Engagement Through Gaming: Teamwork

One thing that has really been fascinating for me to watch as I work with my wonderful group of sophomores is the social dynamic of gaming. I’ve done plenty of social gaming, but I’ve never been a fifteen-year-old boy, so this is new territory for me. And I’d always suspected that the competitive camaraderie of gaming would actually raise the bar for everyone in the group, but I worried that this environment might also be a breeding ground for things like misogyny and homophobia.

Imagine my delight when I discovered the missing variable: me.

Engagement Through Gaming: Theory into Practice

Yikes. I started this series kind of a while ago and never got past the first post, huh?

Well, I do have a reasonable excuse: I’m two weeks into my six-week gaming elective for sophomores.

Overall, I have to say I’m really pleased so far. Much of the formal instruction I’ve received on classroom teaching has focused more or less on triage–classroom management, formal requirements, and generally What To Do About Troublemakers. Not surprisingly, then, I went into the class–me all by my lonesome with eight sophomore boys–a little bit geared up to deal with, well, troublemakers.

Instead, I’ve found the guys are all friendly and generally polite. They do what I ask them to do, help each other out, and seem to be having a good time. They’re pretty much the perfect first class for me to figure out what works and what doesn’t when it comes to teaching about gaming.

Engagement Through Gaming: Part One

I just had an interesting conversation with the headmaster at my school about ways that we might use games to engage kids who just aren’t reaching their academic potential. Games certainly aren’t unique in these situations–plenty of teens who excel in an extracurricular area (from more socially acceptable ones like team sports to more marginalized activities like skating or hacking) have trouble excelling at school.

From that conversation, I’ve decided to start a new series on engagement through gaming. This is part one: the philosophical basis.

So how do we turn a highly accomplished gamer into a highly accomplished student?

Games We Play: NES

I know it’s been a while since I’ve updated this particular strand of posts, and for that I apologize. (I can tell you were deeply, deeply upset.) Mostly I’ve been too busy playing PlayStation and, like, reading books. Also my job.

But I love the old skool Nintendo. I still have ours, currently plugged in next to my PS2. My list for this system will include a few games I don’t currently own, because even though I bought them the roommate I was living with took them with her when we moved out at the end of the summer. Awkward.

Games We Play: Nintendo Gameboy

We actually went through at least two first-generation Gameboys due to excessive wear from playing constantly. My brother and I had to grudgingly take turns, though, because we only ever had one at a time. I think we may have even convinced my mom to try Tetris at some point. (My mother is an exceptionally good sport.) I can’t really remember if we got the gameboy or the Nintendo first, but for some reason I think it was the Gameboy.

Games We Play: Atari

I’d like to start out this post by saying that I’ve always been a gamer. I really don’t know how to feel about the recent ZOMG! Girl Gamers! craze. Have girls and women always been gamers? Yes. Yes, they have. We’ve been playing in arcades, on consoles and at our computers since we were very small. Female gaming is absolutely nothing new. Have we been playing different games, or playing games differently, from the games and ways our male counterparts play? Well, maybe.

I don’t know that the new emphasis on female gamers is really helping anybody out. Yes, it would be awesome if game designers made more games targeted at girls and women that weren’t totally condescending and stupid. It would also be great if we could play some of the “male” games we so adore without all the female characters being either wussy or ridiculous sex objects (or both). I’d also love to see more women advancing in the realm of game design and competitive gaming, if that’s what they want to do.

Anyway, I’ve decided to take a little trip through my personal history of gaming, roughly in chronological order. (I say roughly because I’ve actually divided by platform, which isn’t necessarily accurate since there was some overlap. Some of these games also had a bit of renaissance in my college and post-college years, so while I may have gotten the games when I was ten, I may have played them last month.)

First stop: Atari.