This is how we do it:

3 - Descriptive sentences describing the article.

2 - Analytical sentences to show our thinking.

1 - Burning laser-like question inquiring minds want to know about the article (not about the world).

BRIDGE - Two sentences connecting the articles together by their similarities or differences.

3 - Gee (2008) in Cats and Portals, uses cats’ curiosity and the mechanics of the video game series Portal to make a series of observations about learning through discovery and modal logic. Some of these observations are that discovery (as an aspect of play) is mediated through the use of specific tools which help us to see new possibilities for action and that provide opportunities for solving specific problems with specific knowledge. Words are one such tool as they provide a lens through which to view a problem differently and a way to explicitly discuss problem solving possibilities both in the real world and in game worlds that allow players to view a set of possibilities unbound by reality.

2 - While this idea of exploring new possibilities in new worlds is compelling, it might require a suspension of disbelief that isn’t possible in public educational institutions short on resources and training.

Gee says that gamers employ not only tacit, but explicit knowledge of game rules and strategy, and while I do this myself, I wonder about how much gamers are able to imagine and understand the learning system designed by the game designer and achieve metacognition in their learning.

1 - Gee describes play as practice for the real world and that it is missing from school-based learning, therefore: According to Gee, how can educators close the gap he identifies between play and work or school to improve real-world relevance and discovery in learning experiences?

3 - In Games as Distributed Teaching and Learning Systems (Gee & Gee, 2017), learning is presented as synonymous with embodied experiences that live in the long term memory and inform how we make decisions about the future. Our experiences are mediated by three factors: the tools we use to manipulate the world, the way we speak to others and the world and what feedback we receive from them, and the response design cycle which includes the actions and responses that allow us to simulate scenarios and role play future actions before they are taken. It is argued that games offer virtual opportunities for players to participate in simulations within a game and discuss and analyze their actions in larger distributed teaching and learning systems (DTLS) encompassing different networked ways of participating outside of the game space to encourage teaching, learning, and mentorship experiences based on passion and commitment, and that these systems will be important to future theories of education.

2 - Regarding the caveat describing different learning ecologies, the analysis is focused on skilled learners but no definition is offered about who they might be and how there may be a gap between a skilled learner and a non-skilled learner regardless of learning ecology or how that learner might interact with games and DTLS.

DTLS are heralded here as a way forward toward deeper learning and teaching experiences out of school but I would argue that education itself has a place in these systems as a part of a network of staff and students that can be found in schools everywhere and who are participants in their own DTLSs or in DTLS that might exist within a school’s ecology, and that conceptualizing DTLS as not already having an influence on schools (except briefly in their idea of brokers) seems like a blind spot that ought to be addressed.

1 - It seemed to me that Amanda did all she could as a learner to explore her interest and that the analysis of her story was deterministic, therefore: Who are skilled vs potentially unskilled learners and how would Gee and Gee envision learning experiences be designed so that learners of any skill understand how to board the ‘right’ or relevant information for future thinking within their learning ecology?

1. In Cats and Portals, Gee (2008) presents knowledge tools that mediate our experiences by reducing the world down to the essential problem that we can solve with our tools, an idea that is expanded to include not only tools but social experiences and action/feedback/analysis/action (response design) cycles in Games as Distributed Teaching and Learning Systems (Gee & Gee, 2017).

2. Cats and Portals (Gee, 2008) is enthusiastic in its tone and discourse about the potential for games and learning but, and I think necessarily, Games as Distributed Learning Systems (Gee & Gee, 2017) coming a near decade later strikes a slightly more critical tone in the later portion of the article as it has expanded to include the social influences of DTLS on the gaming community and on affinity groups more broadly which can be anti-social, unequal, and exclusionary rather than pro-social and inclusive.

Gee, J. P. (2008). Cats and portals: Video games, learning, and play. American Journal of Play, 1(2), 229-245.

Gee, E., & Gee, J. P. (2017). Games as distributed teaching and learning systems. Teachers College Record, 119(12), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146811711901202