Cultural Models, Learning, and Action

After reading chapter six in Gee I have learned a lot about his ideas about video games and cultural models. I find it very interesting when Gee discusses how "video games are just as easy to design to allow you to play a sinner as a saint" (141). The idea that when you play video games you are taking on different roles and have to live life through out the game in these various cultural models. Some games allow you to choose if you want to be on the "dark side" or the "good side" and you get to experience the game from two perspectives. I think this point Gee makes is a good one. Children should get a chance to experience school from various perspectives and when doings so they get a chance to appreciate the opposite side of things and understand different viewpoints better. Getting to experience different cultural models is important because you then get a chance to find out about what others consider to be "typical" and realize that "different cultural models are associated with different groups in the larger society, though some are also shared widely by many". After Gee's discussion about cultural models in video games, I find his statements about cultural models in school to also be of interest. I think that it is interesting to learn his idea that children "adopt different models of content of learning in school" and that some may be right or wrong and teachers need to be aware of this and students need to think about why they have these different views. This is what Gee says good video games do, they "have a way of making players consciously aware of some of their previously assumed cultural models about learning itself" (162). That struck me to very interesting because I think that is so important for children to think about when they come into a classroom already assuming things that may deter or attract them from wanting to learn, maybe they need to rethink their cultural models for some of their learning cultural models and give new ones a chance in order to give learning a fair chance.