Part 2: Beginning with Core Media Literacy Skills...

Core Media Literacy Skills:
1. Play: the capacity to experiment with one's surroundings as a form of problem-solving.\
The authors cite Pratt (1991) who gives the example of Sam and Willie who learned a lot about phonics by deciphering the names of baseball players on baseball cards.
Baseball card collecting required some skills that had clear payoffs for academic subjects. For example, math was practiced when the boys worked out batting averages; arranging his cards gave him concentrated effort at classification; and discussing the baseball cards gave him reason to work on his communication skills.
On a different level, the cards helped him become motivated and shaped his acquiring of academic subjects. Sam thought about the cities where the teams played. This gave him the desire to learn about map-reading skills. Furthermore, Sam developed a sense of himself as a learner that enjoyed the process of learning.

Fun in this context means engagement. Some of what a person does to compete in a game is not fun--- it's a chore. However, the efforts make it possible to begin to master skills, collect materials, or line up things. The payoff is down the line, after the work or chores. The individual is willing to spend the time on this "work" because he/she values the goal or purpose. When the individual is "working" for the goal, they are meaningfully (to them) engaged. For our current generation, games are often the best way to get students engaged in learning.

Play is valuable because it lowers the emotional stakes of failing. Taking risks and learning through trial and error are encouraged in "play". Since textbooks often are dull to children (and adults!)because they are abstract and often depersonalized, games make up intresting worlds players must compete in. The players feel involved in the "world" and have some stake in the events happening and final outcome. In many cases the games actually give a reason to "Why learn this?".
Also, what players learn is immediately put to use in the game to solve dilemnas - with consequences in the game itself.

The authors cite Jenkins (2005) who relates that a game is really just a set of problems. Furthermore, he believes the most interesting games are those that do not have one answer but a an "infinite range of solutions".

Games are much like the scientific process. Players are asked to make their own discoveries and then apply what they have learned in different settings and contexts. Thinking about how they play the game is much like reflection and talking about what they have learned (through the game).

There were three examples that the authors gave of how teachrs might develop "play" into their classroom situations:
1) Students could create alternative history scenes (than what occurred in reality).
For example, "What might have happened if Germany had won WW II? Or if Native Americans had colonized Europe?" These questions compel students to think deeply and creatively because there is no one right answer. Also, the questions lead to exploration that comes back to why and how certain events in history occurred. They teach students to not be overawed by adult expertise; allow many different levels of engagement (play), and can lead to students making logical arguments and searching for evidence to back up their perspectives.

2)Art students are given a waide variety of everyday materials and asked to use them to solve a spcific design problem. Thus students are encouraged to look again at common objects, to think in multiple directions about common problems, and to respect others' responses to the same activity.

3) Games give the opportunity to learn through direct experience. The example given was with physics and the game Supercharged, a game that teaches the core principles of electromagnism. Students were to move their cars through a electromagnetic maze by using charges that attract or repel their cars (in the game). Physics teachers then taught underlying principles that they were using, ultimately sending them back to play again on higher levels.

(I just realized that I need to summarize more succintly or it will take way too long to finish this paper.... so here goes my try at minimalizing words and concepts!)
At this point, I'll just list the other 10 Core Literacy Skills and comment afterwards:

2. Simulation - the bility to understand and make dynamic models of real world processes.
3.Performance - the ability to take on alternative identities for the reason of improvisation and discovery.
4. Appropriation - the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content.
5. Multi-tasking - the ability to scan the environment and chage focus onto the
prominent details for a specific purpose.
6. Distributed Cognition - the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that increase our mental capacities.
7. Collective intelligence - the ability to share knowledge and compare notes with others toward as common goal.
8. Judgment - the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources.
9. Transmedia Navigation - the ability to deal with the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities.
10. Networking - the ability to search for, synthesize, and desseminate information.
11. Negotiation - the ability to travel across very different communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative sets of norms.
(Now, I'm going to post the above [I don't want to lose what I've already typed---since I've been working on this assignment all day], reread the information about each New Core Literacy Skill, and process my thoughts on the description and uses of these skills.)