Dr. Degand article “A Phenomenological Multi-Case Study About Social Success Skills, Aspirations, and Related Media Experiences” discusses his year long multi case study that examined two male black teenage students who have different backgrounds but both were living in New York. He compares how they view social success, career goals and their media experiences. In addition, he then takes in account of the differences in their community and school demographics and how it impacts them socially. The main topic for “Algorithms of Oppression” discusses algorithms that connected black people to images or slurs with negative connotations. The video by Steinkuehler mentions how motivation to read and learn is strongly linked to video games. She then explains how motivation comes when the student is interested in the material. The Ted Talk discusses the difference between algorithms and statistics.

Reflecting back on the readings I found the “Interest Driven Thinking” video very interesting. Since taking this class, I never considered how much video games can educate students. In addition after watching the video, I can see how videogames can positively impact learning and motivate children to interact with the material.

If you were a teacher trying to get children to be more motivated, would you try to incorporate video games into your curriculum.

The first article Dunbar’s article “Rap music, race, and perceptions of crime” argues that scholars who have studied rap music have concerns about people who criticize the genere. They also suggest the criticism is linked to stereotypes of young Black men in the United States. The second article “How to Listen Musically to Rap” by Connor argues that people who criticize rap often do not listen thoroughly to the genre. They are not actively listen to the music, where you can hear the difference in accents, flows, and rhythms of each song; it is not all about the lyrics when it comes to rap music. For the podcast, “The Birth of American Music” by Morris, he first talks about the different types of black music that has been produced throughout history. Many of the songs he mentioned he also talked about how they were filled with struggle and the want for freedom. The “Kanye West: The Elephant in the Room” podcast talks about how kanye grew up and his success in the music industry. The second podcast talks about the song, “Through the Wire,” which put kanye into fame and later on game him complications in life.

From a personal experience, I have always loved rap music and even grew up with it. I remember my father and I cruising after my soccer games listening to Eminem and 50 cent. It was nice to listen to difference in tones of voices and the beats they produced. I found this music a way of becoming the most unique artist one can be. Rap music is so different and allows artists to try all different types of mixes and rhythms. For example, Travis scott’s songs vary from song to song; one of this songs even sounds like it could be more than one song.

Why do you think people who do not actively listen to rap music are so easy to judge the music that is produced?

To be completely honest, I have not had much time to interact with the guild part of the game. I found that part of the game very confusing so I decided to stick to completing the story line and upgrading what I can for my city. For me, the most exciting part of the game was defeating others soldiers to gain land and money. Reflecting back to the start of this experience, I can say I was totally wrong about this game. There are so many ways to use this game in education. I believe there are many social studies classes that can benefit from using online games to make learning the material easier. Another feature of the game I like is how the game was simple on the iphone and allowed people to navigate through the game smoothly. I would rarely play the game on a computer since it was hard to zoom in and out on the screen. I also did not like how small the logos were on all the buttons, it made it hard to pick the right button you want. With the game coming to an end, I would like to thank Dr. Degand for making this game a requirement for this class. I really enjoy the new perspective I have about online video games and how they can benefit learning.

1. With the guild, I still have no clue what I am doing except for clicking buttons and gaining the prizes. When there are fights, I mostly choose for the game to auto fight since I don’t want to pick where my soldiers go. This makes the game go by a little faster and less boring. I haven’t really interested with the message thread and chat. The reason for not being interested in the chat rooms is because I don’t like talking to strangers online.
2. When I don’t compare to some of the other students worlds, I think I have gotten pretty far on the game. I am now in the middle of the stone age, which is not very advanced. My city has grown a lot though, I now have more houses that can provide more people to be able to have more business in my city. Also, I have noticed my understanding of the game has changed. I have a lot more knowledge on how to play this game and be able to get further. I can now figure out how to get certain inventory or how to trade it for other items.

In Winn’s article, “Toward a Restorative English Education,” it describes how restorative justice can be applied to the classroom setting, targeting mostly english classes. The restorative justice process is where zero-tolerance policies are replaced with collaboration and dialogue within classrooms, this can result in more productive classrooms. The podcast on restorative justice talks about there is toxicity in online interactions. In addition, the podcast also talks about how it is linked to the concept of restorative justice and how it affects humans on a daily basis. The buechley video mentions that Make Magazine is a place where they show kids how they can create cool objects while also giving them the freedom by allowing them to make such unique representations. Another important topic she mentions has to do with the gender imbalance. She does this by emphasizing how 85% of the makers are men. Lasty, the Ladson-Billings article talks about implementing culturally sustaining pedagogy allows students’ cultures to be explored freely.

When I was in middle school, I remember how serious the zero-tolerance policies were for all the student. These zero tolerance policies showed bullies they were going to get suspended for what they did. Because allowing any form of bullying to be okay, enabled the bully to keep going. By having these zero tolerance policies showed how serious their actions were and how they were not accepted under any circumstance. But after reading about restorative justice, I can now see how there are better alternatives to zero-tolerance policies.

What type of impact would it have on the students if teacher implemented restorative justice?

1. My experience with the guide so far has been nonexistent. In my opinion, I thought I was pretty far in the game so why am I not being shown how to use the guide part of the game? I feel as if the game does not explain what next steps should be taken once you’ve reached a certain point. In addition, I was able to look at the guide and see the different types of ages but did not know what to do next. There was no tool to figure how to interact with this part of the game.
2. Now for the pace of the game, it is very slow for the types of games I life to play. The wait time for everything is very long, sometimes you have to wait a whole 2 days for something to be completed or in order to move on to your next step. For example, you can’t build more items without more houses and in order for the houses to be built you have to wait a certain amount of time. In my opinion, this game is too slow for me when comparing it to farmville and clash of clans.

I find myself playing this game less and less as the weeks go by. The level my world is at makes everything so much harder and more time consuming. Games that are time consuming, I tend to stop playing them since I get easily board of game. I need something excited to keep my eyes glued and FoE is just not that game for me.

My cites layout took some time to get to. I don’t like how there’s not a feature where you can put your items in inventory so you can start off from scratch to redesign. The way the game works is by having space so you can redesign your city better if you don’t have any room on your map it is very hard to redesign. So as a result I had to sell some cities and remove some roads which kinda caused chaos in my city. My houses where freaking out about not having roads and when I sold some houses my people’s happiness went down. Then all of a sudden I was not paying attention to my supplies and I couldn’t build roads for awhile. So redesigning was not as easy as i thought it was going to be but eventually everything worked out and my cities moving into the iron buildings, so now i have some of those houses.

As for my battle experience, I was fighting and winning for awhile until I got to the point where I had to negotiate more since my army was too weak. I had to wait awhile to get to the iron stage so I could get better soldiers. When I attack, I do it automatically since I am not very good at picking where the people should go during the attack. The guild expedition is very cool, it i nice to have some wait time in between since it takes awhile for the soldiers to recuperate.

For today’s readings, we were given Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow, where we were given the preface, introduction, and first chapter. These readings are highly intense for me since I have family members in the criminal system. The main point of Alexander’s book is to show how the United States criminal justice system still continues racism in law even though many people say it is gone. In the first chapter, Alexander summarizes the history of racism in the United States, especially for African Americans in the U.S.

In my life, I have not personally experienced racism of any sort. As for my uncle who is in the criminal justice system, he writes to me all the time about who is favored and who is treated poorly. As americas on the other side, we tend to not believe these serious situation happen on a daily basis. Everyday there is someone out there in the world experiencing racism. When Alexander mentioned there are some people who think racism is not evident in this world anymore, I had to take a second glance. I believe they do not want to believe the truth since it is horrible to still have racism in this world.

If history teachers taught their children the seriousness of racism and how it can have a cause and effect in every situation. Do you think there could be a more positive effect on there education and how they tend to deal with certain situations?

1. So as of right now, my city is moving very slow since the storyline is having harder tasks and everything is just getting more difficult without paying for items. This where the game becomes boring and where usually Ill stop playing the game since it is to much of a time commitment. The ongoing storylines are fun to play but they get difficult since you have bigger and bigger assignments to complete. As of right now I have to conquer land in order to complete my story line but in order to do that I need Stone Age soldiers and I cant do that since i have no space in my city right now. For my daily tasks, I make sure to use all my forge points whenever they are available. I make sure to collect all the coins and aid friendships so they will aid my city also. Lastly for my daily tasks, I make sure to try to conquer one sector or more depending on how powerful the defense is. When thinking about the archeology component, I have no idea what that could be, sorry.

1. “Decisions that Matter” by Patronus, is an internet game that is interactive. The game deals with real life situations such as sexual assault in a college setting. The main argument of the game is all decisions we choose to make may or may not have consequences. In addition, people need to think before they do when it comes to their actions. The article, “But That’s Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy”, discussed definitions and examples of school and culture and how they are related to one another. The main argument for this reading is how the environment outside the classroom is just as important as learning in side the classroom. Lastly if teacher want to form deep contentions with children then they need to address students cultures. The last reading is a book “Critical Race Theory” which talks about activists and scholars who like to engage in relationships with race, racism and power.
2. When I played the interactive game “Decisions that Matter,” I thought about the countless times teachers and faulty throughout my education being very informative on sexual assault and how it is wrong. They had many resources to help children through the difficult time in life. I think having knowledge about sexual assault and comping skills is very good tool to learn at a young age. This interactive game was very eye opening to me since I experienced situations just like the game and never thought it was sexual assault. This game gave me knowledge on topics or situations I was unaware of. It was a really good learning tool that i think many students could benefit from.
3. Do video games have the power to teach and show children material they may not already know?