After my presentation yesterday I had the feeling I didn't explain what I meant by the habit of mind or hexia that I saw gaming as having the potential to help students, or rather I should say anyone, develop. By a habit of mind, I am referring to a thought process that a person takes into any situation and figures out what it is that s/he needs to do to in that situation. As I read the articles this week, I got the sense that gaming presents opportunities for people to develop a more enriched habit of mind or thought process. Specifically, gaming presents situations to gamers in which they have to make decisions, plan, and ultimately figure out what it is they need to do to achieve their goal in the game. I take the example of the LD student playing Sims in the "Taking Flight" article. Specifically, that person had to develop a long term vision in order to help his fictional city thrive in the game setting. However, I realize that in writing long-term vision I also am leaving out the fact that the gamer also had to develop a short-term vision as well. Put another way, the gamer had to deal with immediate situations that would play out in a shorter time period; however, those decisions also have an impact on the future of the city as well, so the game for this student presented the opportunity to develop a more well-rounded vision, both short and long term. Ultimately, the gamer is becoming a thinker while playing, yet the crucial question for me is how can the gamer then translate those skills (critical thinking?) and apply them in other situations in his/her life, both individually and professionally?

I'm not sure I have an answer for this question yet, and I think it takes us back to our "intellectualizing" of games discussion that we had yesterday. In our discussion we mentioned how in "intellectualizing" gaming it may take the fun out of gaming and thus remove one of the primary criteria for using gaming in the classroom. However, if we aren't going to have students intellectualize what they're doing, then why bring it into the classroom? I look at how we have our students do rhetorical analyses of their multimedia projects. Beyond them learning how to use and understand rhetorically the technologies as a way to communicate, I believe we also have the students use the technologies because it is fun for them. Yet, why are we not as concerned with making the intellectualizing move with our multimedia assignments as we are in gaming?

Finally, we didn't get a chance to talk about the "honing" of their rhetorical skills via gaming question that I raised at the end of my presentation, but can we see gaming as an opportunity to hone rhetorical skills?