Heather Burns Independent Study, FWT 2006

Final Project

Video Games as Teaching Tools

My final project is currently in research stage. The information posted here are notes from the various books/articles that I will be using as resources in my paper. Each book is broken up into chapters and each of the chapters notes have 4 sections.

*definitions - helpful definitions of words and phrases as they are used in the text.

*overview - general points made in the chapter so as to summarize what the chapter was about.

*quotes - specific quotes that I found interresting and/or relevant to my paper.

*tags - I have marked each book with various colored tags so that points I felt were too large or vague to quote/summerize are easily found in the book.

• Red tags are fairly general points, usually made up of several paragraphs.
• Blue tags are more specific points in the book, ususally one paragraph.
• Yellow tags are very specifically related to the Flow-Learn relationship that I am expanding on in this paper.

I have read "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy" by James Paul Gee and "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,"Science and Human Behavior" by B.F. Skinner, another article by Skinner entitled "Teaching Machines" and "Mind in Society: Development of Higher Psychological Processes" by Lev S. Vygotsky. I am currently reading "How we Think," by John Dewey.

Reading Notes

"What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy"

Gee, James Paul. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy. Palgrave Macmillan. New York, New York, 2003.

Ch. 1: 36 Ways to Learn a Video Game

p.8 *situated cognition: thinking as tied to a body that has experiences in the social, material, and cultural world.

p.8 *connectionism: a view that stressed the ways in which humans are powerful pattern-recognizers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-How we interpret language depends on which domain we are operating in. Depending on the domain, many words have very particular social meanings. For instance, the word work is different for a man pushing a stalled car than it is for a physicist.

-Video games offer a difficult/frustrating experience, but also life-enhancing; hence the number of hours (the author spent 8) the player is willing to spend on it just during one sitting.

- A difficult game cannot be played if it can’t be learned. Therefore, good games that sell well will have good learning principles.

-Schools today do not incorporate most of the learning theories found in video games.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.1 “…I argued two things that, at first sight, look to be ‘mental’ achievements,namely literacy and thinking, are, in reality, also and primarily social achievements.”

p.6 “The key is finding ways to make hard things life enhancing so that people don’t fall back on learning and thinking only what is simple and easy.”

p.6 “What we are really looking for here is this: the theory of human learning built into good video games.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p.3, p.6

BLUE TAG: p.5, p.7

---

Ch. 2: Semiotic Domains

p.14 *multimodal (texts): texts that mix words and images.

p.18 *semiotic domain: any set of practices that recruits one or more modalities (oral, written language, images, equations, symbols, sounds, etc.) to communicate distinctive types of meaning.

p.27 *affinity group: people in an affinity group can recognize others as more or less “insiders” of the group.

p.43 *critical learning: involves learning to think of semiotic domains as design spaces that can manipulate us in certain ways and that we can manipulate in certain ways.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Reading and writing are what we would normally consider to be in the realm of literacy. But, images also play a large part in todays world, as well as other senses. Even in reading and writing literacy is multiple and based on the domain in which you are in. For example, reading and writing in Shakespearean language, versus reading and writing rap songs.

-Literacy is about being able to communicate in different domains. Therefore one has to be able to socially engage in these constructs to be literate in them.

-People consider video games to be a waste of time because they teach a very particular set of skills (e.g. eye-hand coordination) and not content. The fact is content void from an environment teaches us nothing. The meaning of content cannot be learned unless students are involved in the social life of that content and understand the environment/domain from which it comes from and is used.

-To have critical learning, the learner must be able to produce ‘new/innovative’ meanings of the domain.

-Understanding meanings is an active process that involves reflecting on both the particular situation and the domain/construct we are in.

-To understand the kind of learning that goes on in video games, you have to think of the game in metalevel. The game is a system and a designed space that engages, but more importantly manipulates the player into certain actions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.4 “Afterall, we never just read or write; rather we always read or write something in some way.”

p.15 “This claim amounts to arguing that producers (people who can actually engage in a social practice) potentially make better consumers (people who can read or understand texts from or about the social practice.)”

p.21 “No one would want to treat basketball as ‘content apart from the game itself.”

p.23 “Three things…are involved in active learning: experiencing the world in new ways, forming new affiliations, and preparation for future learning.

p.48 “They situate meaning in a multimedial space through embodied experiences to solve problems and reflect on the intricacies of the design of imagined worlds and the design of both real and imagined social relationships and identities in the modern world.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p.21, p.23, p.44, p.49

BLUE TAG: p.13, p.16, p.42, p.45

---

Ch. 3: Learning and Identity

p.58 *virtual identity: the attributes the game has given to the character.

p.58 *real-world identity: your identity as a player of a game.

p.58 *projective identity: the aspects of your identity (morals, ethics, beliefs, etc.) that you project onto your virtual character.

p.64 *amplification of input principle: systems receive a little bit of input and then produce a lot of output.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Part of learning about a domain is creating an identity that will be able to successfully interact in that domain. Videogames encourage identity work and reflection on identity that builds a successful identity to interact in that domain.

-Identity in games is both active and reflexive. The player can actively affect the actions of the character, but those choices will develop the character in a way that sets certain parameters about what the player can do.

-Oftentimes it is the damage of a particular identity that stops ‘deep learning’ in that domain. For instance, the identity of “being good at learning technical skills”, if damage, can greatly hinder a students ability to have any ‘deep learning’ happen in a science classroom.

-Repairing identities and allowing for deep learning requires 3 things:

1. The learner must be enticed to try.
2. The learner must be enticed to put in lots of effort.
3. The learner must achieve meaningful success.

-Games with good storylines easily entice players and involve them in the story/play. Video games can also adjust their difficulty level to fit the ability of the player—rewarding effort with the appropriate amount of success.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.51 “All learning in all semiotic domains requires identity work.”

p. 68 “Humans need to practice what they are learning a good deal before they master it. Furthermore, they tend to loose a good deal of their learning—including school learning—when they cease to practice the skills associated with this learning in their daily lives.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p.61, p.67

BLUE TAG: p.51, p.58

YELLOW TAG: p.62, p.64, p.65, p.70

---

Ch. 4: Situated Meaning and Learning

p.96 *appreciative system: a person’s set of goals, desires, feelings, and values in respect to the domain being engaged with.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Learning content based in abstractions is not efficient because the human brain learns by rooting content in previously learned generalizations and associations.

-Video games offer embodies experiences that allow for players to gain a more complete understanding of the meaning of the situation/domain/content.

-Content lists can be added onto forever, but it is the understanding of patterns that allow us to edit, refocus, and create in the domain which allows us to add onto our understanding forever, not just our lists of content.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.90 “Meaning is material, situated and embodied if and when it is useful.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLUE TAG: p.81, p.90

---

Ch. 5: Telling and Doing

-To learn most effectively, students/players need both overt information as well as a context within which they can apply that overt information.

~~~~~~~~~~~

p.113 “The dilemma then is this: For efficacious learning, humans need overt information, but they have a hard time handling it. They also need immersion in actual contexts of practice, but they can find such contests confusing without overt information and guidance.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p.114

YELLOW TAG: p.120, p.121, p.123

---

Ch. 6: Cultural Models

p.143 *cultural model: images, story lines, principles, or metaphors, that capture what a particular group finds “normal” or “typical” in regard to a given phenomenon.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Video games have potential to seriously challenge players preconceptions by offering many sides (ways of playing, characters, stories, etc.) from which to approach a game.

-When learning, it is important to reflect on the types of ‘cultural models’ that you bring into a domain. In many cases, each domain requires a different set of cultural models/contexts to call upon.

-Video games tend not to reward the isolated use of linear thinking and instead encourage the combination of non-linear and linear movement as well as the use of multiple ways to approach problems.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.151 “Videogames have an unmet potential to create complexity by letting people experience the world from different perspectives.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLUE TAG: p.162, p.164

---

Ch. 7: The Social Mind

p.190 *reciprocal teaching: take turns leading discussions, asking questions, clarifying, summarizing, and predicting.

p.191 *jigsaw method: assign subparts of topics to collaborative units of students that will later present to add to the overall theme of the section.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Playing video games is a deceptively social activity. The three most common ways to play games socially are:

1. Players hook multiple controllers into a gaming platform.
2. Players network computers into a local area network (LAN parties)—which can mean they are in the same physical area, or that they are connected in a private community on the internet.
3. Players log onto the internet and play one of the popular online games.

-Ones ultimate knowledge is not based on the individual’s ability to recall facts, but their ability to utilize social and technological tools to navigate the information landscape.

~~~~~~~~~~~

p. 194 “…young people who play video games often experience a more intense affinity group, leverage more knowledge from other people and from various tools and technologies, and are more powerfully networked with each other than they ever are in school.”

~~~~~~~~~~

BLUE TAG: p.190

---

Ch. 8: Conclusion

Skip

---

Learning Principles

1. Active, Critical Learning Principle: all aspects of the learning environment are set up to encourage active and critical, not passive, learning.

2. Design Principle: learning about and coming to appreciate design and design principles is core to the learning experience.

3. Semiotic Principle: learning about and coming to appreciate interrelations within and across multiple sign systems as a complex system is core to the learning process.

4. Semiotic Domains Principle: learning involves mastering, at some level, semiotic domains, and being able to participate in the affinity group connected to them.

5. Metalevel Thinking about Semiotic Domains Principle: learning involves active and critical thinking about the relationships of the semiotic domain being learned to other semiotic domains.

6. “Psychosocial Moratorium” Principle: learners can take risks in a space where real-world consequences are lowered.

7. Committed Learning Principle: learners participate in an extended engagement as extensions of their real-world identities in relation to a virtual identity to which they feel some commitment and a virtual world they find compelling.

8. Identity Principle: learning involves taking on and playing with identities in such a way that the learner has real choices and ample opportunity to mediate on the relationship between new identities and old ones. There is a tripart play of identities as learners relate, and reflect on, their multiple real-world identities, a virtual identity, and a projective identity.

9. Self-Knowledge Principle: the virtual world is constructed in such a way that learners learn not only about the domain but about themselves and their current and potential capacities.

10. Amplification of Input Principle: for a little input, learners get a lot of output.

11. Achievement Principle: for learners of all level of skill there are intrinsic rewards from the beginning, customized to each learner’s level, effort, and growing mastery and signaling the learner’s ongoing achievements.

12. Practice Principle: learners get lots and lots of practice in a context where the practice is not boring.

13. Ongoing Learning Principle: the distinction between learner and master is vague, since learners must, at higher and higher levels, undo their routinized mastery to adapt to new or changed conditions. There are cycles of new learning, automatization, undoing automatization, and new reorganized automatization.

14. “Regime of Competence” Principle: the learner gets ample opportunity to operate within, but at the outer edge of his or her resources, so that at those points things are felt as challenging but not undoable.

15. Probing Principle: learning is a cycle of probing the world; reflecting in and on this action and , on this basis, forming a hypothesis; re-probing the world to test this hypothesis, and then accepting or rethinking the hypothesis.

16. Multiple Route Principle: there are multiple ways to make progress or move ahead. This allows learners to make choices, rely on their own strengths and styles of learning and problem solving, while also exploring alternative styles.

17. Situated Meaning Principle: the meanings of signs are situated in embodied experience. Meanings are not general or decontextualized. Whatever generality meanings come to have is discovered bottom up via embodied experiences.

18. Text Principle: texts are not understood purely verbally but are understood in terms of embodied experiences. Learners move back and forth between texts and embodied experiences. More purely verbal understanding comes only when learners have had enough embodied experience in the domain and ample experiences with similar texts.

19. Intertextual Principle: the learner understands texts as a family of related texts and understands any one such text in relation to others in the family, but only after having achieved embodied understandings of some texts. Understanding a group of texts as a family of texts is a large part of what helps the learner make sense of such texts.

20. Multimodal Principle: meaning and knowledge are built up through various modalities, not just words.

21. “Material Intelligence” Principle: thinking, problem solving, and knowledge are “stored” in material objects and the environment. This frees learners to engage their minds with other things while combining the results of their own thinking with the knowledge stored in material objects and the environment to achieve yet more powerful effects.

22. Intuitive Knowledge Principle: intuitive or tactic knowledge built up in repeated practice and experience, often in association with an affinity group, counts a great deal and is honored. Not just verbal and conscious knowledge is rewarded.

23. Subset Principle: learning even at its start takes place in a simplified subset of the real domain.

24. Incremental Principle: learning situations are ordered in the early stages so that earlier cases lead to generalizations that are fruitful for later cases. When learners face more complex cases later, the learning space is constrained by the sorts of fruitful patterns or generalizations the learner has found earlier.

25. Concentrated Sample Principle: the learner sees, especially early on, many more instances of fundamental signs and actions that would be the case in a less controlled sample. Fundamental signs and actions are concentrated in the early stages so that learners get to practice them often and learn them well.

26. Bottom-up Basic Skills Principle: basic skills are not learned in isolation or out of context; rather, what counts as a basic skill is discovered bottom up by engaging in more and more of the game/domain or game/domains like it. Basic skills are genre elements of a given type of game/domain.

27. Explicit Information On-Demand and Just-In-Time Principle: the learner is given explicit information both on-demand and just-in-time, when the learner needs it or just at the point where the information can best be understood and used in practice.

28. Discovery Principle: overt telling is kept to a well-thought-out minimum, allowing ample opportunity for the learner to experiment and make discoveries.

29. Transfer Principle: learners are given ample opportunity to practice, and support for, transferring what they have learned earlier to later problems, including problems that require adapting and transforming that earlier learning.

30. Cultural Models about the World Principle: learning is set up in such a way that learners come to think consciously and reflectively about some of their cultural models regarding the world, without denigration of their identities, abilities, or social affiliations, and juxtapose them to new models that may conflict with or otherwise relate them in various ways.

31. Cultural Models about Learning Principle: learning is set up in such a way that learners come to think consciously and reflectively about their cultural models of learning and themselves as learners, without denigration of their identities, abilities, or social affiliations, and juxtapose them to new models of learning and themselves as learners.

32. Cultural Models about Semiotic Domain Principle: learning is set up in such a way that learners come to think consciously and reflectively about their cultural models about a particular semiotic domain they are learning, without denigration of their identities, abilities, or social affiliations, and juxtapose them to new models about this domain.

33. Distributed Principle: meaning/knowledge is distributed across the learner, objects, tools, symbols, technologies, and the environment.

34. Dispersed Principle: meaning/knowledge is dispersed in the sense that the learner shares it with others outside the domain/game, some of whom the learner may rarely or never see face-to-face.

35. Affinity Group Principle: learners constitute an “affinity group” that is, a group that is bonded primarily through shared endeavors, goals, and practices.

36. Insider Principle: the learner is an “insider,” “teacher,” and “producer” able to customize the learning experience and domain/game from the beginning and throughout the experience.

---

"Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience"

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row. New York, New York, 1990.

Ch. 1: Happiness Revisited

p.4 *Flow: a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Happiness, has been said by many philosophers to be a man’s ultimate goal in life. After over 8 years of study, it seems that the most universally agreed upon state of happiness is something that is achieved when your mind and body are completely ‘in the moment’ of whatever it is you are doing.

-Roots of discontent: Chaos in the universe—humans have a lack of control over their own destiny accompanied by ‘uncooperative’ laws of nature and physics.

-Cultural shields, like cultural traditions and religions, are created to block and protect people from the harsh chaos of the universe. Sadly, these blocks are inevitably pushed aside by reality sooner or later, and man must, once more, look inward to find control and power instead of to outside forces.

-All societies, to work properly, have to have an emphasis on postponing gratification. When this is true, all members of society are willing to work for an ultimate goal and put aside their own immediate forms of fulfillment. While this is good in some respects, it also sets up a dynamic where people are always working for tomorrow and are rarely working to accomplish something just for the moment.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p.4

BLUE TAG: p.12, p.15, p.18

---

Ch. 2: The Anatomy of Consciousness

p.24 *Function of Consciousness: to represent information about what is happening outside and inside the organism in such a way that it can be evaluated and acted upon by the body.

p.27 * Intentions: the force that keeps information in consciousness ordered.

p.31 *Attention: a process that selects the relevant bits of information from the potential millions of bits available. Attention retrieves the appropriate references from memory, to evaluate the event, and then choose the right action.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Consciousness is intentionally ordered information. While our senses may interpret many things, only some are ‘recognized’ in the consciousness.

-It has been roughly estimated that we can manage, at most, 7 bits of information at any one time. The shortest time it takes to discriminate between one set of bits and another is about 1/18 of a second. So, theoretically, we can process 126 bits per second, 7,560 bits per minute.

-p.29 To understand what a person is saying we use 40 bits of info each second. Theoretically, we could understand what three people are saying to us at the same time, but we would not be aware of the speaker’s expressions, nor wonder why they are saying what they are saying, etc.

-Attention cannot hold or focus more information than the consciousness can process.

-Flow is a state that can be reached when consciousness and attention are perfectly focused on one task/set of stimuli, which often leaves little room for other stimuli.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.26 “With this framework in mind, what, then, does it mean to be conscious? It simply means that certain specific conscious events (sensations, feelings, thoughts, intentions) are occurring, and that we are able to direct their course.”

p.30 “Not surprisingly, people report some of the lowest levels of concentration, use of skills, clarity of thought, and feelings of potency when watching television.”

p.30 “Information enters consciousness either because we intend to focus attention on it or as a result of attentional habits based on biological or social instructions.”

p.41 “After each episode of flow, a person becomes more of a unique individual, less predictable, possessed of rarer skills.”

p.41 “Flow helps to integrate the self because in that state of deep concentration, consciousness is unusually well ordered. Thoughts, intentions, feelings, and all the senses are focused on the same goal.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p.29, p.41

BLUE TAG: p.28 p.29

---

Ch. 3: Enjoyment and the Quality of Life

p.46 *Enjoyment: when a person goes beyond meeting a prior expectation or satisfying a need or desire and has achieved something unexpected, accompanied by a sense of novelty and accomplishment.

p.49 *phenomenology of enjoyment:

1. experience occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing.
2. we must be able to concentrate on the activity.
3. concentration is possible because the task has clear goals.
4. concentration is possible because the activity provides immediate feedback.
5. one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life.
6. experience allows people to exercise a sense of control over their actions.
7. concerns for the self disappear during the flow experience but reemerges much more strongly afterward.
8. the sense of the duration of time is altered.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-There are two ways of “improving the quality of life” :

1. changing the environment to better suit your expectations and needs—e.g. more money.

2 change your internal expectations to be more accepting and adaptable to the environment.

-Enjoyment is an experience that increases complexity in your internal (mental) life. Pleasure is merely an experience that signals a return to homeostasis from a state of entropy. E.g. People who have low blood sugar take pleasure in eating. People who aretasting a chef’s buffet at a 4-star restaurant and eat their food slowly, examining all of the intricacies of flavor enjoy eating.

-There are many ‘games’ or diversions that people use on a daily basis to stave off boredom and improve the quality of their everyday experiences. E.g. singing while you drive to work, the same drive you’ve done everyday for several years.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.49 “…by and far the overwhelming proportion of optimal experiences are reported to occur within sequences of activities that are goal-directed and bounded by the rules—activities that require the investment of psychic energy, and that could not be done without the appropriate skills.”

p.50 “In many ways, competition is a quick way of developing complexity…”

p.52 “Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person’s capacity to act.”

p.60 “…activities that produce flow experiences, even the seemingly most risky ones, are so constructed as to allow the practitioner to develop sufficient skills to reduce the margin of error to as close to zero as possible.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAGS: p.49, p.62

BLUE TAGS: p.60

YELLOW TAGS: p.46, p.49, p.51, p.52

---

Ch. 4: The Conditions of Flow

p.84 *Anhedonia: “lack of pleasure”; a symptom in schizophrenics that is related to “stimulus overinclusion” which refers to a condition in which schizos notice irrelevant stimuli and have no choice to which information they process.

p.86 *Anomie: “lack of rules”; a condition in society in which the norms of behavior become muddled. When it is no longer clear what is permitted and what is not, when it is uncertain what public opinion values, behavior becomes erratic and meaningless.

p.86 *Alienation: a condition in which people are constrained by the social system to act in ways that go against their goals.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-While some flow states are reached by chance, most are found in activities designed to enhance the likelihood of reaching a flow state. Organized activities, games—in the broadest sense of the word—are prime examples of designs meant to enhance flow.

-Culture is the broadest example of a design intended to create a state of flow (happiness) for a mass of people. Every culture has rules as to how lives should be lived, the ultimate goal of which, being that all people are surviving, but also find life challenging enough to engage in flow states.

-Things that inhibit flow:

1. inability to control attention; as in people with A.D.D. and schizophrenics.
2. people who are overly self-conscious or self-centered so that attention is distributed inefficiently to the actual activity.
3. cultural conditions that greatly limit the achievement of enjoyment through slavery, oppression, exploitation, etc.
4. anomic situations (cultural constructs are unclear, no rules, values become muddled, etc.).
5. alienation—people are forced to jump through non-relevant hoops to achieve their goals.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.75 “One cannot enjoy doing the same thing at the same level for long. We grow either bored or frustrated; and then the desire to enjoy ourselves again pushes us to stretch our skills, or to discover new opportunities for using them.”

p.84 “Among school children, a great variety of learning disabilities have been reclassified under the heading of “attentional disorders” because what they have in common is a lack of control over attention.”

p.85 “Attentional disorders and stimulus overinclusion prevent flow because psychic energy is too fluid and erratic.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAGS: p.85, p.87

BLUE TAGS: p.72, p.81, p.85

YELLOW TAGS: p.74

---

Ch. 5: The Body in Flow

p.104 *Yoga: “yoking”; refers to the method’s goal of joining the individual with God, first by uniting the various parts of the body with one another, then making the body as a whole work together with consciousness as part of an ordered system.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

-Because the body is the unit with which we receive all of our sensory information, the use of the body is an ideal place for enjoyment to be cultivated. Whether it is a coordinated effort—running or swimming—or just utilizing one sense—sight, taste—these experiences are all based in the body.

-One can reach a flow state by just setting and improving goals of basic physicality (e.g. walking, or sex).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.99 “…enjoyment…does not depend on what you do, but rather on how you do it.”

p.101 “In a sense, eroticism is to sex as sport is to physical activity.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLUE TAGS: p.104

---

Ch. 6: The Flow of Thought

-There are many activities that organize the mind in such a way that induces a flow state. Most of these are symbolic in nature, requiring the mind to perform ‘imaginary’ actions or manipulations of concepts.

-The mind’s natural state is chaos; without outside structures to focus on, thoughts become erratic. To reduce this entropy, people have a natural tendency to shift their focus to any outside stimulus when there is no need for them to focus on anything specific.

-Developing memory is an important foundation for consciousness. Abstract knowledge grow out of solid information that is held in memory—even via skill and drill.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.139 “If a person feels coerced to read a certain book, to follow a given course because that is supposed to be the way to do it, learning will go against the grain. But if the decision is to take that same route because of an inner feeling of rightness, the learning will be relatively effortless and enjoyable.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLUE TAGS: p.130

---

Ch. 7: Work as Flow

p.150 *Yu: the right way of following a path; “walking without touching the ground”; “flowing.”

p.159 *Apathy: characterized by low levels of access both challenges and skills. People feel passive, weak, dull, and dissatisfied.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Work that provides challenges a given worker can master is an opportunity to create flow.

-A study to test the level of challenge and abount of skills used by a person during random times of the day suggests that only in 16% of the responses made during work indicated apathy and 52% of those done during leisure time indicated apathy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.152 “The more a job inherently resembles a game—with variety, appropriate and flexible challenges, clear goals, and immediate feedback—the more enjoyable it will be regardless of the worker’s level of development.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAGS: p.160

---

Ch. 8: Enjoying Solitude and Other People

Skipped due to irrelevant content

---

Ch. 9: Cheating Chaos

Skipped due to irrelevant content

---

Ch.10: The Making of Meaning

p.216 *Meaning:

1. ultimate goal; there is a temporal order, a causal connection, phenomena are not random, but fall into recognizable patterns directed by a final purpose. 2. a person’s intentions; people reveal their purposes in actions, their goals are expressed in predictable, consistent, orderly ways. 3. ordering information; identity of different words; relationship between events.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-To have a meaningful life, one that prevents chaos and promotes enjoyment, a person must have clear goals that will lend to their ultimate purpose (whatever that may be) in life.

"Science and Human Behavior"

Skinner, B.F. Science and Human Behavior. The Free Press. New York, New York, 1953.

note: because of the density of this book, there are a few big sections that I didn't read because their content did not seem very relevant to my topic. So this is an overview of the first two sections and Ch.26 of section 4

Ch. 1: Can Science Help

-The rate at which many technologies have grown has been much faster than the rate at which we have gained an understanding of how humans will be affected by the introduction of these new technologies. As a result many technologies have affected society in ways we could have not foreseen, both for good results and bad. It is important to concentrate on developing stronger models and methods for studying human behavior so that averse affects from technologies can be predicted and dealt with.

-Society today is concerned with what it would mean to give support to scientific explanations of human behavior; that is might mean giving up their sense of freedom or free will.

-While the plight of the ‘less fortunate’ is often seen as being largely due to their conditions, the successes of the elite are thought to be due to personal motivation and values.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.6 “If we are to use the methods of science in the field of human affairs, we must assume that behavior is lawful and determined. We must expect to discover that what a man does is the result of specifiable conditions and that once these conditions have been discovered, we can anticipate and to some extent determine his actions.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 2: A Science of Behavior

p.12 *Science: 1. a set of attitudes: -a disposition to deal with the facts rather than what someone has said about them; a challenge to authority. -a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to your own wishes and beliefs. -remaining without an answer until a satisfactory one can be found. 2. a search for order, for uniformities, for lawful relations among the events in nature.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Behavior may seem beyond the powers of science, not because it is inaccessible, but because of its extreme complexity. However, behavior is something that even laypeople can expect to find order in. We can predict what our friends will do in certain situations and we know what kind of behavior is grossly inappropriate (out of order) in most situations.

-Another criticism in scientifically measuring behavior is the identification of controlled environments from which to gain statistical results. However there are many controlled environments that are already operating in our society; nurseries, armies, governmental agencies, even media is a type of controlled environment that is used to manipulate behavior.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p. 16

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 3: Why Organisms Behave

p.23 *Cause: a change in an independent variable.

p.23 *Effect: a change in a dependent variable.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Explanations of the ‘causes’ of behavior are as old as man. Pre-scientific explanations often involve the spiritual/supernatural world.

-Inner ‘causes’—things which behave the way they do because of their essence: -neural causes: in a time when neural observation was limited, gross anatomy was used as an explanation. Conditions that develop neurological reactions still remain outside the body. -psychic inner causes: ‘spirit’, the ‘inner man’ or personality. Sometimes explained as multiple voices (Freud) who combat for their own desires lead to a cumulative behavior in the organism.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.24 “Millions of people turn to these spurious causes [astrology, numerology, etc.] every year in their desperate need to understand human behavior and to deal with it effectively.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p. 26, p. 37

BLUE TAG: p. 23

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 4: Reflexes and Conditioned Reflexes

p.53 *Stimulus substitution: a previously neutral stimulus acquires the power to elicit a response which was originally elicited by another stimulus—occurs when the neutral stimulus is followed by (reinforced by) the effective stimulus.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Behavior, or movement, is something we strongly identify with life. Machines are one of our creations that prompted a lot of discussion about the similarity between the human body and the moving machine. Thinkers of the time began to speculate if humans and animals did not actual move and behave very similarly to machines.

-Decartes was the first to suggest that our behavior is merely a reaction to outside sources (stimuli) as opposed to being driven by inner forces. The stimulus-response reaction, or reflex, has since been able to account for a variety of complex behaviors.

-While reflex explanations are very limited, Pavlov took the research to a new level when he ‘invented’ reflexes through the use of conditioning. He created environmental factors unrelated to a reflex and then paired them with already-existing reflexes. In this way, he created new stimulus to be reacted to in the same way as the old stimulus.

-Having biological reflexes gives an animal a great deal of advantages in terms of survival. But equally important is the ability to be conditioned by changing environments. If a new enemy appears, it is important to identify the characteristics of the enemy and be able to react to these characteristics with a reflex fear response.

-Conditioned responses are everywhere and are often manipulated by many. Advertisers use pleasant images—babies, food, beautiful environments—in their campaigns so people associate these pleasant feelings the images evoke, with their product. Artists use colors and shapes that evoke particular emotions based on their abundance in certain environments (notice that this is very culture-dependent).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.55 “Where inherited behavior leaves off, the inherited modifiability of the process of conditioning takes over.”

p.56 “According to the formula of stimulus substitution we must elicit a response before we can condition it. All conditional reflexes are, therefore, based upon unconditioned reflexes.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLUE TAG: p.56, p.57

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 5: Operant Behavior

p.64 *response: any movement of an organism.

p.64 *operant: describes a class of responses. A unit of predictive science that describes a likely set of similar responses to a stimulus.

p.71 *extinction: removing an operant from the repertoire of an organism. Not to be confused with the use of punishment or forgetting; extinction occurs after a long period of the operant being ignored/not reinforced, so there becomes no ‘reason’ to continue the behavior.

p.71 *abulia: extreme extinction; ‘lack of will’

p.73 *presenting stimuli: a reinforcing event that consists of adding something to the situation (e.g. food, water, sexual contact). Also known as Positive Reinforcement.

p.73 *removing stimuli: a reinforcing agent that consists of removing something from the situation (e.g. a loud noise, a bright light, an extreme temperature). Also known as Negative Reinforcement.

p.77 * generalized reinforcer: a conditioned reinforcer that is paired with more than one primary reinforcer.

p.85 * superstition: an accidental connection between the response and the appearance of a reinforcer. Behavior that is ‘accidentally’ associated with a reinforcement and becomes an operant behavior in hopes of receiving the reinforcement again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-An effective stimulation to create operant behaviors is one that the organism will find both ‘meaningful’ and one that delivers clear feedback.

-Many words we use to attribute psychological states are just fictional ‘reasonings’ for conditioned responses. “Sense of achievement,” “moral,” “ambition,” “discouragement,” are all terms that describe the presence or absence of an appropriate reinforcements when certain behaviors are engaged in.

-Sometimes, if the reinforcement becomes strong enough, you can elicit a behavior that relies primarily on the generalized reinforcer. E.g. a miser that loves his money so much he’d rather die than spend it on an operation that could save his life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.67 “The organism must be stimulated by the consequences of its behavior if conditioning is to take place.” --feedback

p.67 “Conditioning depends also upon the kind, amount, and immediacy of reinforcement…”

p.72 “We do not give a man a sense of achievement, we reinforce a particular action. To become discouraged is simply to fail to respond because reinforcement has not been forthcoming.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLUE TAG: p.67, p. 71, p.77

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 6: Shaping and Maintaining Operant Behavior

p.95 *differential reinforcement: selecting different magnitudes/degrees of a response to gain greater effectiveness in different environments with similar operant behavior requirements. (e.g. talking to someone to get their attention in a grocery store, yelling at someone to get their attention in a boat yard)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-A behavior never pops up out of nowhere but instead is a succession of similar behaviors that are reinforced in such a way as to ‘shape’ behavior.

-Another difficulty science faces in describing operant behavior is that stimuli and their responses are rarely a single unit. Most often one operant behavior will be enacted for several similar stimuli and visa versa. The necessity of a similar skeletal/muscular set up or a similar operation (speech) is largely the cause of this.

-Intermittent reinforcement has a much greater lasting power than a consistent reinforcement schedule.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.92 “By reinforcing a series of successive approximations, we bring a rare response to a very high probability in a short time. This is an effective procedure because it recognizes and utilizes the continuous nature of a complex act.”

p.95 “It [differential reinforcement] is the difference between ‘knowing how to do something’ and ‘doing it well.’ The latter is the field of skill.”

p.98 “In fact, what we call annoying behavior in general is just that behavior which is especially effective in arousing another person to action.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLUE TAG: p.92, p.96

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch.7: Operant Discrimination

p.123 *attention: a controlling relation—the relation between a response and a discriminative stimulus.

p.125 *respondent conditioning: corresponding effect on behavior when events occur together (e.g. color and taste of ripe fruit).

p.125 *operant conditioning: corresponding effect on behavior when certain activities of the organism effect certain changes in the environment.

p.125 * operant discrimination: corresponding effect on behavior when certain events are the occasions upon which certain actions effect certain changes in the environment.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Operant behavior is emitted rather than elicited.

-Through respondent conditioning, operant conditioning and operant discrimination, an organism in a novel environment eventually is able to behave efficiently.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p.123

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 8: The Controlling Environment

p.132 *Induction: the spread of the behavior that accompanies one stimuli to other (often similar) stimuli. (e.g. pressing a small red button, and then pressing a large blue button).

p.134 *abstraction: behavior that is brought under the control of a single property or special combination of properties while being freed from the control of all other properties.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 9: Deprivation and Satiation

Skipped—non-relevant

Ch.10: Emotion

Skipped—non-relevant

Ch. 11: Aversion, avoidance and Anxiety

p.171 *aversive: a stimulus whose removal is reinforcing—used in negative reinforcement.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Negative reinforcement is very powerful as it always elicits the same ‘type’ of behavior, escape.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch.12: Punishment

-Punishment is the most common method of attempting to manipulate human behavior. However it is not the most effective for either the punished organism or the punishing agency.

-Punishment has been shown to have an immediate effect of lessening chances of repeating the punished behavior, but the rate of the behavior eventually increases once more. Also punishment has been shown to have additional negative behavioral effects.

-The punishment itself has an effect, but not necessarily the activity which caused the punishment to occur. For example, saying “No” will bring on an aversive emotional response from a child, but the desire to eat the cookie before dinner will not bring on the same emotional response. Therefore the punishing stimulus is often only effective when it is present, or the stimulus is embedded in the actual behavior (touching a hot stove).

-Good alternatives to punishment are simply limiting the circumstances in which the behavior is elicited in the first place, not rewarding the behavior with attention, rewarding more acceptable alternative behaviors.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.182 “The commonest technique of control in modern life is punishment.”

p.187 “In general, then, as a second effect of punishment, behavior which has consistently been punished becomes the source of conditioned stimuli which evoke incompatible behavior.” (e.g. a person has a physical response when he knows he is lying, these are conditioned responses associated with previous punishments for lying.)

p.189 “The most important effect of punishment then, is to establish aversive conditions which are avoided by any behavior of ‘doing something else.’”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p.183

BLUE TAG: p.182

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 26: Education

p.402 *Education: the establishment of behavior which will be of advantage to the individual and to others at some future time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Education has a variety of individual and cultural reinforcements that guide its implementation and continuation.

-As a culture/society becomes more affluent, many of the reinforcements become much less effective. Prestige` gained from education is no longer as important, jobs are available that don’t require high education to make a good salary (this was written during the industrial era, things have changed with the advancements of technology and need for technologically savvy workers).

-“Progressive education” supplies ‘real-world’ reinforcements as soon as possible. Having field trips, lab experiments and opportunities to engage in newly learned behaviors in a ‘real’ way becomes the best reinforcement—in order to find value in the task outside the school’s artificial reinforcement system.

-Knowledge is simply a specific behavior that can be enacted when given the appropriate contingencies. A child who knows the capitol of Peru is a child who can speak the city name when asked “What is the capitol of Peru?” or the environment somehow makes the exhibition of that behavior relevant.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.402 “Education emphasizes the acquisition of behavior rather than its maintenance.”

p.411 “…the educational institution cannot be content merely with establishing standard repertoires of right answers but must also establish a repertoire with which the student may, so to speak, arrive at the right answer under novel circumstances in the absence of any representative of the agency.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p.402

BLUE TAG: p.407, p.409, p.411

---

Teaching Machines

Skinner, B.F. “Teaching Machines: From the experimental study of learning come devices which arrange optimal conditions for self-instruction.” Science, Vol. 128, No. 3330, pg. 969-977, October 24, 1958.

Article Notes

-There has been a large increase in the number of students in schools. There has been little done to increase the efficiency in schools.

-While visual media aids have been a helpful tool to present information, it still does not fix the need for one-on-one interaction with a teacher.

-Sidney L. Pressey designed a machine to test intelligence in the 1920’s. The machine presented questions with multiple choice that would only move on to the next question when a student answered the question correctly. If they did not, it would allow them to choose another answer until they did get it right.

-Pressey realized that these could be powerful teaching tools as well as they had the advantage of giving the student both immediate feedback while staying at just the right level for each individual student. Skinner’s Teaching Machine keeps Pressey’s same idea with a few changes to the way in which information is presented.

-There is now much more information on how humans best learn and behaviorism has taken part and suggests that a surprising degree of control on learning can be achieved by “arranging appropriate contingencies of reinforcement.”

-Features of Skinner’s Teaching Machine:

1. the student must compose his answers rather than have multiple choice. -this eliminates accidental paring of the information with the wrong answer.
2. To acquire a complex behavior the machine will take the student through a very carefully controlled sequence of steps that gradually increase in ‘difficulty’

-Why the Teaching Machine is an efficient tool:

1. it makes sure that a given point is thoroughly understood before allowing the student to move on.
2. it presents just the material for which each individual student is ready.
3. it helps the student to come up with the right answer, rather than causing the student to struggle on their own.
4. it gives immediate feedback and reinforcement for every right answer.

-A teaching machine can also give direct feedback to a programmer and/or teacher about areas a student is having difficulty in and how the program needs to change to accommodate the student(s).

-Teaching material that is difficult is supposed to induce ‘thinking’ in the student. There are two big issues with this belief:

1. only a small selection of potential ‘thinkers’ will learn under such difficult learning conditions.
2. there will have to be a sacrifice in the teaching of each subject matter by renouncing effective but ‘easier’ methods.

-One objection to the machine is that students will come to rely on it and therefore be unprepared for real-world application of their knowledge. However, a weaning process is also necessary upon leaving the fanciful goals that school systems set up for educational achievement as well.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.1 “There is a real danger that it [productive interchange between student and teacher] will be wholly obscured if use of equipment designed simply to present material becomes wide-spread. The student is becoming more and more a mere passive receiver of instruction.”

p.1 and 2 “…Pressey seems to have been the first to emphasize the importance of immediate feedback in education and to propose a system in which each student could move at his own pace.”

p.2 “A student is ‘taught’ in the sense that he is induced to engage in new forms of behavior and in specific forms upon specific occasions.”

p.3 “there is a constant interchange between program and student. Unlike lectures, textbooks and the usual audio-visual aids, the machine induces sustained activity.”

p.7 “He [the teacher] has found that students do not pay attention unless they are worried about the consequences of their work. The customary procedure has been to maintain the necessary anxiety by inducing errors.”

p.7 “Making sure that the student knows he doesn’t know is a technique concerned with motivation not with the learning process.”

p.8 --on a study in which Teaching Machines were tested --“An important advantage proved to be that the student always knew where he stood without waiting for an hour test or final examination.”

p.9 “The discipline of the birch rod may facilitate learning, but we must remember that it also breeds followers of dictators and revolutionists.”

---

Mind in Society

Vygotsky, L.S. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1978.

Ch. 1 : Tool and Symbol in Child Development

-Originally, the model used for botany and developing plants was the same model used in child psychology. Now, the slightly more sophisticated version is a model more similar to zoology. Most of the research on child development has been in practical intelligence, looking at similarities between apes and children.

-While child psychology has grown a great deal following zoological models, there have been many studies that reveal an integration of speech and practical thinking as well as the development of higher psychological functions. This suggests that a new approach will be necessary to discover the specific development of a human child.

-p.25 Experiments trying to demonstrate the use of speech in both practical and complex psychological activity demonstrate two points:

1. A child’s speech is as important as the role of action in attaining the goal. Children not only speak about what they are doing and are going to do; their speech and action are part of one and the same complex psychological function, directed toward the solution of the problem at hand.

1. The more complex the action demanded by the situation and the less direct its solution, the greater the importance played by speech in the operation as a whole.

-Initially speech follows action; ‘describing’ the movement that has already taken place. Eventually speech precedes action and guides, determines, and dominates the course of action that will be taken.

-The development of complex psychological behaviors does not happen in a linear one-dimensional fashion, rather children have been shown to solve problems using unique mixtures of processes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.19 “The fact is that maturation per se is a secondary factor in the development of the most complex, unique forms of human behavior. The development of these behaviors is characterized by complicated, qualitative transformations of one form of behavior into another…” ---transformation of quantity into quality.

p.21 “K. Buhler established the developmentally important principle that the beginnings of intelligent speech are preceded by technical thinking and technical thinking comprises the initial phase of cognitive development.”

p.24 “…the most significant moment in the course of intellectual development, which gives birth to the purely human forms of practical and abstract intelligence, occurs when speech and practical activity, two previously completely independent lines of development, converge.”

p.26 “…children solve practical tasks with the help of their speech, as well as their eyes and hands.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p.25, p.26

BLUE TAG: p.24, p.30

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch.2: The Development of Perception and Attention

-There are big differences between human and animal uses of perception, the primary one being the human’s ability to use symbolism and intentionally change their perception. Animals, on the other hand, can only perceive the tools and possible responses that are in their direct visual field; they are unable to think ‘outside the box’ so to speak.

-Visual perception is integral while speech is essentially analytical.

-It is attention that allows a child to change her perceptory fields and move back and forth between multiple fields.

-Young children, when talking themselves through a task, are verbally directing their attention.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.33 “A special feature of human perception—which arises at a very young age—is the perception of real objects…all human perception consists of categorized rather than isolated perceptions.

p.35 “The system of signs restructures the whole psychological process and enables the child to master her movement. It reconstructs the choice process on a totally new basis.”

p.37 “There is reason to believe that voluntary activity, more than highly developed intellect, distinguishes humans from the animals which stand closest to them.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch.3: Mastery of Memory and Thinking

p.38 *natural memory: the retention of actual experiences as the basis of mnemonic (memory) traces. Found in non-literate peoples.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Even in the early stages of historical development in humans, natural memory was facilitated with the use of symbolic markers (e.g. tying knots in ropes, notching wood, etc.).

-Every behavior is the result of a direct reaction from an organism when it meets a stimulus. The use of sign operations creates an additional, intermediate link between the SR relationship.

-The history of child behavior is born with the intervening of elementary processes, which are of biological origin, and psychological functions, which are of sociocultural origins.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.46 “This means that sign-using activity in children is neither simply invented nor passed down by adults; rather it arises from something that is originally not a sign operation and becomes one only after a series of qualitative transformations.”

p.50 “Memory in early childhood is one of the central psychological functions upon which all the other functions are built.”

p.51 “For the young child, to think means to recall; but for the adolescent, to recall means to think.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLUE TAG: p.39, p.46, p.51

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch.4: Internalization of Higher Psychological Function

p.55 *higher psychological function/higher behavior: the combination of tool and sign in psychological activity.

p.56 *internalization: the internal reconstruction of an external operation.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Man’s use of signs is a mediated action. It is through signs that a human’s desired action is fulfilled instead of direct interaction with the environment.

-The tool reacts on external environments, the sign is internally oriented.

-p.56 Development is not a circle, but rather a spiral, passing through the same point at each new revolution while advancing to a higher level.

-Internalization:

1. an operation that initially represents an external activity is reconstructed and begins to occur internally.

1. an interpersonal process is transformed into an intrapersonal one.

1. the transformation of an interpersonal process to an intrapersonal one is the result of a long series of developmental events.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch.5: Problems of Method

-Despite the many opposing interpretations in psychology, the stimulusresponse framework has remained the dominant form of scientific analysis.

-While the stimulusresponse framework may be appropriate for areas of psychology focusing on simple behaviors, it is not appropriate for studying higher function which is specifically human behavior.

-p.61-63 Three principles guide a new framework for studying higher psychological functions:

1. analyzing process, not objects. Requires a dynamic display of the main points making up the processes’ history.

1. explanation versus description. Genotypic analysis

1. the problem of “fossilized behavior.” Involuntary attention.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.59 “The adoption of a stimulus-response framework…brought psychology closer to the method and spirit of the natural sciences and prepared the way for the objective psychological approaches that followed.”

p.65 “To study something historically means to study it in the process of change…”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch.6: Interaction Between Learning and Development

p.85 *actual developmental level: the level of development of a child’s mental functions that has been established as a result of certain already completed developmental cycles. How well they can perform by themselves.

p.86 *potential development: the developmental stage one can reach when given some form of assistance. How well they perform with help.

p.86 *zone of proximal development: the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or n collaboration with more capable peers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-There are 3 major theoretical positions on the relation between development and learning in children:

1. the processes of development are independent of learning. Learning is an external process that does not actively involve development. -p.82 “It is assumed that mental capabilities function independently of the material with which they operate, and that development of one ability entails the development of others.”

1. Learning is development. Learning is merely developing a reflex. -p.83 “Improvement of one function of consciousness or one aspect of its activity can affect the development of another only to the extent that there are elements common to both functions or activities.

1. Development is based on two independent but related processes; maturation and learning. -p.83 “…the learning process can never be reduced simply to the formation of skills but embodies an intellectual order that makes it possible to transfer general principles discovered in solving one task to a variety of other tasks.

-There are some fundamental differences between how a child learns before school and how she is learning during school. It is more than just an introduction to systematic learning, it is matching learning structures to specific developmental stages in the child.

-Two developmental stages must be recognized:

1. actual developmental level
2. zone of proximal development

-Though two children may be the same age and have the same actual developmental level, they may have a different zone of proximal development in which case their education should be adjusted differently for each.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.86 “The zone of proximal development defines those functions that have not yet matured but are in the process of maturation, functions that will mature tomorrow but are currently in an embryonic state.”

p.87 “Thus, the zone of proximal development permits us to delineate the child’s immediate future and his dynamic developmental state, allowing not only for what already has been achieved developmentally but also for what is in the course of maturing.”

p.88 “Imitation and learning are thought of as purely mechanical processes. But recently psychologists have shown that a person can imitate only that which is within her developmental level.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p.79, p.81, p.83, p.86, p.89

BLUE TAG: p.83, p.90

YELLOW TAG: p.86, p.87

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch.7: The Role of Play in Development

p.93 *imagination: play without imagination

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-A very young child requires instant gratification of desires. As a child grows older she will have desired that are not immediately fulfilled and cannot be forgotten. To resolve the tension, and imaginary ‘world’ is created in which these desires can be realized. This is what we call play.

-Imaginary play operates based on rules of behavior, similarly, play based on rules still requires imagination to operate and create a ‘play space.’

-Before imaginary play comes into effect very yong children cannot separate their cognition from their visual field. If they are told to say “Suzy is standing up,” while Suzy was sitting in a chair, they will change the statement to “Suzy is sitting down.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.96 “The development from games with an overt imaginary situation and covert rules to games with overt rules and covert imaginary situation outlines the evolution of children’s play.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLUE TAG: p.93, p.99

YELLOW TAG: p.102

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch.8: The Prehistory of Written Language

-Educational pedagogy emphases the technical learning of writing. This does not teach students how to read and write the written language. To develop an appropriate method to teach this, the historical development of writing in children must by analyzed; how and when they started to write and the path it has taken up to their school days.

-In young children “written” language takes the form of gestures. Even when drawing, it is not the object itself they draw but the gestural quality of the object.

-In older children, play allows the child to create symbolic meanings for objects, but only so long as those objects still hold gestrual qualities. A stick or a chair could be a horse, but not a book.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.110 “…we see make-believe play as a major contributor to the development of written language—a system of second-order symbolism.”

p.115 “…the child must make a basic discovery—namely that one can draw not only things but also speech.”

How We Think

Dewey, John. How We Think. Prometheus Books. New York, New York, 1991.

note: This book was an incredible example of how information-thick books should be written. There are great margin notes alredy in the book, he italicized all important points and had headers for all the sections in the chapters. It was a dream to sort through.

Ch 1: What is Thought?

p.2-3 *reflective thought: a consecutive ordering of thought in such a way that each determines the next as its proper outcome. p.6 --active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and further conclusions to which it tends.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Thought is a term we use widely in the English language. We use it to describe:

1. Everything that goes through our heads.
2. We think of things that we do not directly interpret by other senses.
3. Beliefs that rest upon some sort of evidence or testimony.

-Difficulty or obstruction along the general everyday images and actions bring pause and reflection to the thought process.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLUE TAG: p.viii, p.2

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 2: The Need for Training Thought

-Thought gives humans the power of prediction, working for an ultimate endpoint, systematized foresight.

-Humans have a tendency to accept conclusions that are based on social constructs as opposed to factual information; superstition.

-Reasons for wrong beliefs:

1. dependence on others—reliance on authority.
2. self interest—believing things that further your own cause.
3. one has a limited view point to draw from—either doesn’t have all the info or has info that is very one-sided.

-Because of the tendency to make inferences, we must be careful in regulating what inferences are accepted as beliefs or possibilities.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.16 “The very essence of civilized culture is that we deliberately erect monuments and memorials, lest we forget; and deliberately institute, in advance of the happening of various contingencies and emergencies of life, devices for detecting their approach and registering their nature, for warding off what is unfavorable, or at least for protecting ourselves from its full impact and making more secure and extensive what is favorable.”

p.21 “The substitution of scientific for superstitious habits of inference has not been brought about by any improvement in the acuteness of the senses or in the natural workings of the function of suggestion. It is the result of regulation of the conditions under which observation and inference take place.”

p.25 “Education has accordingly not only to safeguard an individual against the besetting erroneous tendencies of his own mind—its rashness, presumption, and preference of what chimes with self-interest to objective evidence—but also to undermine and destroy the accumulated and self-perpetuating prejudices of long ages.”

p.26 “At present, the work of teaching must not only transform natural tendencies into trained habits of thought, but must also fortify the mind against irrational tendencies current in the social environment and help displace erroneous habits already produced.”

p.26 “The exercise of thought is, in the literal sense of that word, inference; by it one thing carries us over to the idea of, and belief in, another thing.”

p.27-28 “…it is its [educations] business to activate deep-seated and effective habits of discriminating tested beliefs from mere assertions, guesses, and opinions; to develop a lively, sincere, and open-minded preference for conclusions that are properly grounded and to ingrain into the individuals working habits methods of inquiry and reasoning appropriate to the various problems that present themselves.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p.25

BLUE TAG: p.26, p.28

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 3: Natural Resources in the Training of Thought

-The idea that we must teach children to think in schools is ridiculous. Children will think because it is their natural state. Schools must train their thinking abilities so they become honed and do not fall prey to unfounded beliefs.

-Important natural resources in/with which to train thinking:

1. facts and experiences from which suggestions proceed
2. promptness, flexibility, and fertility of suggestions
3. orderliness, consecutiveness, appropriateness in what is suggested
4. curiosity -physical manipulations of the world around you -social relations—asking questions -the desire to answer “problems” created by observation

-Everyone is naturally curious, but to develop that curiosity into a desire to learn is difficult. It is very easy, if the curiosity is not handled correctly, for interest to die down.

-What is considered a bright mind is one that can readily give suggestions (responses) to whatever is presented. Oftentimes, “dull minds” are not being presented material in such a way that sparks interest or jolts the student to respond.

-Its very important to keep in mind there are various elements in the function of suggestion; ease/promptness, extent/variety, and depth/persistence. When considering a student, it is important to call upon the use of all these elements from the student’s suggestions.

-Organization is another very important element in suggestion.

-Often, the social status of an adult dictates his course of action on an overall basis and therefore it is often these social forces that lead (or don’t lead) an adult into an educative situation and not the adults intent at all. Children have an advantage in that the social pressures on them are much less and they have a greater opportunity to openly choose those activities which can enhance their intellect.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.29 “Training, in short, must fall back upon the prior and independent existence of natural powers; it is concerned with their proper direction, not with creating them.”

p.33 “If germinating powers are not used and cultivated at the right moment, they tend to be transitory, to die out, or to wane in intensity.”

p.40 “It [concentration] means variety and change of ideas combined into a single steady trend moving toward a uniformed conclusion.”

p.41 “Intellectual organization originates and for a time grows as an accompaniment of the organization of the acts required to realize an end, not as the result of a direct appeal to thinking power.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p.29, p.33, p.35, p.42

BLUE TAG: p.33, p.40, p.44

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 4: School Conditions and the Training of Thought

p.52 *information: knowledge that is acquired and stored up.

p.52 *wisdom: knowledge operating in the direction of powers to the better living of life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-There are a set of activities that can help to ‘flex’ the thought muscle. These activities are not specific to any subject, but rather can be applied to all subjects.

-The environment of a student is very important in shaping their overall ability to learn and it is a teachers job to be aware of what conditions encourage efficient ‘flexing’ of thought.

-Three main conditioning influences of the school environment:

1. the mental attitudes and habits of the people around the student
2. the subject studied
3. current educational aims and ideals

-The attitudes and biases a teacher approaches a subject with is often picked up and can be imitated by students. Teachers who are excited and interested int eh subject make their students excited and interested about it.

-If a student comes to associate his interaction with a great teacher as his interaction with the subject, there is a danger of him answering questions for the teacher instead of for himself.

-There are three types of studies in schools:

1. those involved in the acquisition of skill in performance (reading, writing, music, etc.)
2. those concerned with acquiring knowledge (geography, history, etc.)
3. those less concerned with facts or skills and focus more on abstract reasoning (arithmetic, formal grammar, physics, etc.)

-One pitfall that often occurs is when teachers and students create a chasm between logical thought and real-life.

-It can be very easy for the acquisition of a skill to become a mechanical process that gets you the end result as quickly as possible. It is the acquisition of the skill itself that draws upon the intellect.

-One of the greatest dangers in teaching is following the idea that their chief responsibility is to get the right answer out of their students.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.46 “A subject—any subject—is intellectual in the degree in which with any given person it succeeds in effecting this growth.”

p.46 “…[training methods are] concerned with providing conditions so adapted to individual needs and powers as to make for the permanent improvement of observation, suggestion, and investigation.”

p.47 “Everything the teacher does, as well as the manner in which he does it, incites the child to respond in some way or other, and each response tends to set the child’s attitude in some way or other.”

p.51 “…teachers wonder why the pupil reads with so little expression, and figures with so little intelligent consideration of the terms of his problem.” -in reference to the use of skill and drill

p.52 “The aim [of schools] often seems to be…to make the pupil what has been called a ‘cyclopedia of useless information.’”

p.53 “…men of little book-learning are often able to put to effective use every ounce of knowledge they possess; while men of vast erudition are often swamped be the mere bulk of their learning, because memory, rather than thinking, has been operative in obtaining it.”

p.53 “The ideal of the product, as against that of the mental process by which the product is attained, shows itself in both instruction and moral discipline.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p.46, p.51

BLUE TAG: p.46, p.50

YELLOW TAG: p.46

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 5: The Means and end of Mental Training: the Psychological and the Logical

p.56 *logical: what is demonstrated to follow necessarily from premises that are definite in meaning and that are either self-evidently true, or that have been previously proved to be true.

p.57 *thoughtfulness: careful attention.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Logic is the path a person takes to reach a conclusion.

-There are two schools of thought to encourage the development of logic in schools:

1. natural—everyone is inborn with a natural tendency to find logic and interest, etc.
2. conformity—the mind does not naturally come to logical conclusions and must be coerced into such thought processes.

-The natural aspect of logic must be developed as well as the conformed aspect of logic that should be trained and honed.

-The point of education is to turn out a disciplined mind. Not in the negative sense as it is sometimes seen in culture, but in the sense that the thought-logic process works efficiently.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.62 “…the real problem of intellectual education is the transformation of natural powers into expert, tested powers: the transformation of more or less casual curiosity and sporadic suggestion into attitudes of alert, cautious and thorough inquiry.”

p.63 “Discipline represents original native endowment turned, through gradual exercise, into effective power.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLUE TAG: p.63, p.65

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 6: The Analysis of a Complete Act of Thought

-Reflective experiences:

1. practical deliberation
2. reflection upon an observation
3. reflection: involving experiment

-A reflective experience has five logically distinct steps:

1. a felt difficulty
2. its location and definition
3. suggestion of a possible solution
4. development by reasoning of the bearings of the suggestion
5. further observation and experiment leading to acceptance or rejection

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.72 “The problem is the discovery of intervening terms which when inserted between the remoter end and the given means will harmonize them with each other.”

p.74 “The essence of critical thinking is suspended judgment; and the essence of this suspense is inquiry to determine the nature of the problem before proceeding to attempts at its solution.”

p.78 “The trained mind is the one that best grasps the degree of observation, forming of ideas, reasoning, and experimental testing required in any special case, and that profits the most, in future thinking, by mistakes made in the past.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLUE TAG: p.72

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 7: Systematic Inference: Induction and Deduction

p.79 *induction: a movement that takes the given partial/confused data and creates a comprehensive suggestion of the data as one entire situation.

p.79 *deduction: a movement that takes the meaning of the suggested whole and reflects it back to the particular facts with additional facts to which the suggestion has directed attention.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-A complete act of thought involves both inductive and deductive movement.

-Inductive movement is not precise or direct. It is very dependent on the persons experience attitudes, special training, etc. as to what kind of suggestions they will formulate to connect the facts.

-The inductive movement process can be refined:

1. elimination by analysis of what is likely to be misleading and irrelevant.
2. emphasis of the important by collection and comparison of cases.
3. deliberate construction of data by experimental variation.

-In education, induction is often taught by having students amass great quantities of separated, seemingly unrelated facts.

-There are also cases in education when deduction is isolated. This usually occurs when there is a failure to test the results of the general reasoning process.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.95 “Deduction requires a system of allied ideas which may be translated into one another by regular or graded steps.”

p.95 “Definition, general formulae, and classification are the devices by which the fixation and elaboration of a meaning into its detailed ramifications are carried on. They are not ends in themselves…but instrumentalities for facilitating the development of a conception into the form where its applicability to given facts may best be tested.”

p.97 “the inductive inference, the guess, is formed by the student; if it happens to be correct, it is at once accepted by the teacher; or if it is false, it is rejected.”

p.99 “No one understands a general principle fully—no matter how adequately he can demonstrate it, to say nothing of repeating it—till he can employ it in the mastery of new situations, which, if they are new, differ in manifestation from the cases used in reaching the generalization.”

p.100 “…the entire scientific history of humanity demonstrates that the conditions for complete mental activity will not be obtained till adequate provision is made for the carrying on of activities that actually modify physical conditions, and that books, pictures and even objects that are passively observed but not manipulated do not furnish the provision required.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p.97, p.99

BLUE TAG: p.97, p.99

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 8: Judgment: The Interpretation of Facts

p.101 *judgment: consists of 3 features:

1. 1. a controversy consisting of two claims regarding the same objective situation.
   2. a process of defining and elaborating these claims and of sifting the facts adduced to support them.
   3. a final decision, or sentence, closing the particular matter in dispute and also serving as a rule or principle for deciding future cases.

p.114 *analytic education methods: begin with the entirety and work down until reaching the student’s immediate experience.

p.114 *synthetic educational methods: beginning with partial and limited portions that the student has direct experience with and piece on more and more until it creates a whole picture.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Many educational methods are broken down to be purely analytical or exclusively synthetic. To create proper judgment , the two must go hand in hand. “Analysis leads to synthesis; while synthesis perfects analysis.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.106-107 “If one is not able to estimate wisely what is relevant to the interpretation of a given perplexing or doubtful issue, it avails little that arduous learning has built up a large stock of concepts. For learning is not wisdom; information does not guarantee good judgment.”

p.113 “It is, however, a common assumption that unless the pupil from the outset consciously recognizes and explicitly states the method logically implied in the result he is to reach, he will have no method, and his mind will work confusedly or anarchically.”

p.113 “As a matter of fact, the development of an unconscious logical attitude and habit must come first.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 9: Meaning: or Conceptions and Understanding

-In thinking there is a level of known meaning and a level of unknown. It is through inferences based on our current understanding that allows us to draw conclusions about the unknown.

-Acquiring meaning is a process of acquiring definiteness, distinction and consistency of that meaning. As a child this is often gauged through physical reactions the objects make in response to a child’s actions. It is much easier than for a child to understand the elasticity of a rubber band than color, which has no appreciative physical distinction.

-A practical meaning/definition relies on practical traits that are formed from personal interaction. A scientific meaning/definition relies on the ways in which things are causally related to each other, a classification.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.117 “All knowledge, all science, thus aims to grasp the meaning of objects and events, and this process always consists in taking them out of their apparent brute isolation as events, and finding them to be parts of some larger whole suggested by them, which, in turn, accounts for, explains, interprets them; i.e. renders them significant.”

p.118 “Something already understood in one situation has been transferred and applied to what is strange and perplexing in another, and thereby the latter has become plain and familiar, i.e. understood. This summary illustration discloses that our power to think effectively depends upon possession of a capitol fund of meanings which may be applied when desired.”

p.123 “Perspective does not exist, for the child’s interest is not in pictorial representation, but in the things represented; and while perspective is essential to the former, it is no part of the characteristic uses and values of the things themselves.”

p.128 “A concept is not a bare residue but an active attitude.”

p.134 “…our conceptions attain a maximum of definite individuality and of generality (or applicability) in the degree to which they show how things depend upon one another or influence one another, instead of expressing the qualities that objects possess statically.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p.118, p.128

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 10: Concrete and Abstract Thinking

p.137 *concrete thinking: deals with things found in practical life, constant feature of the environment of which we have to take account in order to live.

p.137 *abstract thinking: deals with the theoretical and that which is not intimately associated with practical concerns.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-A goal for schools is to proceed from the concrete to the abstract. Lower levels will deal with physical interactions while higher levels lean towards an applied learning.

-A mistake that is often made when trying to make a school subject ‘concrete’ is the use of physical objects (e.g. counting blocks). The subject is still trying to impart abstract thought through applied meanings on physical objects.

-The goal of schools is to create abstract thinkers; those who take an interest in intellectual matters for their own sake.

-Education should encourage a balance of both concrete and abstract thought as both are essential to achieve a higher order of thinking, neither being more important than the other.

-Educators must also recognize the particular strengths (either concrete or abstract) of each pupil and help to support those dispositions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.136 “The difference as noted is purely relative to the intellectual process of an individual; what is abstract at one period of growth is concrete at another…”

p.138 “When thinking is used as a means to some end good, or value beyond itself, it is concrete; when it is employed simply as a means to more thinking, it is abstract.”

p.140 “The conception that we have only to put before the senses particular physical objects in order to impress certain ideas upon the mind amounts almost to a superstition.”

p.141 “The educative activities of childhood should be so arranged that direct interest in the activity and the outcome create a demand for attention to matters that have a more and more indirect and remote connection with the original activity.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 11: Empirical and Scientific Thinking

p.145 *empirical thinking: based upon past habits, associations created via observation.

p.150 *scientific method: breaking up the coarse or gross facts of observation into a number of minuter processes not directly accessible to perception.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Though empirical conclusions can be very helpful in practical life, they are also responsible for a multitude of false beliefs.

-Empirical thought fails when faced with novel situations.

-Empirical observations usually focus on physical forces ‘big’ enough to cause a reaction. Often it is those less observable factors that are the more important and reliable instructors of an event.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.156 “…experience may be interpreted either with reference to the empirical or the experimental attitude of mind.”

p.156 “Education takes the individual while he is relatively plastic, before he has become so indurated by isolated experiences as to be rendered hopelessly empirical in his habit of mind.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 12: Activity and the Training of Thought

p.163 *work (as a mental attitude): interest in the adequate embodiment of a meaning in objective form through the use of appropriate materials and appliances.

p.164 *play activity: the interest in the activity for its own sake.

p.164 *work activity: the activity concludes in a product or result.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-The development of physical control in babies is an intellectual process, not an instinctive one. It involves a refining of motor control based on trial and error.

-The difference between playfulness and work is a gradation of symbolism and creating meaning for its own sake versus to some purpose. Most educators don’t recognize the importance of having the two modes interplaying.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.162 “The rhythm, the competition, and cooperation involved in most plays and games also introduce organization…play is the chief, almost the only, mode of education for the child in years of later infancy.”

p.166 “The healthy imagination deals not with the unreal, but with the mental realization of what is suggested. Its exercise is not a flight into the purely fanciful and ideal, but a method of expanding and filling in what is real.”

p.167 “Not the thing done but the quality of mind that goes into the doing settles what is utilitarian and what is unconstrained and educative.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p.161, p.165, p.168

BLUE TAG: p.163

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 13: Language and the Training of Thought

p.180 *passive vocabulary: those words that are understood when heard or seen.

p.180 *active vocabulary: words that are used intelligently—with their full meaning.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Three views regarding the relation of thought and language:

1. they are identical
2. words are the garb of thought—not necessary for having thought, but for conveying it.
3. Language is not thought, but is necessary for thinking and communication.

-Language is primarily used as a practical device—to influence things. As a secondary use, it is a social tool. Thirdly, language is used for intellectual purposes; “conveying precise notions of things and to express in general propositions certain and undoubted truths.”

-p.180 A successful method of helping students to access this third aspect of language is:

1. enlarging the pupils vocabulary
2. rendering its terms more precise and accurate
3. formation of habits of consecutive discourse

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.176 “Words can detach and preserve a meaning only when the meaning has been first involved in our own direct intercourse with things. To attempt to give a meaning through a word alone without any dealings with a thing is to deprive the word of intelligible signification…”

p.178 “…verbal memorizing is substituted for inquiry into the meaning of things.”

p.181 “Paucity of vocabulary on the part of those with whom the child associated, triviality and meagerness in the child’s reading matter (as frequently even in his school readers and textbooks), tend to shut down the area of mental vision.”

p.185 “If the idea is not grasped, nothing is gained by using a more familiar word; if the idea is perceived the use of the term that exactly names it may assist in fixing the idea.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p.180, p.186

BLUE TAG: p.176, p.185

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 14: Observation and Information in the Training of Mind

p.188 *thinking: the ordering of subject matter with reference to discovering what it signifies or indicates.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-The way in which a subject matter is presented will effect how it is organized in the mind.

-How meaningful thoughts form:

1. observation—the raw material
2. memory—putting away facts about the observation
3. imagination—the creation of meaning from the remembered facts of the observation.
4. thought—the ability to take this meaning and apply it to real-life situations.

-Oftentimes when observational methods are used in schools, they’re used without a sense of a problem to solve/question to answer, therefore it does not engage imagination or thought.

-Despite the inclusion of direct observation in schools the vast majority of information is derived from lectures, textbooks and essentially learning via transmission of what other people “say.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.188 “If the subject-matter is provided in too scanty or too profuse fashion, if it comes in disordered array or in isolated scraps, the effect upon habits of thought is detrimental.”

p.193 “Alertness of observation is at its height whenever there is “plot interest.””

p.198 “For teacher or book to cram pupils with fact which, with little more trouble, they could discover by direct inquiry is to violate their intellectual integrity by cultivating mental servility.”

p.200 “Pupils are taught to live in two separate worlds, one the world of out-of-school experience, the other the world of books and lessons.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RED TAG: p.194

BLUE TAG: p.193, p.199

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ch. 15: The Recitation and the Training of Thought

-p.202 The formal steps of instruction:

1. preparation
2. presentation
3. comparison
4. generalization
5. application of generalizations to specific and new instances

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.201 “…recitation, the complete domination of instruction by rehearsing of secondhand information, by memorizing for the sake of producing correct replies at the proper time.”

Let the Games Begin

Shreve, Jenn. “Let the Games Begin.” Edutopia. P 29-31. . April/May.

p.29 “…school districts, eager to be perceived as plugged in and afraid of being penalized for low test scores, have bought into expensive skill-and-drill software…with only minimal improvements on test scores and scant evidence for long-term progress among students.”

-Kurt Squire used the game Civilization III to get his students excited about learning Western Civ and to give them a deeper understanding of the material.

-One strategy for incorporating gaming and learning in the class room is to have students create teaching games themselves.

-Another exciting element of using history games in the classroom is the students ability to experience through a character, the reality of a situation. They become scientists or Europeans via simulation.

p.30 “African American students, for example, inspired by the possibility of over-throwing colonial oppressors, attempted to rewrite the history books through smart game play.”

-One of the biggest problems is writing popular games that can still be adjusted for a school curriculum.

-The strategies of creating popular games are to design something engaging to the player, it should be possible to take these same strategies when designing educational games.

Engaging by Design

Dickey, Michele D., Sid Meier. “Engaging By Design: How Engagement Strategies in Popular Computer and Video Games Can Inform Instructional Design.” Educational Technology Research and Development. 53, no2, 67-83, 2005.

-The strategies of creating popular games are to design something engaging to the player, it should be possible to take these same strategies when designing educational games.

p.1-2 -Many studies indicate that “…many of the strategies, tactics, and methods employed in popular gaming environments may also provide compelling strategies for the design of educational media and interactive learning environments.”

p.2 “…games support intrinsic motivations as well as opportunities for imitation and learning by providing feedback, fantasy and challenges.”

p.2 “…electronic games require active engagement in environments, which supports discovery, observation, trial and error, and problem solving.”

p.2 “…studies reveal commonalities of game design that include clear goals and tasks, reinforcing feedback, and increasing challenge.”

p.3 –Elements of engaged learning include:

1. Focused goals
2. Challenge tasks
3. Clear and compelling standards
4. Protection from adverse consequences for initial failures.
5. Affirmation of performance
6. Affiliation with others
7. Novelty and variety
8. Choice
9. Authenticity

p.4 “It is the interactions with other learners and the materials that allow students to analyze, synthesize, evaluate, and employ critical thinking skills as they make decisions and determine the course of their actions.”

p.5 “As media continue to evolve, it is important that designers look not only at how new forms can be appropriated for learning, but also at the underlying value promoted by the design.”

p.5 “The parallel between game design and learner positioning within differing theoretical perspectives of learning reveals that the values perpetuated in the design of contemporary gameplay may be a better match for the design of constructivist learning environments than for design from a behaviorist perspective.”

-One device used to engage players is the use of narrative. Some argue that it creates a deep and rich gaming experience; others argue that while narrative applies to books and films, the nature of the gaming media is limited by narrative, and inevitably linear, play experience.

-There are two ways to create a less linear gaming experience:

1. branching narratives with different endings, depending on the choices of the player
2. A linear narrative whose elements can be played in a variety of orders depending on the players choice.

-There are two main ways to include narrative into a game:

1. backstory given by introduction of game, manual, specific conversations with other characters, etc.
2. cut scenes—the interactive element of the game ceases as predetermined actions take place via movie clips, journal entries, character conversations, etc. that further the arch and conclusion of narrative in the game.

p.7 “The benefit of integrating narrative in instructional design is that it provides opportunities for reflection, evaluation, illustration, exemplification, and inquiry.”

p.7 “Games provide narrative spaces.”

p.7 “…the use of such devices as placing and arranging items in the environment allows players to come to their own conclusions in cause-and-effect vignettes.”

p.9 *hooks: anything that requires the player to make a decision that relates to the game and thus keeps them playing.

p.10 “Hooks make for engaging gameplay; however they may also provide instructional designers with methods for crating engaging learning environments.”

p.10 “Typically the purpose of educational simulations in which learners explore cause and effect relationships, to complex symbolic simulations in which learners observe and explore interacting processes.”

p.10 “Whereas gameplay is primarily for entertainment, the design of sophisticated gaming environments requires players to implement higher order thinking skills in order to navigate and interact. This may prove to be of the greatest value for instructional designers because these are the very skills that educators and instructional designers attempt to foster in learning environments.”

p.11 Engaged learning:

1. 1. focused goals
   2. challenging tasks
   3. clear and compelling standards
   4. protection from adverse consequences for initial failures
   5. affirmation of performance
   6. affiliation with others
   7. novelty and variety
   8. choice

Game Design elements:

1. 1. focused goals
   2. narrative
   3. character roles
   4. interaction with NPC players
   5. perspective
   6. challenging tasks
   7. setting
   8. action hooks (choice)
   9. resource hooks (choice)
   10. tactical and strategic
   11. time hooks
   12. clear and compelling standards
   13. protection from adverse consequences and initial failures
   14. role-playing
   15. affirmation of performance
   16. novelty and variety

Suggested Research:

Rieber, L. P. (1996). Seriously considering play: Designing interactive learning environments based on the blending of microworlds, simulations, and games. Educational Technology Research and Development, 44(2), 43-58

Prenksy, M. (2001). Digital game-based learning. New York: McGraw^?-Hill.

Provenzo, E.F. (1991). Video kids: Making sense of Nintendo. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press.

Bowman, R. F. (1982). A “Pac-Man” theory of motivation : Tactile implications of classroom instruction. Educational Technology, 22(9), 14-17.

Malone, T. W. (1981a). Toward a theory of intrinsically motivating instruction. Cognitive Science, 4, (333-369).

Malone, T. W. (1981b). What makes computer games fun? BYTE.

Jones, B., Valdex, G., Norakowski, J., & Rasmussen, C. (1994). Designing learning and technology for educational reform. North Central Regional Educational laboratory. [online]. Available: http://www.ncrtec.org/capacity/profile/profwww.htm

Schlechty, P. C. (1990). Schools for the 21st century: Leadership imperatives for educational reform. San Francisco, CA : Jossey-Bass

Bricken, M., & Byrne, C. M. (1994). Summer students in virtual reality: A pilot study on educational applications of virtual reality technology. In A. Wexelblat (Ed.), Virtual reality: Applications and explorations (pp. 199-218). Boston, MA: Academic.

Conle, C. (2003). An anatomy of narrative curricula. Educational Researcher, 32(3), 3-15.

Jenkins, H. (2002). Game design as narrative architecture. [Online] Available: http://web.nit.edu/21fms/www/faculty/henry3/games&narrative.html#1

Hall, K. (1998). TIENET: Technology in Education Network. [Online] Available: http://www.hurcules.coe.ohio-state.edu

Howland, G. (2002). Balancing gameplay hooks. In F. D. Laramee (Ed.) Game design perspectives. Hingham, MA: Charles River Media. (pp. 78-84).

Rollings, A., & Adams, E. (2003). Game design. (Pre-publication galley proof). Indianapolis, IN: New Riders.

Playing Computer Games Vs. Better Learning

p.4 – Eminovitch and Miller (1988) “examined how minority students’ learning styles could be matched with computer instruction, and its effects on their achievement, reflectivity, and self-esteem.”

-Minorities, when taught technology at appropriate developmental levels have no problem learning the technology. There are no gender differences in technological ability, though boys seek out computers more than girls. Younger children have a disadvantage in that their manual skills are not as developed.

p.5 “…Min(1996) explored the impact of interactive multimedia use on young children’s behavior. The findings revealed that multimedia technology with its use of video, audio and graphics could engage children for a longer period of time.”

p.5-6 –Clemets and Gallo (1984) “…results indicated that the computer programming group scored significantly higher on measures of reflectivity, two measures of divergent thinking, and meta cognitive ability…no difference on measure of cognitive development.”

p.6 – Haugland (1992) “…children exposed to developmental software had significant gains in intelligence, structural knowledge, non-verbal skills, complex manual dexterity, and long-term memory.”

Suggested Further Research Allen, J., Watson, J. A., &Howard, J.R. (1993). The impact of cognitive styles on the problem solving strategies used by preschool minority children in logo microworlds. Journal of Computing in Childhood Education, 4 (3), 203-217.

Clements, D. H., & Gallo, D. F. (1984). Effects of computer programming on young children’s cognition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 76 (6), 1051-1058.

Emihovich, C., & Miller, G. E. (1988). Effects of logo and CAI on black first graders’ achievement, reflectivity, and self-esteem. The Elementary School Journal, 88 (5), 473-485.

Haugland, S. W. (1992). The effect of computer software on preschool children’s developmental gains. Journal of Computing in Childhood Education, 3, 15-30.

Min, L. (1996). An exploratory study of how pre-kindergarted children use the interactive multimedia technology: Implications for multimedia software design. Journal of Computing in Childhood Education, 7 (1-2), 71-92.