Design, Learning, and Experience

Keynote by James Paul Gee. Thursday October 21, 2010 9:00

(I'll try to keep up on this, but he moves quickly.)

Gee thinks in the United States, taht we are asleep, and games have the capacity to wake us up to think for themselves, and learning...and lieing.

Years ago, Chomsky said there are two major intellectual problems. Plato's problem is that students seem to know way more than they should no. Look at children and the way that language is learned.

Chomsky also said there is another problem, there are many cases where humans tend to be more stupid than they should be (Orwell's problem). Gee begins using the real estate, toxic assets, credit default swaps as an example of how people couldn't have known the problem.

Chomsky says that people are smart, but they are duped by the institutions they belong to. Glenn Beck is third most resected man in the United States--THAT is Orwell's problem.

There are conditions in which humans operate intelligently, and those that they operate stupidly. If people are given a problem, where something is at stake, and they emotionally care, they are smart, but if they don't care, they are stupid. Humans are especially smart at catching cheaters.

So if we wanted to create a better school, we need to give the learners something that they care about. Don't ask for a "right" answer, but give them the opportunity to ACT. We think well when we have to act, but not if there is nothing that matters.

Demon's Soul is a great game, but it punishes you if you make a mistake. What is it that is a life enhancing experience about something that is so difficult. If you can get to the end it is life enhancing [question: from a learning perspective, or a content perspective?]

Old people have "experience" because we rely on what we have learned, and what others have learned, unfortunately, some of those are lies. Relying on lies. But when old people have to learn something totally different, they are just like a 6-year-old. The idea that I was an agent in my own learning was something that I had not experienced since grad school.

what I think is significant about games from a scholarly perspective, video games are a much better model of the human mind than just a computer. When you are playing a video game, you are doing what humans do best, but they do it externally (the game).

Games give you the opportunity to rediscover that you are an agent.

GAmes sweet spot, is to teach you that you can think, and that you don't have to rely on others to facilitate learning. Empowered.

Games say to you that you have a soul, and you are as smart as everybody. With the whole credit default swap thing, you would have figured it out, you would have learned that it was bad, and would have held people accountable.

I have a right...imagine discovering from a video game that you have a right...maybe they would learn that if they had a right they would excercise it.

Questions:
I'm saying that a game like Demon's Soul teach you that you are a learning agent, you are as smart as the experts. Is there a danger that a game has an ideology, yes, but the real danger is that you only play one game. I don't want to make a game to teach math. I want a game that will teach you that you need to rely on yourself (and your fellow games) to learn.

The cognitive sciences know that if you are not emotionally committed to an issue that you won't care. Game designers know that if you do not care in the first few minutes, you won't continue playing.

If you want people to collaborate you have to give them something that they care about, but they have to be problems that can't be solved on their own...only through the collaboration can the problem be solved.

Mentioned the Sims, and the way that the Sims created opportunities for interaction. Expertise resides in the community, not in individuals.

The only colleges that can truly innovate, are those without any status, cuz they have nothing to lose. If you are going to implement around games, don't just do it one way, do it all ways, digital games, community, collaboration, virtual worlds, . . .

Since publishing my first book, what has changed, is that games have become this phenomenon that games come along with a community...a discussion on the meta game. Games give tacit knowledge, but the community gives explicit knowledge.

Every one of my books I've written when something is brand new to me and it is exciting. Now I've learned too much about games to say anything intelligent about them.