Thinking About Culture Is Useful

This recording serves as an appendix to the episode on James Paul Gee's book What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. In his book, he provides 36 principles of learning that he proposes in his book on the basis of the psychological effectiveness of computer games.

In my opinion, 36 principles is far too many; ideally, I would have five or fewer. I thought that a principle was supposed to be a distillation, and so a proliferation of them seems counterproductive and rather ironic. But I still wanted to go through his principles to be fair to him and his book. What's striking is how he is occasionally absolutely correct in his assertions, yet at other times completely off the mark. He is another example of somebody who is apparently academically respected within the field of education, and yet says things which are completely unreal and make little if any sense to those who know the basics.

Enjoy the episode.