Video Games in the Classroom

Once again, I will be making my blog post about the books we have been reading even though I did not want to be *that* person who always does.

When I was reading Reality Is Broken I felt a ton of truth in her words. What she described was just correct and spoke volumes to me. She is very good and persuasive at articulating her thoughts and arguments. Even though I already largely agreed with the benefits that video games have to offer us, I still found myself constantly surprised about how much clarity was in her words and how well she could articulate certain matters. It was really surprising to me that her book could have that effect on me even though I already largely agreed with her. Admittedly, she is rather optimistic about a few matters, and some of her points, while true, are not exactly viable to be implemented.

After reading this, I was on Facebook two days later and noticed that Nick was also reading it. However, his take was rather interesting to me. Even though he liked the book and the subject material, the fact that is was homework really hindered his feelings and impressions of it, or at least that is how I interpreted what he said. The fact that something that was fun to him was turned into homework and thus made not fun for him was interesting. That is when I came to realize that he had a very valid point. And that point is the same point of this blog post.

Video games in the classroom sound awesome. They are fun and enjoyable, versus most of the junk we are taught in school. It is a lot more active and not just getting talked at. However, putting deadlines and requirements on what you do in your gaming world(s), which is the one place you are supposed to have freedom, not defeating the point?

I will admit that I am enjoying playing FFIX for the class and am not having any issues with it. However, for our past two required readings on video games, I felt that, even though I enjoyed the books to some degree, my feelings were greatly hindered by the fact that I could not just put it down and stop when I started getting tired of it and felt like it was beginning to wane on me. Instead, I had no choice but to keep trucking along until the assignment was over. And that sucked. It was just not enjoyable. When this happened to me, specifically on the second book What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, I suddenly had this moment of clarity as to about what Nick was talking and I realized one simple thing: He was right.

Video games sound like a fantastic medium to add to the classroom and I admit there is merit to it. But there needs to be a balancing act of some sort that occurs here if it were to happen. Otherwise, video games would end up no different than the homework students currently have to endure. They would be thought of as not fun, terrible things. That is exactly the opposite of what is desired by the two books we are reading for class. There is this inherent contradiction upon which neither of them appear to touch.

Even though it is a really obvious train of thought to have, it never occurred to me. When it did, I was surprised I had never thought of it before. Even though I already knew a lot about video games and had a lot of thoughts on my opinion of their usefulness, including in the classroom, I am glad to have learned something more, which I did not expect to happen. I think that it is also quite ironic that I learned this in a class about video games.

Comics

Alright, so I didn't want to be *that* person who does all of their blogs exclusively on content/required readings done via class, but I'll be damned if I don't have something to say about Watchmen.

I have never liked Superheros. Quite hated them, in fact. I hated how unrealistic they were. I hated how they always did 'good' things. I hated how they were never wrong. I hated how they were incapable of screwing up. And more importantly, I hated how popular they were. To me, it always felt like they had a large portion of their popularity exclusively from the fact that they were popular and people, as a whole, largely couldn't find a reason to hate them. So it was not so much a matter of them being liked as much as a matter of them not being hated, and being largely popular as a result of that. And that fact in itself is the reason why I hated them personally.

Also, this is not to say that what I said above is necessarily the absolute truth. However, to me, this is how I felt about it when I was growing up.

Now, don't get me wrong. That's not to say I hated absolutely everything about them. I've always been a person to largely support justice and correcting evil/corruption and etc. I do believe that those in the wrong need punished and those in the right shouldn't have anything bad happen to them and should correct those who are in the wrong. Even still, for the reasons listed above, I just could not bring myself to like Superheros.

Going along with this, I also hated comic books. However, I had an even stronger hate for them than I did the Superheros themselves. And that is because of just how much of the comic book market is Superheros. Hell, I would hardly call it a stretch to say that comic books = Superheros. In my personal experiences, when you go to a comic store, almost exclusively, no matter where you look, it's incredibly dominated by Superheros, if there is anything else at all. And I always thought that was a damn shame. Because the medium itself, with the panels, speech bubbles, etc. was a really creative medium and I had a large interest in it. But the fact that I could not find anything besides all of the Superheros that I abhorred was absolutely infuriating. Why was the comic book market so exclusively focused on just one genre out of the hundreds of possibilities that exist in the world? I just could not understand it. And as infuriating as it was, it was also depressing.

That being said, after Shannon and Conner's presentation on Wednesday covering the history of comic books in America and the CCA (Comics Code Authority), I am glad to at least finally, after so many years, understand the why to my question from when I was a child growing up.

Going along with this even more, reading Watchmen also opened my eyes quite a bit on the matter. I never realized that a darker side to the Superhero comics actually existed. I never realized how mislead I was growing up and not truly understanding the medium enough. I never realized that the common conceptions of what Superheros were was not all there was to be. And I was astounded. I mean, sure, I was also rather young back then. So it goes without saying that there would be some things that I wouldn't realize or understand. But for all of my hatred I had for comics as a kid to be so utterly unfounded was really... crushing. I can't believe I was so misguided this entire time.

Now, I am exaggerating a bit here. It's not like I was 100% clueless. Growing up and having movies like The Dark Knight be released in cinemas, I already knew that some of my conceptions from growing up were actually misconceptions. But reading the Watchmen first-hand and then also having the presentation that Shannon and Conner did in class was incredibly eye-opening. I feel like I have been missing out on something for a great portion of my life that I could legitimately enjoy.

Tangenting a bit from all of this, my hatred of comic books not for the medium itself but for the stories they contained was how I came to have such an interest in manga. Manga largely cover far more genres than comics in America have even tried to cover. Though the art styles differ to some degree, it is largely the same idea. And that's a hobby I have been following for years.

Anyway, that's my take/rant on comic books and how I've evolved right alongside them.