Principles 1, 19 and ch. 4- Lee Adams

1. Active Learning Principle- The learning environment fcilitates active and critical, not passive, learning

19. Intertextual Principle- The learner understands a text based on the family of texts that it is associated with. The text is only understood in this context because of the embodied experience the learner has with other texts and is able to interpret based off of other previous experiences.

Chapter 4- Situated Meaning and Learning

Gee discusses Deus Ex in this chapter and refers to it regularly

He introduces the concept of embodied experience (meaning the body, mind, and outside experience)

Stories are different in video games. They are a mix of four factors:
1.the designer's choices
2. the players choices tat affect the order in which the storyline takes place
3. the main character's choices within the game
4. imagination projected onto the characters, plot, the world of the story

Situated meaning in the context of the chapter
- the numbers you find in the game are general (decontextualized) and gain a situated meaning once you find out that they are the key code to a safe.

Critics say that it works in video games, but what about real life, like education?
- discussion of concept of democracy: people can use terms in various ways and until the reader is able to situate the meaning, a word is nothing but letters.
-Students are taught general information
-educators say that not every principle needs to be contextualized because not all the information will be pertinent for every student, but Gee retorts that in order for any leatning to take place, it must be embodied in at least some way, if not in the context of a future profession.

Situational Meaning and Embodied experience in real life-
Galileo's principle of motion was taught generally and then with a computer program in which the students were able to modify aspects of the program and thereby give meaning to the principle.

Gee talks about the way video games make us situate meaning
-Probe
-Hypothesis
-Reprobe
-Rethink

Written Text
Teachers were given game manuals and couldn't understand them.
They did not play the game and until they did, they would not be able to situate the meaning.