The New York Times has published an amazing interactive online application that allows readers to explore and analyze all the words and phrases spoken during all of the big speeches at the two major party conventions that just wrapped up last week here in the United States. On the surface, the tool looks like a fancier version of Wordle, with words and phrases that had higher frequencies during speeches being placed in large bubbles, while lower frequency terms have small bubbles. That however, is just about where the comparison between Wordle and the "At the National Conventions, the Words They Used" web app ends. The New York Times allows users to click on the terms, compare how often they were said by both major parties (per 25,000 words spoken), search for your own terms, and even browse the words of phrases in context of the speeches, with quotes from everyone who said them. It’s really a bit more complicated to talk about and describe, so I decided to make a screencast of the tool in action (which I’m labeling a "futzcast" due to the impromptu and unpolished nature of it). You can view the interactive below or click here to view it on YouTube. I’m only able to scratch the surface of teaching ideas using a tool like this, but immediately the prospect of being able to easily compare themes or rhetorical devices in an english composition or debate course jump out at me. With the inclusion of the original quotes, putting the terms in context, students can see how orators at the conventions may have used words to help shape a message, soften a stance, or create the dissonance between "the other" candidate’s viewpoints and what the speaker wants to focus on. Being able to search for your own terms extends this tool immeasurably for the purpose of vocabulary building, personalization of the examination, and to explore what themes or elements may have been ignored by both major parties. It’s like Wordle 2.0, on steroids, with a shot or two of adrenaline. If you’re a teacher of civics, oratory, debate, or composition, you should at least play around with it for a few minutes to see what other ideas you can come up with.

When I set out this morning to make a low budget temporary green screen, I didn’t imagine that it would take less than 10 minutes, and actually cost me next to nothing thanks to some left over paper in the teacher supply room of our elementary building. While I wanted to call this a "free" green screen, I can’t justify the statement fully as I’m sure there’s about $6.45 worth of materials that went into the screen, even if it didn’t actually cost me anything to make. If you’re interested in creating a super cheap low budget green screen for your classroom or other amateur video work, check out the video below, or watch it on YouTube.   I was so excited when I finished building this green screen that I posted a picture on Twitter. Low budget green screen is complete! 10 minutes, left over roll of wrapping paper, and some tape! Video coming soon twitter.com/techsavvyed/st… — Ben Rimes (@techsavvyed) September 14, 2012 To which I had a question from @coachk: @techsavvyed Sweet! Do you have a space where teachers come to you? That would be amazing to have a teacher learning area. — Kelly Kermode (@coachk) September 14, 2012 While we do have a couple of green screens in the district, at least one is in a room that has been turned into storage, and another is in an active classroom, so I don’t have access to it. I wanted a way to do some simple, off-the-cuff green screen effects to help show teachers how students might be able to add images or videos for informational videos, PSAs, or other video projects. A lot of time, students want to add a picture-in-picture element to help visually illustrate a speech, presentation, or video, and they typically rely on a cut-away transition like those found in Movie Maker or Photostory. Since we have an increasing number of Macs in the district, I thought I might encourage teachers to use some of the more robust movie making tools with the addition of a super cheap green screen that they can put up and take down over the course of one day or even a class period if they’re in a time or budget crunch. There are plenty of other "how to make a green screen" videos to be found on YouTube and across the internet, but I always like to tackle as many of the DIY projects myself, to demonstrate how practical it is to do some relatively simple projects on your own. In fact, this project is so simple, students could do it during a snack time, break time, or just use a single piece of green paper on their desk to create a special effect. I’m hoping that my efforts to create, film, and put together this video will help encourage a few people to try this in their classrooms, and let students explore what they might be able to create with it. For some inspiration, check out the great green screen videos from teachers and students below.

It may come as a shock to many of my educational colleagues and friends, but I’m not "a reader." Alright, so that’s a bit too blunt. I do read a lot online; magazine articles, blog posts, emails, and other "short form" digital media clippings. When I say I don’t read, I’m using the common idea of what "I’m a reader" typically means to people. For example, my wife is "a reader." She has no fewer than 3 to 4 books on her nightstand, will be reading multiple books at once (including ebooks on her Nook), and does not hesitate to "put down a book", never to finish it again due to lack of interest or time. That sort of thing drives me crazy! I’ve always been the type of person that feels compelled to finish something that I’ve started (although the last 5 episodes of Caprica still lingering in my Hulu cue may say otherwise). "THERE’S A FUTURE IN BOOKS and a book in your future." Vintage book poster by Cowman Publications. circa 1955-1960. Back in the late 90s, when I could still consider myself to be a reader, my bed-side table always had at least a couple of books, one for a college reading assignment, and one for my own personal pleasure. Sometimes a text book or two might get tossed in there, but for the most part my life was filled with lots of great trade paperbacks, young adult literature (I was an Elementary Education undergrad), and the occasional piece of science fiction. After graduating from college in 2002, finding a job, getting married, having kids, etc. I slowly found myself finding less time to read for pleasure, forced time to read for my master’s work (most of that reading being online), and eventually the most I read these days are Roald Dahl and Peter Pan to my kids at bedtime. I can’t complain about reading such excellent children’s literature most nights with my kids, but thus far this year I’ve only managed to read one book for myself from cover to cover. That’s it, just one single book, and even that took me almost 9 months given my sporadic reading cycles. It’s not that I try to avoid reading, I’m just not that great at it. Sure, I can skim through digital texts and webpages with the best of them, but I am a slow, deliberate, and plodding reader. I’m not sure if it’s a decoding thing, a slow comprehension process, or some form of mental "slow down, and savor this" obstacle that my brain puts up whenever I sit down to read, but it typically takes me 3 to 4 times as long to read the same passage that my wife or another equally accomplished reader might be able to do. Thus, when I attempt to read books together with my wife I get frustrated, and give up before long. Which is why I’ve always wanted some sort of open and accountable process for forcing me to read again, while being able to deliberately slow down the process (because training wheels aren’t always that bad of a thing). This is how I feel sometimes about reading, even if it’s only just one or two books.http://www.flickr.com/photos/waltstoneburner/3372746317/ So I decided, what the heck, I’ll construct myself a loose digital framework that deliberately slows down the discussion and enjoyment of a text through a collaborative online meeting space. I know that I’ve always done my best reading in an educational setting, when our small high school literature groups tore into books like Grapes of Wrath and A Tale of Two Cities. While working at a children’s bookstore in the summer for several years of college and beyond, I eagerly read young adult and children’s literature so I could talk with customers about what they liked, and what I found exciting, thrilling, or frustrating about the books in the store. The common thread in both instances was community; a face to face connection that is difficult to capture online through asynchronous means, forum posts, and status updates. I also had a huge layer of accountability to make sure I had actually read the book! The literature group needed my input to be successful, and customers wanted to hear what I thought about some of the books in the store. And that’s where an idea for an online video chat came into my head. It would be easy to replicate everything that I’ve been considering with a face to face virtual meeting through Skype, a Google+ Hangout, or some other video chat. It wouldn’t be good enough just to put up a sign saying "hey, let’s do a video chat about books". There would need to be some sort of framework and expectation of what to read, when to read it, and how to best organize the discussion. There are certainly many tools available online to create digital spaces for discussion including a free forum, a Google Group, or WordPress blogs, but I wanted this effort to serve a dual purpose, killing two birds with one stone, so to speak. Not only do I want to be "a reader" again, but I also want to help put together a loose model for what an effective online book club might look like using Google Apps for Education tools. Why? I support some 260 teachers and almost 4,000 students that all have access to Google Apps, and while many use Google Docs, Gmail, Calendar, and Groups effectively, I also wanted to start creating some integrated and innovative way to leverage the connectedness of these tools, and I think I might have a decent start. Starting this Thursday, October 11th, at 8:30 pm EST, I’m going to be hosting a Google+ Hangout each week for 4 to 6 weeks, discussing a book that I’m tossing out to the internet to decide. I’ve put together a Google Site (a rather frustrating and limiting experience given what I know I can do using WordPress or building a website on my own), tossed up a simple Google Form, and have a YouTube video describing my thoughts behind the book club in a bit more animated detail than what I have here. I fully expect a big fat check from Google any day now for all of that advertisement, and if it’s not enough, I also have plans to use Google Moderator and perhaps Google Groups to help facilitate both communication and discussion. Voting is going on right now, and while I don’t have much else than just a simple overview on the site, I thought it might be best to start documenting the process here, so I have a lot of my thoughts out of the way when I start to unravel the entire experience at its end this November, and I can build something that’s useable for teachers and students in my district for the second semester. All that’s left is to try and get enough people to actually participate with me, and help me read a book. Care to join the discussion?

Parents love to see images of their students from class. Teachers are always looking for an increasingly easy way to share those images. If you happen to be one of those teachers who has an iPad, iPhone, or a Mac computer, you can setup a free iCloud account, and setup a dead simple way to push images from your classroom to an online web gallery. Check out my "proof of concept" video below, or watch it on Youtube. WARNING! Sharing a Photostream publicly on the web via iCloud will make the images viewable to anyone with the link, so it’s best not to be sharing images that might be sensitive, and talk with your student’s parents beforehand to make sure they’re all comfortable with it. While I don’t think this is the best way for everyone to share classroom pictures with parents, thanks to the new shared Photostreams ability in iOS6 on Apple’s devices, it is just about the easiest way to do it. You don’t even need an iPad to do it either; iPhoto on a Mac, an iPhone, or an iPod touch will all work just as nicely. I’m actually using the shared Photostream albums to send pictures that I take of my kids directly to my mother’s iPhone, so she has new pictures of her grandkids to show off each week. I really just wanted to make a "proof of concept" video to show off how it could be done, without having to use a commercial site to share images that might put ads up, or force all users to create another account. As I said in the video, this isn’t even a long term solution for all of your photo sharing needs between school and home, just a fun way to share "in the moment" learning pictures, or share some cool stuff that happens throughout the week in your classroom. Heck, you could even use it as a way for students to be photojournalists, and share images from their learning experiences throughout the week, creating a visual diary of the weeks lessons and growth. If you end of trying this, feel free to share with others, and let us know how it goes!

There’s less than one week to go before the first discussion in what is increasingly my complex attempt to encourage the internet to force me to read a book. It started with the a simple concept; Ben doesn’t read books anymore (I’ve read 1 book this year cover to cover, and even that feels like a fluke), Ben wants to start reading more, so Ben has decided to put his shame out there publicly for the internet to see in hopes that some kind souls will participate in a book discussion, forcing Ben to read. Along the way I’m hoping to gain a greater understanding of how a lot of Googles various tools work in conjunction with one another, and already lamenting the huge rift between Google Apps K-12 accounts and the rest of the Google Apps ecosystem. "THERE’S A FUTURE IN BOOKS and a book in your future." Vintage book poster by Cowman Publications. circa 1955-1960. So it was with great excitement that almost 2 dozen people took it upon themselves to help select the first book for what I am dubbing Book Club 106, a loosely organized online book club. Starting yesterday I began reading What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, with the hopes that at least one other person is going to show up for the weekly discussion next Thursday evening on the 11th of October. If it turns out it’s just me and the voices in my head talking to the camera, then so be it. I’ll do my best to make it an interesting monologue, and will still know that by writing these blogs posts documenting the process will serve someone’s purposes in the future beyond my own need to become a productive academic "reader" again. If however, people show up for the discussion, which I’m sincerely hoping they do, it should make for an interesting exploration of just how effectively you can cobble together a reasonable facsimile of large corporate or open-source Course Management Systems (Moodle, Coursera, Blackboard, etc.). I’m not aiming to make this online book club a perfect substitute for the well polished and highly developed systems that many large institutions use for their online learning component. I’m just trying to apply my typical rolls-up-your-sleeves, DIY attitude to moving an instructional environment from the physical face-to-face realm to the digital realm of the internet. So far the jury is out on how well it’s succeeding, and I fully intend to continue to provide updates, including video of the weekly discussion chats, here on my blog. In case you’re interested in forcing me to read what is promising to be a fantastic book, feel free to head over to the Book Club 106 website, and give it a look. I’ve embedded a video below that goes over how discussion about the book will take shape, which you can watch on YouTube if you prefer. If you’d like to participate in the discussion, the steps I’ve laid out are hopefully easy enough for people to jump in even at this late stage: Read! Grab a copy of the book and start reading. The first two chapters are only about 40 pages. Submit Questions! Using the Google Moderator series on the Book Club 106 website, submit any and all questions you have while completing the assigned reading. Feel free to "approve" or respond to other reader’s questions. Sign Up for the Google+ Hangout Video Chat! Add Ben Rimes to your circles on Google+ and then fill out the simple form below to be invited to the Google+ Hangout.

Last week my school district received a very large donation of spiral bound notebooks from the Target Corporation. 5 full palettes, stuffed with lined paper notebooks, showed up at the loading docks, and news was quickly spread through the district of it’s availability. Not to underestimate the power of teachers in need of school supplies, I ran down to the loading area to grab some footage of the paper before it had been sent off to all the buildings. The result was a rather simplistic, almost math "bookish" type story problem, although I did leave out any formula or other strategy that might help students. I simply stated the question "How many sheets of paper are there here", and then gave them any information they may or may not need in order to solve the problem. You can view the multiplying paper video story problem below, or on Vimeo if you’d like. I figured this could be used as a good "warm up" at the start of the school day or class. Students working with multiplication or building their own strategies for tackling a problem and given a heap of data might enjoy this. Like I said, it’s not pretty, and feels like a typical story problem from a text book, just a little warmed over, but I was genuinely curious about how many sheets of paper were stacked on those palettes, and I thought it was pretty gosh darn awesome of Target to donate it to our school!

Last night was the inaugural discussion for Book Club 106, the loosely organized online book club that I formed last month with the goal of forcing me to actually read a book, while enjoying a nice weekly chat with other curious educators. Despite the power being out at my place for more than two hours, and the Google+ Hangout for the event starting almost half an hour late, it was a terrific conversation! Two of the other book club members attended, and while L Patrick Brewer had to duck out early due to a finicky satellite Internet connection, Johnathon Beals and I carried on a great conversation that touched on video games, Huizinga’s Homo Ludens book, social context needed for critical learning, and a host of other topics from the book. If you’d like to watch the 60 minute discussion between Johnathon and myself below (and can spare the time), I’d love to hear your feedback, otherwise a much more condensed version of my thoughts about the book thus far are below. What I Think Thus Far After having read both the introduction chapter to Gee’s theory of gaming as a metaphor for learning, and the second chapter in which he explains the underpinnings of his theory of semiotic domains, I have the sense that this book, while certainly playing on the hook of video games, is written for a much more academic crowd than the average "gamer" or teacher. That’s not to imply there’s anything inherently wrong with writing for a more collegiate crowd, but Gee misses many opportunities to spend more time talking about concrete examples and references to both video games and other elements of how we learn as individuals. A good amount of time is spent explaining how various domains exist within any given set of practices and modalities, and video games are no exception. Besides that fact that gamers comprise a rather large semiotic domain, bound together with both terminology and functioning literacy of how games work and how gamers relate to one another, there are also many sub groups within the larger gamer population, similar to the way that students have many sub groups within a particular learning environment. While I appreciated the time that Gee spent describing how semiotic domains function, and more importantly how one can participate in a particular domain (i.e. playing a first person shooter game), but not actually be able to function on a higher level (i.e. talk intelligently and reflectively about a first person shooter game), I feel a great amount of time could have been spent by using much simpler terminology such as "literacies", although I’m sure Gee would disagree, as he references his own previous work, among other’s work, to support this. My point is that when Gee uses concrete examples from both video games, and other areas of life, his theories and observations make a lot of sense, and help drive home the connection he’s trying to make between learning and play. Unfortunately, he doesn’t spend as much time on those examples as I would have liked. A Few Thoughts That Stood Out I was particularly taken with a few thoughts and questions that Gee posed in the second chapter of his book. While I’m reading the revised issue, I’m hoping that they were present in the original version as well. While describing "design grammars" he asks a question about identities which I found to be very intriguing, "can you recognize the sorts of identities such people take on when they are in their domain?" I really dig this question, because it spoke to who I am, not just as an educator or a gamer, but as a human being. I find myself constantly shifting identities depending on which domain I find myself in. I would use the word "persona", but it’s basically the same idea. My professional domain illicit certain aspects of my being that don’t always exhibit themselves at home or our with friends, and while playing a game or enjoying family time at home there are certain actions and "design grammars" that I get to use that wouldn’t always fit well in my professional life. The shifting identities that we employ as human beings to successfully co-exist with one another fits nicely with this question and exploration of different identities in video games. Towards the end of the chapter comes perhaps the most powerful thought. As Gee recounts to us the story of a young gamer playing Pikmin, and how he seeks to help and advice about how to play the game. When the young learner goes online to seek advice from websites and forums he claims it as doing "his own thinking." However, when Gee attempts to help the gamer out, the response is a very curt plea to stop "bossing hom around." This rings so true for so many educators, regardless of whether learners are struggling with technology, content matter, or other learning goals. Quite often our students want not just advice from their peers, but the validation from them that they can "walk the walk", and show to their fellow learners that they’re capable of achieving what others can, and that help is seen as shared work and thought. When that help comes from an adult however, there’s something lost in that accomplishment because we as adults are seen as having "all the answers", and when we offer advice it’s not some collaborative group effort, it’s not a shared sense of discovery, it’s a "we’ve been there and done that, this is what you should do" sort of statement that to many learners robs them of that self-discovery. Want To Join the Conversation? I’m hoping that the rest of this book club goes as well as last week, and I’ve heard from a number of individuals that they’re excited to read along and even participate in the discussion for chapter 3. If you’re able, I’d love to have you join us, or if you’re reading this after the fact, please consider using the resources below or the video discussions and questions on the Book Club 106 site for this fascinating book. A Few Resources to Figure Out Gee’s Thoughts on Learning & Video Games http://sites.wiki.ubc.ca/etec510/Semiotic_Domains http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Paul_Gee http://www.jamespaulgee.com/node/28 http://www.amazon.com/Video-Learning-Literacy-Second-Edition/dp/1403984530 What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning & Literacy - Part 2

I’m at the ISTE Leadership Forum today and tomorrow, getting schooled by some serious hard-core academic types that take learning extremely seriously. These amazing educators have devoted a large amount of their life’s work to helping establish lots of frameworks, graphic organizers, and other tools to help us visualize how various components work together. For example, here’s the Framework for Systemic Improvement we were shown this morning at the opening session: I’m not sure why or what compelled me to spend a good portion of my day struggling with Adobe Illustrator to create what I hope is seen as a rather humorous, yet effective homage to this framework from an elementary educator’s perspective, but here it is: Like I said, I’m not sure why I created it, but something inside my elementary educator’s brain just wanted to splash some Comic Sans and color all over this graphic. To any ISTE Leadership Forum attendees, I hope you enjoy!

As part of my ongoing attempt to force myself back into regular reading habits (academic, fiction, or otherwise), I was excited to have a new voice added to the Book Club 106 discussion last week of James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning & Literacy. Ben Harwood, a technologist with Skidmore College in upstate New York joined me to talk about chapters 3 and 4 of the seminal title from 2002 that explores the effective structuring of learning environments through the analogy of video game design. Our Google+ Hangout was cut short due to our schedules, but I’m looking forward to an excellent video discussion this evening of chapter 5 after last week’s exploration of learning theories and just how effective we can expect learners to be if there isn’t "play time" built into regular instructional practice. You are more than welcome to watch the 45 minute discussion Ben Harwood and I had about the chapters on Youtube, or the embedded video below. If you have suggestions, questions, or thoughts to add to the discussion, please do so using the comments below! What I Think Thus Far At the end of chapters 1 and 2 I had a deep seeded belief that this was going to be a rather dry and heavily academic book. I lack a large amount of background knowledge in the areas of metacognition and learning theory that this book makes reference too, however, chapters 3 and 4 began to show a much broader examination of Gee’s Learning Principles that he builds upon at the end of each chapter. Having spent so many years away from academic texts, I forgot that quite often there is a great deal of time that must be spent on laying a foundation for the argument an author will be making, so that the reader has the proper context with which to consider the arguments and postulations. If anything, the new direction that the text is taking is making it much more accesible to the average educator (or dare I say casual reader). As more time is spent on exposition of the various scenarios and intricacies of specific game mechanics, giving the mid section of the text a much more narrative feeling. I would still not recommend this text to the average "gamer" or someone interested in using video games in learning. This book presents itself as a bridge between great game design and great instructional design through Gee’s learning principles. Gee is not advocating that educators use games in their classroom, but rather ask us to examine the deliberate nature of how we structure our learning environments, activities, and ways in which we can focus our students’ learning to be meta-cognitive (the hallmark of many great learning theories) and help them be aware of the various roles they move through throughout the learning process. As a gamer, the nice long passages in which Gee describes actual game play of popular video games is an often humorous (as he explores games as a "noobie"), yet poignant reminder that many great video games contain an amazing amount of carefully calculated design that feeds many intrinsic motivations that lead many people to play games. Whether or not Gee can successfully complete his argument of excellent game design being translated over to excellent instructional design remains to be seen as I finish up the middle of this text. A Few Thoughts That Stood Out I appreciated the way the Gee breaks down the identities we take on or are subjected to while playing video games. Gee makes a case for 3 separate, yet co-dependent identities within most games; Me as the gamer, the Character and it’s limitations as programmed by the gamer, and Me as the Character and the limitations we both experience due to programming and inexperience as a gamer or influence from past experiences. It’s easy to make this connection to the learning spaces within K-12 institutions as learners can be seen taking on the same 3 identities; the Student as an individual, the Student as an active learner, and the meta-cognitive Student looking at the learning process and exploring what past experiences influence how he learns in the present space. I’m sure that’s not exactly the analogy Gee was going for, but it’s the one that I’m currently clinging to to make sense of the book until I can develop a better analogy. Gee does make an excellent point about the reflective nature in which he goes about playing games, and I think it’s important to mention that like all endeavors, playing any video game can be done in a passive way, and very much like a passive student in our classroom, the results are similar; little engagement with any over-arching ideas, and a lack of critical thought regarding the game or learning goal. What Gee doesn’t point out is that both situations can still lead to an enjoyable experience for both gamer or learner, although most educators would hope passive learning isn’t our goal. This is why I read so infrequently…my mind goes into "learning nerd" mode. Very infrequently do I read anything in a book and create a sticky note that says "blog about this!" but I do find that I’m attracted to lists in a very Pavlovian way, and when Gee outlines three basic conditions that he sees as a "must" for truly effective critical teaching and learning, I had to both sticky and highlight it. 1. The learner must be entice to try, even is he or she already has good grounds to be afraid to try. 2. The learner must be enticed to put in lots of effort even is he or she beings with little motivation to do so. 3. The learner must achieve some meaningful success when he or she has expended this effort. These conditions resonate with my quite deeply. If there’s no attempt on the part of the learner to even try and accomplish something meaningful that will develop a deeper or new understanding of a concept, then I’ve failed as an educator. It was quite refreshing to see something like this, in quite plain english, written in a rather academic text. Gee continues in chapter 4 that learners who have only a verbal understanding of a concept (the idea that students could talk about the various parts of the water cycle without actually understanding how the water cycle is impacted by outside factors) have an almost useless understanding of the concept. Those learners be pushed to experience some form of embodied action that puts the application of their knowledge to a test, not just the regurgitation of that knowledge. Video games present a unique opportunity in that everything the "gamer" learners through various encounters and tutorials within a game are constantly being applied, transferred, re-worked, and then re-applied to an ever shifting set of variables, enemies, obstacles, and goals. That is of course, if the game has been designed effectively. I can’t help but wonder how many great learning opportunities educators could craft for their students if only more embodied actions (opportunities for students to apply knowledge, possibly fail, and then redevelop new understandings based on that failure) were present throughout the learning environment. Far too often we ask students to regurgitate information rather than apply it, and Gee makes excellent analogies and pushes for this type of learning through the text. Academic reading aside, the Common Core State Standards are pushing for this same experience throughout the K-12 continuum and within all of the subject areas. This might explain why so much in chapter 3 and 4 resonate strongly with me, as I believe that the Common Core Standards, if applied properly, will mark a significant shift in the way teachers provide learning opportunities for learners. Want To Join the Conversation? As I’ve already said, the last two chapters have meant of huge turning point for me with this text, and I’m excited to keep pushing forward. If you have the time to chat, have already read the text, or just want to observe the ongoing conversation, check out the ongoing discussion at the Book Club 106 site. There are still a couple of weeks left to take part in the live weekly Google+ Hangout as well! What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning & Literacy - Part 1

For a while now I’ve downplayed the current trendiness of Gamification in learning. I couldn’t exactly put my finger on why, but there are a few ideas buzzing around my head. At times I’m put off by the heavy reliance on replacing one form of extrinsic motivation (gold stars, points, etc.) with another (achievements, points, etc.). Quite often it’s the oversimplification of game design and instructional design theories, leading many teachers to just turn learning into a cheap facsimile of a game (which has its advantages and disadvantages). By far the critique that comes to the surface most often is the desire for teachers to cling to what’s popular, rather than step back and look at the roots of what makes games, video or otherwise, so attractive as analogies and vehicles for effective instructional practice and design. And then comes along James Paul Gee and makes everything so clear; it’s not about turning learning into a video game, it’s taking excellent video game design elements and structure that parallel effective learning principles, and then making sure those learning principles are replicated within our teaching and learning environments. It’s not about the regurgitation of facts, information, and concepts; it’s about the internalization of information, transference to new problems, and creation of new understandings as learners create situated meaning; deep understandings that are tied to individual experiences, ensuring that concepts are tied to important failures, successes, and struggles, not tied to the answer glossary at the back of the text book. Preach, on Mr. Gee, preach on! image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dimic-/5033993643/