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Reviews by Pancho @ "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy" By James Paul Gee. Chapter 7

🎮What Video Games Have to 🎲Teach Us About Learning and Literacy📙


In chapter 7, James Paul Gee discusses how online interactions through video games can help create a learning network for video game players. When video game players are able to communicate with each other worldwide, it causes people to learn new things or solve the trivia of a game as a group. The unified network of gamers can allow those who participate to submit their own ideas on the game. Certain abilities and cheat codes to the game can also be developed as people play within the network. One game that Gee uses to prove this principle is World of Warcraft, an online MMO and RPG game.


The game has a huge audience with people from all around the world logging in to play daily. The author was able to experience on hand just how far playing within a network can help gamers progress through these types of games. He states “But video game players can be part of a powerful network if they so desire and know-how. Their own ineptness need not stop them.



There is the knowledge they can use, if they know how to leverage it, stored in the other people and stored in various tools and technologies.”(Pg 200) After forming a bond with the other Half-Life players, Gee had learned some tips and cheat codes to help him in the game. Further in the paragraph, he writes “I got on the internet, looked up several game sites, and found a cheat code that allowed me to input commands to the game that made me invisible to the flying aliens. This allowed me to jump without being distracted by their firing at me. When I got back onto the cavern's floor, I turned off the cheat code and continued the battle.”(Pg 200) A social mind can always be developed when you are put in front of obstacles with other people. Ideas and contributions help create a learning network within a gaming network. Another online game that relates to the social mind principle is Minecraft.



This is a sandbox game where you can build, design, and establish new environments using blocks and tools. People within this gaming network might contribute tips on what material to build a house with or how to survive at night with crawlers.


Something else that a gamer of Minecraft could learn is where to find the rare objects in the game, for example, diamonds. Learning how to work around a game with other players is a great way of establishing social learning.

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