Video Game Teacher

Break through. I have been searching for Virtual Reality in Education articles for three weeks now. Not as many articles to choose from as I expected but enough to complete the newsletter assignment. However the articles were about things which were not what I wanted to write about. I was expecting immersive learning environments that would stimulate students to new learning plateaus. I discovered practice programs for surgical technique, automotive diagnostics and sight simulations for the blind. I wanted computer generated environments in which students would learn through manipulating the environments and advance through problem solving and reasoning. Instead I was finding bulk material on studying human behavior through subjecting people to computer programs that measured their response to stimuli.
My interest in immersive environments had been peaked while I was in law school and I sat down to watch my roommates play Grand Theft Auto III. The game was incredibly violent but I was fascinated by the city itself. It seemed real. It was manipulable. They played scenarios over and over to get them just right. One of these guys was a high school drop out but here he was hour after hour learning theoretical techniques through direct applications. At the time struggling with my law Studies I wondered why a game couldn't be found to train kids to think in certain ways through the use of video game-like immersive environments. Certainly would have made Law School more fun. It seemed to me that the learning structure (basically that of an ornate maze) was not unlike trying to learn precedent cases and analogizing or distinguishing them from legislative law. Now four years later I figure someone must be doing that. Slow me took three weeks to figure out that wasn't virtual reality but video games. When I searched for video games in education the EBSCO almost exploded. There it was, what I had been trying to find in the wrong place. I am still trying to narrow my list to the prerequisite ten but that is soon to bee accomplished the important thing is the info I wanted is there and I will find it,

Here Comes a Newsletter

I have begun in earnest my journal review research leading to the newsletter due in a couple of weeks. I found plenty of articles using Ovid but didn't have time to get it down to ten articles alone. It won't be easy, but by restricting the time range and being specific I keep getting closer. I may have put myself in the position of having too specific an idea of what I want to find rather than allowing the research to lead me. Begin broad and narrow, just as in developing a fictional character. They begin with infinite potential, as attribites are ascribed them they come into more clear focus and their ranges of possibility become limited in a natural fashion.

Perception is Reality

In class we have formed groups to work towards the final big project. It is a monster but no less so than assignments we are working already. Leave this stuff alone for a couple of days and when I come back to it I have to reteach myself everything I thought I knew.
One of my biggest problems in class is that somethng vital will be demonstrated once, in a step by step demonstration. I"ll understand and follow along nicely. Then when we go hands on I may or may not be able to execute the directions I just witnessed. However, I can almost assure you that the next time I sit down to complete an assignment using the technique demonstrated it will seem as if I am a newborn at the controls of the space shuttle trying to bring it in for an emergency landing. There I am curled jelly boned fingers flipping switches,twisting knobs but when I look out the window I see only the deepest recesses of the eternal universe. Where are the step by step directions I used to make my Novell Apollo rocket model? Boy, I really need them.
Back to the group. Jon and Ivan-- last night we discovered the art of Frida Kahlo and agreed to give our project an hispanic angle. My anglo take on it was my familiarity with Pablo Neruda and I the fact that I have seen the Julie Traymor film "Frida". The guys have deeper and more tangible connections to the concept but it should be cool.