As I reflected on the readings from this week and the discussions we have been having in class about the role games can playing in learning, my mind immediately turned to Bill Hart-Davidson and Tim Peeples’ “Techniques, Technologies and the Deskilling of Rhetoric and Composition.” What came to mind was their comment that “[t]eachers pose challenging rhetorical problems to students to help them learn how to apply rhetorical strategies and techniques covered in class. And usually students are content to play along” (Hart-Davidson and Peeples 276). What I found particularly interesting about the previous statement is how well it connects our discussion about the benefits of games and what we try to teach our students in introductory composition classrooms.

As we saw from Mark’s presentation on Thursday, one of the best examples of how games connect to learning is that they help foster the development of critical thinking and problem solving skills, which are both extremely important portions of the writing process. What I found lacking in the readings, however, was attention to other styles of game play. And, with the recent passing of Gary Gygax and the fact that I used to play a little game called Magic in my high school days, I think the observations being made about video games can also be applied to strategy games that do not always take place in digitized environments.

Take the image of the Magic card I have included (more information about the card can be found here ), which is an example of an artifact from the type of “Semiotic Domain” James Gee describes in What Video Games have to Teach us About Language and Learning. According to Gee:

Reading and writing in any domain, whether it is law, rap songs, academic essays, superhero comics, or whatever, are not just ways of decoding print, they are also caught up with and in social practices. Literacy in any domain is actually not worth much if one knows nothing about the social practices of which that literacy is but a part. And, of course, these social practices involve much more than just an engagement with print. (14-15)

By examine the card we can clearly discover what Gee is describing in the above passage. The entire card is a rhetorical strategy which uses a mixture of visual and print elements to accomplish a specific purpose. While playing the game, a player must accomplish specific socially constructed condition in order to use the card. What the player must learn is how this card can function with the rest the cards in her deck and how they can work together as a tool for victory, which can only happen by revising the strategies the player chooses to implement during game play. So in a way, the player is strengthening her critical thinking skills, developing and drafting a plan of attack through the collection of cards for her deck, and then revising her plan over time by remove cards that do not work and adding card that might work better to construct a well thought out and effective product. (Sounds a lot like writing a paper don’t it.)