kind of sneaks these principles into the reading by discussing different video games and using scenarios from those video games as well as real world scenarios to explain these principles.

Critique:
 * Honestly, from the second I picked up this book, I couldn’t put it down. The author’s voice was so eminent throughout the entire text, I felt like he was talking directly to me and explaining his professional background, ideas, and knowledge about games like Pikmin, Arcanum, and Elder Scrolls III. Also, using language from the gaming world really made it so much more exciting to read. The book was so well organized which made it easy to follow each chapter’s topic which consisted of each of the 36 principles of learning using the examples from the video games. I also liked how it cited the names of the exact principles discussed in the chapter at the end of each chapter. The book definitely provided a new perspective and made points that had never occurred to me.

Rating:
 * I give __What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy__ ‘*’ (five stars) because it made me see educational perspectives through an entirely different lens which helped me learn so much in a whole new way.