1. Computers and English Matt Barton
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Computers and English
Matt Barton

2. _yes, even violent ones
“I want to talk about video games—yes, even violent video games—and say something positive about them.” (1)

3. _social construction
“You cannot read or think outside of any group whatsoever.” (2)
Groups work to encourage people to read and think in certain ways. (2)

4. _three discourses Situated Cognition New Literacy Studies
Human learning is fully embedded in a material, social, and cultural world. (8)
New Literacy Studies
Reading and writing should be viewed not as mental achievements but as social and cultural practices with economic, historical, and political implications.
Connectionism
Humans are powerful pattern-recognizers. We think better with patterns than with logic or abstract principles.

5. _anti-social schools
Children are expected to read texts with little or no knowledge about any social practices within which those texts are used. (16)
Producers (people who can actually engage in a social practice) potentially make better consumers (people who can read or understand texts from or about the social practice).

6. _semiotic domains
By a semiotic domain I mean any set of practices that recruits one or more modalities to communicate distinctive types of meanings. (18)
Cellular biology, literary criticism…
People need to be able to learn to be literate in new semiotic domains throughout their lives. (19)

7. _internal and external
Any domain can be viewed internally as a type of content or externally in terms of people engaged in a set of social practices. (26)
Internal Error: “God breathed life into the word.”
External Error: “Oh, you’re a social linguist.”

8. _design grammars
Each domain has an internal and an external design grammar.
Internal DG: The principles and patterns with which one can recognize what is acceptable content in a semiotic domain.
External DG: The principles and patterns that determine what is an acceptable or typical social practice and identity within the affinity group associated with the domain.

9. _“There isn’t any content…”
Important knowledge is information in, or at least related to, intellectual domains or academic disciplines like physics, history, art, or literature. (21)
Work that does not involve such learning is “meaningless.”

10. _everything in particular
The problem with the content view is that an academic discipline, or any other semiotic domain, is not primarily content. (21)
It is primarily a lived and historically changing set of distinctive social practices.
There really is no such thing as learning in general. (22)

11. _everything in particular
When we learn a new semiotic domain in an active way:
We learn to experience the world in new ways
We gain the potential to join a social group
We prepare for future learning and problem solving in the domain and related domains

12. _critical learning For learning to be critical:
We need to learn not only how to understand and produce meanings in a particular semiotic domain, but also how to think about that domain at a “meta” level.
We need to know how to innovate in the domain.

13. _learning to play
“How are good video games designed to enhance getting themselves learned well and quickly so people can play and enjoy them even when they are long and hard?” (6)
“The theory of learning in good video games is close to what I believe are the best theories of learning in cognitive science.” (7)

14. _videogames
Video games are potentially good places where people can learn to situate meanings through embodied experiences in a complex semiotic domain and meditate on the process. (26)
Video games situate meaning in a multimodal space through embodied experiences to solve problems and reflect on the intricacies of the design of imagined worlds and the design of both real and imagined social relationships wand identities in the modern world. (48)

15. _finger Three types of player identity:
Virtual Identity: Your identity as a virtual character in a virtual world.
Real-world Identity: Your identity as a non-virtual person playing the game.
Projective Identity: Your projection of your values, aspirations, and directives onto the virtual character.
This tripartite play transcends identification with characters in novels or movies because it is active and reflexive.

16. _learning identities
People cannot learn in a deep way within a semiotic domain if they are not willing to commit themselves fully to it…they must see themselves as the kind of person who can learn, use, and value the semiotic domain. (59)
The learner knows she has the capacity to take on the virtual identity as a real world one. (66)

17. _situated meaning
One good way to make people look stupid is to ask them to learn and think in terms they cannot connect in any useful way to images or situations in their embodied experiences in the world. (76)

18. _the story in videogames
The story line in a video game is a mixture of four things:
The game designer’s choices
How you cause these choices to unfold by the order in which you find things
The actions you carry out
Your own imaginative projection about the characters, plot, and world of the story

19. _Hamlet died! Insert coin to try again.
When the character you are playing dies, you may get sad, but you usually get “pissed” that you have failed.
The emotional investments you have in a video-game story are entirely different from those you get in a book or movie. (82)

20. _like I was there
One intriguing thing about video-game stories is that I am so involved at the level of that the larger story line often seems to float somewhat vaguely above me.

21. _the cycle
Playing a good video game requires the player to engage in a four-step process:
Probe the virtual world
Form a hypothesis about what something might mean in a situated way
Reprobe the word with the hypothesis in mind
Reflect on result and rethink hypothesis

22. _learning principles p. 49
Active, Critical Learning Principle
Learning environments should zoom in and out
Design Principle
Know and appreciate design
Semiotic Principle
Learn what signs are and how they relate
Semiotic Domains Principle
Understand semiotic domains and be able to participate in groups
Metalevel Thinking about Semiotic Domains
Ability to make connections

23. _learning principles p. 67
“Psychosocial Moratorium” Principle
Low consequences encourage risk-taking
Committed Learning Principle
Practice and commitment are linked
Identity Principle
Learning through taking on identities
Self-Knowledge Principle
Translate virtual knowledge to your life
Amplification of Input Principle
Low input, high output
Achievement Principle
Learners at all levels rewarded proportionately for effort

24. _learning principles p. 71
Practice Principle
More fun = More practice
Ongoing Learning Principle
Constant cycles of learning make roles overlap
“Regime of Competence” Principle
Gain skills to overcome challenges

25. _learning principles p. 107
Probing Principle
Learn as you do
Multiple Routes Principle
Situated Meaning Principle
Text Principle

26. _learning principles p. 111
Intertextual Principle
Multimodal Principle
“Material Intelligence” Principle
Intuitive Knowledge Principle