2013 November

Don’t worry – this isn’t another course – it’s a book 🙂

Was given this to read by a beautiful teacher and I am so glad she did as it’s bring the practicalities of inquiry learning/facilitating into focus for me. Here are a few points of interest and things I just don’t want to forget…

Guided Inquiry is a way of thinking, learning, and teaching that changes the culture of the school into a collaborative inquiry community. (It) develops academic competency, career readiness, and life skills… Learning content in isolation is an inefficient, outdated practice. (As) student cannot possibly learn all of the content that is known, learning how to learn and understanding one’s own learning process are more important than ever before.

Guided Inquiry Design Process

1. Open: invitation to inquiry, open minds, stimulate curiosity

2. Immerse: build background knowledge, connect to content, discover interesting ideas

3. Explore: explore interesting ideas, look around, dip in

4. Identify: pause and ponder, identify inquiry question, decide direction

5. Gather: gather important information, go broad, go deep

6. Create: reflect on learning, to beyond facts to make meaning, create to communicate

7. Share: learn from each other, share learning, tell your story

8. Evaluate: evaluate achievement of learning goals, reflect on content and process

Classroom time is not call lessons – which infers a teacher-led classroom – they are called sessions. The book contains a session plan – consisting of starter, work time, reflection and notes (pretty simple but clearly marked with a copyright symbol so I can’t share 🙁

Five Kinds of Learning

We have talked about symbols, language and norms

4. Values
Can be considered the most important. Values are what is important and worthwhile. They are the points of reference that guide our behaviour, direct our goals and define our judgements.
As a matter of comparison what are America’s values
– freedom/liberty/democracy
– individualism (self fulfilment)
– success
– justice
– equality
– honesty (Korean culture does not value honesty Confucius taught submission)
– patriotism
– prestige
– Wealth/money
– Power
– Family (highest divorce rate in world)
– Hard work
– Do I yourself
– Science/tech to solve prob
– Do to others what you would have unto you
– Charity
Korean Values
– respect elders, parents and ancestor worship kajonk
– family
– hard work
– education (83% of graduates go to uni)
– collectivism Confucius
– nationalism
– hierarchy (Confucius says inequality is natural)
– success
– wealth (almost equated to worth)
– prestige
– etiquette/politeness (defining characteristic)
– health/long life ( eat snake, drink goat/deer blood) Confucius
– save face
– social harmony
– social conformity
– loyalty
– personal relationships (Confucianism)
Values have roots in Confucianism. The most important values that we hold dear come from Confucianism. Other influence is shamanism (health long life success and wealth). Shamanisn has no concept of life after death. Good is a shamanistic ritual that brings good fortune to the participants. Buddhism never told people to pray for anything. Desire only causes pain so why pray for stuff? These values are based on shamanism – this worldly wisdom. A small minority of Korean monks still act as fortune tellers – based on historical link to shamanism. Lanterns of Buddhist temple roof – name of person who bought lantern with a wish. Names determine people’s fortune – bad and good names – based on date and time of birth this defines a name.
Koreans are shy speaking to foreigners because they are afraid of not speaking at the highest standard. There is a great emphasis in Korea to speak English.

I have enjoyed this course so far but it hasn’t really fulfilled my expectations. I assumed (and we know what they say about assuming…) that it would be more education focused and directed towards game creators and teachers. Then I started watching the lectures for Week 5 and… Yay! Gaming and Literacy! Here are my lecture notes for the first video.

Constellation of Literacy Practices
To get beyond a beginner levels you have to work with other in the game and use many literacy skills.

Sorry about the quality of the diagram – its a screenshot from the lecture.

In-Game Talk

Despite the abbreviations the communication depicted below actually contains a lot of the information. abbreviations are an important part of the discourse of the game. This interaction has three clauses: request, statement of fact, and an account.

The lecturer explains how, by using the abbreviation “POMS”, this player is showing that he was a beta player as this term was only utilised during the beta stage. This maters as the longer the you play this game the more experience you have and the higher your prestige in the community. Displaying shared values, participating in shared activities and displaying identity.

Orally Delivered Narratives: similar to folklore

In-Game Letters: using genre language (i.e. medieval in War of Warcraft)

Other external test also play a critical role in a gaming community.

Official Fandom (usually sponsored by the company behind the game)
– official discussion boards
– official fan fiction

Unofficial Fandom (created by the community and usually valued more than the official content)
– discussion boards
– fan fiction
– collective databases
– Clansites
– annotated discussion boards
– game character emails
– personal game blogs

How fan fiction communities support budding authors. 

The lecturer recounts a situation where she came in contact with a player in Lineage during her research. This teenage boy was a very popular fan fiction writer who had even be endorsed by the game’s company as an official writer. Before the stories were published for the general public, this writer would distribute his story to the guild leaders as a special preview. In his story he states that he dedicates the work to Kushie and says in the email that accompanied it that he only wrote the story to hit on a girl. This shows that the games culture actually supports and values teenage boys writing stories! This is in stark contrast to your average school classroom. This writing, unlike the in-game talk, fulfils all the curriculum requirements of ‘proper’ writing.

This is an interaction between the lecturer and a 13 year old boy at the beginning of summer vacation.   Note that he is planning a 2 – 3 month writing project over the summer.

Games are not replacing reading and writing for young people they are infact bringing these skills back (interesting contrast with TV).

What kinds of resources are gamers interacting with? (quality and quantity)

Fan Fiction only comprises of only 7% of what gamers read.

Information Resources 46%
Game User created resources of text, symbols and images. Texts in the form of expository, procedural, transactional and persuasive texts. Average reading level of 50 sample pages is 12th grade. 4% academic vocabulary.

Text quality is high.

Game Reading vs. School Reading
In the last clip the lecturer talks about the study she conducted. She took gamers, usually boys, who are reading at or below their grade level in school yet reading at 12th grade level in games. Why are these boys reading at such different levels in these two contexts. She tested for strategies and they were the same. She then tested for interest – finding texts that fulfilled a need they currently where experiencing in their gaming. This is where she saw their self correction rate double… they were more determined and motivated to decipher meaning when it was in their interest.

She ends the lecture saying that she entered her studies thinking of games as a means for accomplishing her educational goals but has shifted to thinking of education as means for accomplishing their goals.

Language continued…
Korean language is one of the 11 most spoken languages in the world. More people speak Korean than French as their first language.

Hangul – Korean alphabet – most simple and yet most sophisticated writing systems in the world. Indonesian community that had no system of writing adopted Hangul as their system.

3. Norms
They are expectation -tell you what to and what not to do. Rules guides and terms conduct.

Korean Norms
– use honorific
– take off shoes when enter a house
– child not pick up spoon before elder
– block air flow so don’t stand in doorways
– subordinates bow first and lower than superior
– subordinate shakes hands with two hands but does not offer it
– if subordinate offers hand they come across aggressive
– Koreans are called by the title not first name. Only same age friends call each other friends

The Korean language reflects the important observance of a speaker or writer’s relationships with both the subject of the sentence and the audience. Korean grammar uses an extensive system of honorifics to reflect the speaker’s relationship to the subject of the sentence and speech levels to reflect the speaker’s relationship to the audience. Originally, the honorifics expressed the differences in social status between speakers. In contemporary Korean culture, honorifics are used to differentiate between formal and informal speech based on the level of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. (Wikipedia)

– married couples call each other titles
– people are always called the highest title they have ever held
– do not use red ink when writing a persons name because it welcomes bad luck
– don’t fill your own glass fill the glass of others
– turn sideways when drinking alcohol with older person
– blow your nose away from others
– never put utensils or chopsticks sticking up in food bowl because that’s what you do during ancestor offering
– don’t point at children you are welcoming evil spirits

New course! This one is called Korean Social Structure and Culture and lecture one was great! 

Definition of culture: four elements of culture

1. Symbols
2. Language
3. Norms
4. Values

1. Symbols
Swastika: meaning auspiciousness, goodness in Buddhism
Cross: Christianity
Buddhism – 11 million
Protestant – 8.7 million
Catholic – 5.3 million

2. Languages
Languages reflect worldview
People from the USA – “Americans”
The Chinese character for china literally means centre of the universe
In Korean the word Meokda means eat. Linguistic theory proposes that when a concept is at the forefront of the peoples mind this term is projected into unrelated concepts. So, in Korean history there has never really been an abundance of food thus where a western person would say, “enjoy your meal” or equivalent – older Koreans quote a saying that literally translate “eat lots”. See further examples from slide show:

This is really fascinating and made me think about words I use and how they may be coloured with a worldview and to ask the question: are the words I use, is the worldview I communicate linguistically, consistent with my Christian worldview? Is the considered external worldview consistent with the subtle, underlying worldview?

PS: it amazes to no end that this is a Korean lecturer with both Korean and Chinese students lecturing in English – I really want to learn another language!