Active learning and discovery

I like what Gee talks about in Chapter 5 about how the hands on learning of video games is really an important form of discovery, but how past experiences also can guide our behavior. In school I have always appreciated tasks that were interactive and involved so much more than just trying to read a book and write a report. Being in an environment where trying something new and being allowed to fail at it without giving up is so important. In one of my computer classes, although it would have been faster to tell us step by step how to do a project, one of my teachers gave us a new program and told us to create this slideshow and print it out with all of these specifics. She gave us no instructions about how to do it, so we all were forced to discover things for ourselves-open files, click buttons, pull down screens, search everywhere and try everything. While it seemed like a very structured project, there were many things that were left to our discretion and we were encouraged to be curious, but were left to our own devices. It taught me how to interpret the program and while I did the assignment I found out so many things that I would still remember now, but I know if the steps had just been put in front of me, I wouldn't remember at all. You really do learn much more by doing something for yourself than by just being told what to do.