http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/Play_Games_Gamification_Active_Learning.html#unique-entry-id-106

When I first entered Hybrid Pedagogy I was intimidated by its layout and substantial amount of information/links, but as I perused around I found that many of the articles weren’t dry at all and in fact very easy to read and helpful as a future teacher. I chose to focus on this article, It’s Time to Play: Games, Gamification & Active Learning by Lee Skallerup Bessette, based on the presentation done by the “Gaming” group in Tuesday’s class.
Bessette introduces his argument by telling a story of his two young kids who play board games together frequently, “Currently the conflict in my household is between the elder sister, who is obsessed with making sure everyone follows the rules, and her younger brother, who is still more interested in exploring and experimenting, happily making it up as he goes along.” He follows up by explaining that within game play, exploration and rules must be able to coexist productively in order to have an educational effect on the students involved. While his daughters ‘rule following’ is held in a high regard, it is important that his sons creativity and curiosity is regarded highly also- as he seeks to explore the ins and outs of a game he is unsure of. With the invention of a “hybrid” version of Candyland and Snakes and Ladders, his children put their skills together and used their own interpretations of game pieces, characters and strategy to create a resourceful and imaginative game of their own. Bassette recognized that the creation of this new game was very innovative in the learning process- that by establishing rules of their own but allowing room for flexibility his children were both able to use their skills without conflict- so he took this practice into his classroom. He asked his students to come up with a game that would actively engage the class as well as quiz their knowledge regarding the content of the course. A group of students came up with a Jeopardy type game where the class was split up, asked the same question and rewarded based upon who came up with the answer fastest. Although this type of game was fun and interactive, it lacked the substance and discussion of a typical, in-depth class review- in which students are provoked to learn by bouncing ideas off of their peers. But another group came up with a game that was much more comprehensive and educational for their peers: a “real-life” Farmville/Monopoly board game-
“The game provoked students in the class to think about sustainable farming and how we get our food. The students researched the actual cost of running a farm and integrated that into play. “Chance” cards included hurricanes, drought, sickness, and rises or drops in commodity prices. Students were given the choice to go organic or to go industrial. This game stirred discussion around issues of sustainability, cost, and exactly how much work goes into food production…My students’ Jeopardy game encouraged rote memorization and winning. The Monopoly/Farmville game play, on the other hand, initiated real discussion, investigation, and action.”
When looking ahead to becoming a future teacher, I would love to assign my students these kinds of assignments in which they are the teachers, a sort of “peer-learning” experience, but Bassette brings up a very good point: How do we hack the new rhetoric of gamification in order to get back to the values of play? In other words, how can we get our students passed the simplicity of game play and into a realm of conscious, educational effort of creative innovation? It is simple to click a button and win a game or to log on to a site and surf around, but how as educators do we integrate both creativity and technology into our classrooms? If there are no winners for the games, how do we encourage our students to want to play and be involved? These are questions I will continue to look into as a future educator and two very different educational styles that I will hopefully integrate into my future classrooms.

My group is focusing on Gender & Literacy, and we have all had fairly conflicting ideas with the articles we’ve been reading. While many of the authors we are reading tend to separate the genders and ideas behind gender into strictly male or female, we believe that these typical stereotypes are outdated and change within them is necessary. I read many of the articles in relation to girls specifically, and their use of literacy within social networks to establish and condition relationships amongst their peers.  Barbara Guzzetti discusses this in her article “Online Journaling: The Informal Writings of 2 Adolescent Girls,” claiming that, “Girls chatted online to negotiate and enhance their social relationships and social standing in school, while establishing a social currency that kept them in the know and   developed their relationships with their peers.” She continues on to explain that girls’ tendency to use social networks and instant messaging can be explained by their underlying desire to connect with others- that using electronic text helped the girls learn to use reading and writing as social strategies. On the other hand, boys use digital literacy for other purposes such as advancing in video or computer games. While I didn’t read too many articles regarding boys’ literacy practices, in past courses I’ve taken on psychology I have learned that girls use communication to relate to one another while boys use communication to “one-up” each other. I have desperately searched for a video we watched in Womens Psych about the communicative gender differences in young boys and girls, but have had no luck finding it thus far. The study involves a few separate groups of boys/girls: age 5, age 8, age 12 and age 17 and the observation of the ways in which they relate to each other on a social basis, outside of school. Although this study has a more psychological spin on gender and literacy, it is relatable to the articles we’ve been reviewing as it focuses on proving the differences between the genders in their adolescent life. Overall, my group has found that the articles and information we have reviewed are both outdated and false. We are striving to create an argument against the articles that we read, that disproves the stereotypical gender roles within literacy and emphasizes the fact that in the 21st century, there is a much more androgynous spectrum of accumulating and practicing literacy.   

http://prezi.com/4loustpolq6p/present/?auth_key=75r3rl5&follow=qnkfccyi1quf&kw=present-4loustpolq6p&rc=ref-30024117

I chose to read Just Girls: Hidden Literacies and Life in Junior High because of my interest in its psychological approach to literacy. Surprisingly, the girls in my book club seemed to have chosen it for similar reasons…and it wasn’t long before our “book discussion” broke out into  full-fledged story time as we reminisced about our own lives as young, teen girls stuck between adolescence and adulthood.
The social roles that Finders discusses in her book bring back so many memories of the rigid guidelines that teens must follow in order to simply “fit in.” These rigid and ultimately harsh guidelines stay with some girls for their entire lives — or do they stay with all of us? Excuse my ranting but is it not true that as women we still sometimes disregard morality when judging other women? Do we not use these rigid guidelines that originated in junior high to create our own ‘cliques’ and judgments about those that are not ours? Who knows…but as far as social roles and literacy goes, Finders states that “…roles represent multiple and shifting selves,”(9) and I can clearly remember using different types of literacy in order to fit in with my different social groups in junior high: with my basketball team I would use sarcasm and dry humor, my yearbook class was a place where I was comfortable being a quirky nerd and using more low comedy type literacy. I had my group of friends who were the more stereotypical “popular” girls who I would engage in the latest, juiciest gossip with and then there was my best friend, who had seen all sides and literacies of me and didn’t fall into any one of these social groups. While I believed that all of these friendships were genuine and going to last forever, my very best friends that have been around since day one of elementary school were the only ones who have actually made it this far.
All in all, what I’ve taken from our book so far is that the literacy practices that you engage in within social groups during your adolescent years effect much more than you may think. Before reading this I had almost forgotten what it was like to be a girl in junior high, and I realized how many privileges I take for granted now that I would have DIED for back then: freedom from my parents, the ability to drive a car wherever and whenever I please, no curfew, co-ed sleepovers, the list goes on and on. Finders points out to us that junior high is a time of drastic change from adolescence into the ‘real world’…and their ability to make the transition into adulthood lies partially in the literacy practices that they partake in.