[Headnote]
Using experiences with her students, Adams explores how video gaming may increase students' "virtual literacy" and other reading skills.
As a language arts teacher, I have found that the most useful tool I have in motivating my students is popular culture, particularly video games. Many teachers may fi nd it diffi cult to believe that video games can help student achievement; as a teacher in a small school district, I understand the concern that some teachers will encounter nonbelievers. However, think of how much fun your students have when you incorporate even old-fashioned games into the curriculum. Much like putting Jeopardy into your reading curriculum over a decade ago, modern video games may help students fi nd competition and relevance in reading, especially when combined with cross-age tutoring.
Cross-age tutoring, in which older and younger students work together to improve their ELA skills, is not a new concept; Linda D. Labbo and William H. Teale explored it as a tool for poor readers as early as 1990. Labbo and Teale found that using oral readings and producing them as performance allows students who are inexperienced readers the opportunity to interact closely with "model readers" (362). I have found that using tutoring with video games also works well. The students have the opportunity to read aloud collaboratively while interacting with the game itself; thus, reluctant readers also have the opportunity to become experts in the game. When working with a classmate, the stronger reader acts as the "model" for interpretation and guidance, but ultimately, both students learn a great deal from the experience.
Many students do not consider "grabbing a good book" quality entertainment. Students look to technology and pop culture for their entertainment, and most of them revel in competitive games. In this article I will discuss how tutoring with video games can help particularly reluctant or unsuccessful readers, and I will give teachers practical ideas for making reading fun for 21st-century adolescents.
Why Play a Video Game in Class?
The role-playing game Neverwinter Nights begins with a simple tutorial, which is where the heaviest reading occurs.1 The game is distributed on the Atari label and was created by the makers of the game Dungeons and Dragons, and it uses skills such as logic, problem solving, higher order thinking, and dialogue for the player to "win." Students can play this game in a partnership or tutoring situation with other students in an ELA classroom to facilitate their reading development. In a partnership, the student mentors and the students being tutored work together to move forward in the game. This allows the lower level reader to feel competent, increasing the student's self-confi dence as the game progresses. Alternatively, two students could work on computers next to each other after completing the tutorial, allowing for some competition.
The beauty of the game is that unless the student is an avid fantasy reader, the vocabulary is foreign, so even an advanced reader must learn the new jargon when attempting to play the game. For any adolescent reader this will provide a challenge, and the model reading behaviors will be more important in the tutoring sessions than the vocabulary knowledge. Because the advanced reader will be forced to work with unfamiliar vocabulary as well, the game becomes a place where both readers are working in unfamiliar territory, and the confi dence of the reluctant reader may increase, ultimately resulting in two more-advanced readers. I learned about using video games to teach reading from Michelle Commeyras, professor at the University of Georgia, who developed the concept for use in the College of Education's reading clinic.
I first tested Commeyras's concept in an alternative school program in Greensboro, Georgia. One student named J.R.-an 18-year-old African American male with a learning disability-showed an interest in reading manga. The Naruto series was J.R.'s favorite. I was the teacher of record and decided to allow him to read those novels as part of his "Reading Counts" program, which is similar to the Accelerated Reader program used in schools around Georgia (from Renaissance Learning; http:// www.renlearn.com/ar). J.R. continued reading the graphic novels he enjoyed, but gradually he became more withdrawn during his time in the alternative school, especially when the class read more diffi cult texts. I decided to assign him the Neverwinter Nights video game because it relies heavily on text and written conversation. J.R. and I alternated reading passages aloud when playing the game, and his character in Neverwinter Nights developed quickly. While helping him to increase his reading skills, the game also allowed J.R. to construct a virtual identity that helped him escape from the barrage of obstacles he faced in school. I also assigned him a tutor, and this allowed him the opportunity to play the game without frustration because unfamiliar vocabulary could be explored with his tutor.
James Paul Gee says that when playing video games, there are different identities at work that allow adolescents the opportunity to explore literacy and lose themselves in the action (43-44). I saw J.R., previously a hesitant reader, blossom into a much more confi dent reader. He loved the game, he loved spending time working on reading he enjoyed, and he wanted his tutor to understand his choices and virtual character. This gaming/reading experience allowed me to work individually with J.R., giving him direct and indirect instruction while conferencing continually, and it allowed J.R. to feel comfortable in the medium he was working with, which gave him confi dence traditional texts do not.
J.R. was the perfect candidate for the gaming "identity" construct; he enjoys gaming and the fantasy genre and spends a great deal of time reading in genres that seem to correlate well with the content of the game. However, another student in the class, an 18-year-old Hispanic male named Angelo, was not well versed in the fantasy genre, but he enjoyed the game immensely as well. I believe many students would benefi t from similar gaming/reading experiences.
In part, reluctant readers simply need an escape from their daily life in school. "This generation of students relates to graphics fi rst, versus traditional information acquisition of text fi rst" (Simpson and Clem 6). In this study, Elizabeth Simpson and Frances A. Clem found that middle school students learn more and more rapidly when they are actively engaged. Thus, the authors used video games with their students to make learning more entertaining and more accessible for today's students. The students used problem-based approaches and were evaluated using performance-based evaluations and self-assessments via rubrics. The results were numerous teachable moments and student satisfaction. With structure and support, teachers can implement video games easily (14).
Virtual Literacy in Today's Classrooms
Children in today's society have grown up in a textually rich environment, but their canvas is not the same as the generations before them. Media of all genres bombard them; they are children of the Internet who can access information at the touch of a button. The medium for them is the message (McLuhan 33-34), and they are so used to constant stimulation of all senses in textual experiences that it is necessary to provide new literacies for their consumption (Simpson and Clem 6). Many students in classrooms at Greene County High School read more outside than inside of school. Those students are not necessarily reading the novels read by many of their teachers when they were in school; instead, they are reading text messages, blogs, comments on their online community pages, texts in their online games, and instructions on their Nintendo machines. Teachers are wise to tap into the tools used by teens voluntarily. According to one presentation made for the Annenberg Research Network on International Communication (Castells et al.), youth cultures around the world use popular culture as the new method of communication. Telephones, instant messaging, blogs, emails, interfaces, websites, online communities, and a host of other media act as students' playgrounds, and high school students have invented new languages to facilitate using those mediums quickly and effectively. Just as film has become a common teaching tool in public classrooms across the country, we must embrace the Internet and video gaming as new methods of enticing reluctant readers (Gee).
The video game Neverwinter Nights involves creating a character endowed with various abilities and hindrances based on the race, class, and skill assigned by the gamer. This allocation of identities, identifi ed by Gee as virtual, real, and projected, allows students the freedom to safely become someone they are not (54-55). Neverwinter Nights does contain violence, but its battles are comparable to Beowulf or Titus Andronicus, and in addition to offering students chances to use technology to lose themselves in a fictional world, this game is rich in text and offers an incentive for reluctant readers. When playing this game, students go on a quest, meeting characters along the way that help them through dialogue. The good news for teachers is that the dialogue box at the bottom of the screen is the most helpful component when students prepare for battle in each section of the game. Students must read as they go in order to battle successfully and move forward. Students do not battle each other in this game because it is not conducted online; however, there are many games similar in content to Neverwinter Nights that teachers could use if they found their students enjoying themselves so much that they wanted them to play against each other within that virtual reality.
Some Final Thoughts
Virtual literacy is different from informational literacy. Virtual literacy is how a student reads online texts, images, and conversations, and it requires that students extend their understanding of technology to include understanding how to use it responsibly and how to "read" authors' intentions by making inferences and comprehending the codes involved in the online world. It takes the critical refl ection of the information used in informational literacy and extends it to the social constructs inherent in the digital world. This is especially true of the various identities required in online blogging and gaming communities, and there, students must do more than evaluate the social and cultural impact: they must assume a new identity.
Teachers may at fi rst wonder if virtual literacy is the only thing their students will gain from playing video games in the classroom. Remember several things when you are making this decision for your classroom. First, reading is one of the most important skills students can use when playing Neverwinter Nights. By reading-and reading quickly-students advance in the game. Even with only one student playing the game, the literacy skills they use involve vocabulary acquisition, reading comprehension, and reading for information. In addition, you may have students play on computers next to each other, thus allowing them the creativity to create characters and delve further into the game's plot and theme. By taking on actual characters, they are acting out the story themselves, which is a literacy skill that we often have little time for. Finally, teachers are wise to remember that having fun in the classroom is one of our greatest assets in motivating students. We must always be looking for ways to create those meaningful experiences that add relevance to students' reading.